Understanding Volsgemeinschaft.

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Mr Kydd

volksgemeinschaft-ww2shotsThis is an idea that we will return to in future lessons, but following on from today’s lesson, if you want to develop your understanding of Volsgemeinschaft then have a look at this article.

Mr Kydd.

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Understanding the desire for a Greater Germany / Lebensraum

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Mr Kydd

1024px-Austria_Hungary_ethnic_svgAll,

Those maps from today’s lesson. The first of course reflects the extent to which self-determination was denied to Germany by the victorious allies in 1919. The second is a map showing the maximum extent of German territory in Thied Reichthe Second World War. The slavic areas to the east of Germany were the orginal targets of lebensraum. An interesting question here how different this is from earlier German nationalist ideas of Mitteleuropa…

Have a good half term,

Mr Kydd.

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Window-Shopping Through the Iron Curtain. An insight into a lost world…

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Mr Kydd

_80891912_9_moscow,1990,lipstickThere is a lovely article here from the BBC news magazine about the work of David Hlynsky. After the collapse of the Iron Curtain he photographed as much as he could of the quickly disappearing Communist world. The article focuses on the a tantalising set of still-life pictures of shop windows, which offer a glimpse of life in the old Communist cities. It states, “in the introduction to a book of the project published by Thames & Hudson, Hlynsky relates his experiences. He notes that the shops of the East hid as much as they revealed about the real economy. The arrival of new stock was passed by word of mouth, he says, which meant advertising was replaced by rumour and gossip. People in the know would stockpile items while they were available, then later trade for other goods.”

If you want to know more about his work then his website is here .

Mr Kydd.

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Diggers to uncover Leveller ?

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Mr Kydd

Crossrail-PA-v3If you click here then you will get a lovely article from today’s Independent about Robert Lockyer. It suggests that as Crossrail continues, “archaeologists could be about to unearth the musket-shot-riddled remains of one of Britain’s great left-wing heroes. Executed by firing squad in April 1649, Robert Lockyer was an activist in England’s first democratic political movement, the Levellers. Archaeological excavations due to start early next month at Liverpool Street in central London could locate his final resting place.”

Mr Kydd.

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In our time – What is the relevance of history ?

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Mr Kydd

bbc-radio-4If you click here then you will get to an old edition of In Our Time. In it Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the study of history. The programme guide information follows.

“One of the debates raging in the practice of history is between the history of facts versus the imagination – a debate raised again by so-called ‘faction’ – fiction based on documentary facts which is so much in our minds today from films and television. But in fact it is a debate which has been going on throughout the century within history. The 19th century historian Thomas Macaulay wrote that History is under the jurisdiction of two hostile powers; and like other districts similarly situated it is ill-defined, ill-cultivated and ill-regulated. Instead of being equally shared between its two rulers, the Reason and the Imagination, it falls alternately under the sole and absolute dominion of each. It is sometimes fiction and sometimes theory. Why is the study of history important? Is history relevant to us today? Are the truths likely to be yielded from history closer to those disclosed in great novels than the abstract general laws sought by social scientists? And what is the role of imagination in the writing of history?”

Mr Kydd 

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Obituary – Churchill’s biographer – Martin Gilbert

Posted on February 7, 2015 by Mr Kydd

GilbertYou may have noted that the 24th January marked the 50th anniversary of the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. As this Radio 4 programme by  Sir David Cannadine and this BBC news magazine article reflect, Churchill was a complex and often controversial man.

I first came across such issues in Martin Gilbert’s 1980 biography of the great man – Churchill. It is a work of great intellectual strength which in many respects belonged to a different age. As Larry P. Arnn comments, “Gilbert utterly rebelled against the view that the facts of history change with time. In this way he agreed with the classics. He wrote the biography faithfully, from primary-source materials and with the greatest care to tell the story as it happened.” It certainly taught me the importance of attention to detail in effective history. As such, Martin Gilbert was in many respects the historian’s historian,  and in a strange synchronicity he died this week. You can read Arnn’s obituary in the Wall Street Journal here.

Mr Kydd.

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Pulling Weimar together…

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Mr Kydd

blue_angel2A couple of  useful links to look at before youe write on Weimar Germany. If you click here then you will get an excellent discussion of Weimar Germany from Stephen Tonge. To us it is probably most helpful as a securing overview and for some excellent bits of hard evidence. If you want something a bit more visual, then perhaps you might linke to click on the Youtube video below – it asks Was Weimar Germany a golden Age ?

stab in the back

Finally the cartoon representation of the President Hindenburg and the dolchstoss below reflects that even before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Weimar Germany remained dogged by deep-set political and social divisions.

Mr Kydd.

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Locarno and Stresemann

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Mr Kydd

LSE7342All,

Please find the map that we were using to explain the Locarno Treaties below. The key point to remember is that Germany would guarantee her western borders and pledged never to invade Belgium and France again (along with a guarantee from Britain 90500that they would come to Germany’s aid if it was attacked by France). This was Stresemann’s fulfilment policy –  erfullugspolitik in action. It was followed by;

  • 1926: Germany joined the League of Nations and signed the Treaty of Berlin with USSR (the agreements made at Rapallo in 1922).
  • 1928: Germany signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, thereby renouncing the use of force and committing herself to disarmament
  • 1929: The Young Plan – a revised scheme for repaying Reparations. The allies agree to evacuate the Rhineland early.

Today we debate Stresemann’s motives, and the wisdom of Locarno. It was certainly hated in Moscow. However, Low’s reaction in the cartoon at the top of the page was typical at the time, and added to the idea of growing stability in Europe. David Low is perhaps the greatest political cartoonist to have worked in Twentieth Century Britain. If you want to know more about him and the genre then click here to read my earlier post.

Mr Kydd

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History Society – the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Mr Kydd

_80480260_80480259As agreed, we are going to spend the next the next two weeks considering the holocaust to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. There is a good account of the day from the BBC here.

At the end of our work I would like you to read this post and the comments that follow on from it. It sets out the debate for and against the idea that the former Nazi death camp should now be allowed to crumble away. When you have done this, post what you think (and why) below.

Mr Kydd.

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Conflict Time Photography

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Mr Kydd

conflict_time_photography_exhibition_book_16441_largeAll,

I visited the Conflict Time Photography exhibition at the Tate Modern  over the weekend. You can find reviews of it from The Daily Telegraph here, and from The Guardian here . As Alistair Snook suggests in the Telegraph, the basic premise of the exhibition is that the material is sorted by time. Thus he writes “instead of a chronological survey of war photography from the 19th century to today, Tate Modern organises the material according to the amount of time that has elapsed between the pictures and the conflicts they address.

Thus, the first section, “Moments Later”, contains images of the mushroom cloud produced by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, captured by a 17-year-old student just 20 minutes after the explosion, as well as Don McCullin’s famous shot from Vietnam of a shell-shocked US marine wearing the mentally quivering, awestruck expression of someone coming face-to-face with his maker.

Next, we find photographs taken days, weeks, or months after conflicts ranging from the Crimean War to the First Gulf War and Afghanistan. By the end of this ingenious exhibition, which telescopes through time, we are confronted with photographs recording aspects of the First World War that were made up to a century after the event.

This, then, is not an exhibition about photojournalism, which ordinarily casts the viewer with immediacy into wartime chaos and strife. Rather, it is about remembrance – about how artists, and by extension societies, come to terms with the atrocities and traumas of the past.”

As I will discuss in History Society, it was original, and for me at least it provoked unexpected conclusions. If you are in London before March, I strongly recommend it to you.

Mr Kydd.

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