Week 11: Origins of the Cold War

In 1945 the United States and the Soviet Union had demonstrated the efficacy of the coordinated allied effort by defeating the Nazi Germany. The two had reemerged from the most exacting war exhausted to be sure (the Soviet Union especially), but surrounded by the aura of international respectability never to be enjoyed again. The allied powers had spoken at length about the global future and it seemed as if the partnership forged during the years of struggle, might extend into the peace time as a guarantee of the world-wide security.

Or did it? In less than three years from the end of the war, having forgotten about common sacrifices, the Americans and the Soviets were eyeing each other with unconcealed animosity informing the opposite party with designs of the most malicious intent. Then, of course, the question emerges: was the rapidly coming Cold War result of geopolitical misunderstanding between the superpowers poised to protect their spheres of influence? Were the emerging disagreements of the short-term nature, or, on the contrary, did they stem from something deeply-entrenched in the histories of two nations, something which only needed the war to come to surface? In other words, were the United States and the USSR (or Russia, if you will) destined to vie for the fate of the world as was forecast by Alexis de Tocqueville more then a century before it actually "came to blows"? 

Today's announcement

Tuesday practice (which did not take place due to the Nauryz celebrations) is scheduled to take place today in room 444 at 6 pm. Please try to attend for we are going to cover the material which might prove essential for your paper. 

Week 10: War and Radicalization of the Nazi Regime

From the vantage point of the post-WWII years, it seems easy to discern the annihilating tendencies inherent in the Nazism right from the moment of its advent to power, if not from its very origin. Yet, all through the 30's the Nazis and Hitler in particular were working hard to reassure the public of their peaceful intentions, demanding justice for Germany at best , rather than expansion. Although created in the early years of the Nazi regime, by 1936 the concentration camps (Dachau and Buchenwald) contained but few thousands inmates, most of whom were primed for release. Even with respect to the "Jewish question," the Nazis overtly preferred emigration encouraged by bans, discriminatory legislations and anti-Semitic campaigns.

With war, the regime was quickly tranformed into the murderous machine, tresspassing limits of concievable inhumanity, making virtue of beastiality and integrating death into the programmatic part of its policies. The racial utopia it had endeavored to build turned into the funeral pyre of old morality, Europe and Germany itself. "To write poetry after Auschwitz (became) barabaric," Theodor Adorno famously wrote, encapsulating - schematically to be sure - the end of the civilization with all its naive pretensions to selflessness and idealism.

The question that I would like to pose concerns the causes rather than the aftermaths. Seeing the progression of events, is it fair to say that it was the war itself launched in 1939, which, by removing all inhibitions to actions, precipitated rapid radicalization of the Nazi Germany from an incredibly intolerant regime to an instrument of mass murder? Or, shall the chain of cause and effect be reversed, with the war being seen only as a translation of internal developments in pre-1939 Germany, cast, as it were, onto the surface of the outer world?

Week 8: Appeasement and the Nazi-Soviet Non-Agression Treaty

This time around I am giving you an option of two questions to choose from (i.e. you'd need to write an entry only with regard to one question). To address issues raised below, you would need to finish reading Paxton, chapter 13, as we hadn't had time to discuss them in the course of the previous lecture.

My first question touches upon the policy of appeasement. As we have pointed out, the large segments of the European society had emerged from the First World War not only war-weary, but war-averse, determined to preempt the repetition of the comparable apocalyptic show-down. The appeasement pursued by leading politicians of Britain and France took into account the anti-war sentiments in hope of fulfilling Hitler's demands without resorting to violence. Yet, as Churchill asserted after the Munich settlement, rather than bringing peace, the apologists of the appeasement only facilitated war.

My question then is: why did appeasement fail? Or, put it in somewhat different terms, could it have ever succeeded in its aims - which, as we know, did not consist in maintaining status quo or European balance of powers, but in preserving peace at all cost.

My second question raised the degree of responsibility of the Soviet Union in bringing about the war. Hitler, having decided to escalate its conflict with Poland over Danzig, would have probably not dared to attack that country (and risk getting into war with the Western Powers) had he not first secured Germany's eastern borders by striking a deal with Stalin. Now, given the role that the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression treaty played in unfettering Hitler's hands - and more importantly, given the subsequent invasion of the Soviet armies into Poland on Sept 17, 1939 - could the Soviet Union be classified as an aggressor, or, as a nation placed alongside Germany as responsible for unleashing the war?