Post WWII Europe

I found Ross's article on Berlin after the war, and before the wall, to be fascinating. As we discussed in class, I was like a lot of people and had always been under the impression that the Russian backed GDR locked down immigration from their sector to the West almost immediately following the war. The period of "mass exodus" until the wall went up, does not get much attention in any of the history books that I have read. I knew that Germans fled in droves as the Russians approached Berlin, because they feared Russian retribution for the way their military had prosecuted the war in the East. I assumed that once actual combat died down, people that were not trying to return home from some sort of diaspora remained static, as they tried to recover and rebuild.

I always find it amazing how quickly people adapt to new situations and circumstances, in order to not only survive but get ahead. In this case the manipulation of the GDR through threats of, and actual, immigration to the West is a unique and interesting historical example. I'm honestly kind of surprised that people had the guts to make these sorts of gambles after going through the life shattering experience of the war. I guess I am underestimating the resiliency of the human race, but I have seen far less extreme examples of warfare and strife causing a population to dig their heels in, and cling to whatever they are given to get by on. However, there are vast cultural differences in these individual cases, which I believe has a great effect on how people deal with warfare, harsh economic times, etc.

I also found it interesting how everyone in class that has traveled through Germany or eastern Europe, can mark the end of the capitalist West and the beginning of the old Communist Bloc countries, just by the scenery. I have been in and out of eastern Europe since the turn of the century, and I believe it is still a very different place than western Europe. Some places have scrambled and modernized to a great degree, but you can still pick out the remnants of the Cold War. The blocks of prison-like apartment buildings, rusting industrial parks mixed in with newly revitalized areas of cities, and western style luxuries housed in very austere architecture, are all signs you have crossed that invisible line. The closest look at major differences between eastern and western Europe that I have been able to take and compare is between the various countries armies. Most of the western countries have small, modern, well equipped, and well trained armies. The old communist satellite countries I have been exposed to were completely different stories. Almost universally they have obsolete, poorly maintained equipment, which is sad because some of them take great pride in their training and discipline. Others ridiculous bureaucracy and training standards are lacking, to say the least. It will be interesting to see how the global recession will effect these countries progress in catching up with the their western counterparts.

Nazi Germany

In class, we talked about how Germany wasn't by any means homogeneously in support of the Nazi party coming to power, but how the country quickly got behind their ideologies and tactics. Even if the Nazi party did help to bring about a period of great prosperity from the pit of depression and war, I still don't see how a fairly educated and worldly citizenry let themselves be a party to the evils their country would commit. I always come back to the same question of how much did the German people know about the atrocities going on during the Nazis' reign? I hope they didn't know that much, or they would have tried to stop it, but maybe they were just afraid of becoming a victim of the fascist state as well. The Nazi security apparatus made sure to crush any dissenters that were discovered, in one way or another. A good example of the German people failing to act is the lack of resistance or revolt to the Nazi war campaign, even though so many Germans were against it. It's just hard for me to believe that most of the population didn't have a fairly good idea of what was happening in the concentration camps, especially towards the end of the war, when the brakes came off the "final solution," and Hitler wasn't trying to hide his true intentions anymore.

I lived for a brief period in Germany, and the seeming lack of public regret or acknowledgement for the things that happened under the Nazi regime always bothered me. I'm sure the German people wanted to move on as fast as possible after the war, and the Cold War facilitated that to an extent, but references to that period are conspicuously absent throughout the country. I realize the same could be said about our country and some of its former institutions, but I feel discussion and study about them are more open and available. I worked with my counterparts in the German army, and they were great soldiers and good guys. I found it interesting that they, more than anyone else, were open to talking about the days of the Nazi regime. It was mainly from a military standpoint, and how much the Nazi war machine revolutionized modern warfare, but I still found it refreshing that they didn't shy away about talking about any aspect of that time period.

I've read varying opinions on how much the German public knew, and about how the Nazi era was dealt with after the war. I'm hoping that a little more light can be shed on it for my own curiosity during the time we spend on it in class.

WWI

In our class discussion today we touched on the aristocratic roots of most of the European powers' officer ranks. Looking back on WWI, it's obvious to us that a high birth should not have been the main qualification for the job of commanding troops in something so deadly. The failure to adapt, and more importantly the failure to conserve the lives of their troops, of commanders on both sides of the Great War is simply mass murder through negligence. Even if some of the troops did passively and sometimes mutinously resist the killing fields, their commanders should have never let it come to that point. This detachment from reality up the chain of command is still present in our own military today, but to a much less harmful degree. In our time, we are much quicker to hold accountable those who would send our sons and daughters to their possible deaths. I wish the same could be said for citizens of Europe from 1914-1918. I'm honestly surprised that the families of the boys being fed into the meat grinder didn't rise up against their governments and stop the war on their own. I wouldn't think any amount of homegrown propaganda would be able to cover up the horror that was actually taking place.

It didn't happen that way, so we ended up with a massacred generation of young men, Europe in shambles, and the seeds planted for another war to end all wars go round. I'm interested to see how Europe did, if at all, piece itself back together after the war. The only country you normally hear about is Germany, because of what happened in the next two decades that allowed the Nazis to come to power. What does France, England or Russia do in those two decades of uneasy peace? Are they even fully functioning nations? They're so broken and shell shocked, that they don't even dare to step in and stop the tide of fanaticism rising in Germany. Considering the circumstances, I can't say that I blame them.

The effects of a war like WWI are so foreign to us now, that I wonder if the world as we know it could even survive such a thing anymore. People are so detached from the two wars our own country is currently fighting, that I wonder if we could ever join together as a nation and face something so horrible, and still come out the other side. The European powers were never the same after WWI, but they survived. We haven't had to deal with blood on our own soil for so long, I'm not sure what would happen under such dire circumstances. Hopefully the world, and the human race, has evolved enough that we never have to find out, but something tells me we're not there yet.

I think one of the interesting things concerning consumer consumption, that we didn't talk that much about the other day in class, is how it differs in our country from subculture to subculture. Our society is not only stratified by economic means, but the development of leisure time and conspicuous consumption has created an entirely new class structure within different interest groups. Whatever you're into doing with your free time, there's the haves, have nots, and somewhere in between. You can find it in everything from mountaineering to adventure racing. I used to do a lot of both of those activities, and it was crazy how much your experience could differ depending on the amount of money you had to spend.

Take mountaineering for example. You can spend an easy thousand dollars just to get started with your basic gear and kit set up. If you want to start doing actual expeditions, where you spend multiple nights out camping, etc., you really start piling the money on. Most people I know that are into this type of activity, accumulated their equipment over time, as their experience and ability levels grew. What always pissed me off is that on the flip side of this you have people with way too much disposable income who saw something on TV, or got invited to go climbing one weekend, and they go out and spend thousands of dollars on equipment that they may use once or twice. Now obviously they may take to a sport or activity, but in my experience most people like this jump from one thing to the next, mainly so they can say they've done everything under sun. Nothing aggravates a bunch of people, who scrape everything little bit of money together to pursue their passion, more than some idiot who shows up decked out in the latest and most expensive gear, but yet knows absolutely nothing. That's also how people typically end up getting hurt or dying. I've seen some incredibly stupid things occur, because somebody thought their expensive equipment would make up for a lack of experience and ability. Unfortunately that's not how it works.

In our culture of instant gratification people don't want to wait on a slow Internet connection, much less years of practice and determination to become good at something. I find this a sad state of affairs, because no matter how much money you have to throw around, most things that are worth doing take a long time to become even somewhat good at them. I hope this type of behavior is not enculturating us to become a nation of quitters, or people that always look for the easy way out. I also hope our increasingly short attention spans won't prevent the next generation of Americans from making progress in solving the problems that we've already created. If we lose our respect and support for those who take the difficult path with the best of intentions, we're going to be in serious trouble.