Roundup: Talking About History

Timothy Snyder: Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse?

[Timothy Snyder is Professor of History at Yale. His new book, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, was published this month. (October 2010)] As we recall the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, sixty-six years ago today, we might ask: who was worse, Hitler or Stalin? In the second half of the twentieth century, Americans were taught to see both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as the greatest of evils. Hitler was worse, because his regime

Jeffrey Lord: Ronald Reagan's America

[Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.] With every passing minute of every passing day, the truth Ronald Reagan long ago understood is once more emerging from the political fog. "Somewhere a perversion has taken place," Reagan said in discussing his former political faith as a Democrat and a "near hopeless hemophilic liberal." The pa

Franck Salameh: The Coming "Arab Revolution"

[Franck Salameh is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Coordinator of the Arabic Studies and Hebrew Program at Boston College. He writes occasionally for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.] With the recent Tunisian uprisings—now termed the “Jasmine Revolution”—and the ensuing giddiness about some impending copycat revolutions soon to be sweeping the “Arab World,” very few voices of reason are being heard. Troubling as this may sound, one is on solid ground

Ed Lasky: The Media, Reagan and Obama

[Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.] As we approach the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, he has been in the news once again. One way he has been used is to boost the image of Barack Obama. Some presidents have been used to degrade the image of others. Herbert Hoover was a convenient whipping boy to tar various Republicans through the years. Nixon was the epitome of evil in the White House. The fate of Ronald Reagan has been a curious one. The

Steven F. Hayward: Reagan Reclaimed

[Steven F. Hayward is the F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow at AEI.] The news that President Obama decided to read a biography of Ronald Reagan during his Christmas holiday in Hawaii might be taken as a sign that Reagan's triumph over liberals is complete. Can anyone imagine John F. Kennedy admitting he was reading a biography of Calvin Coolidge, or Jimmy Carter taking in lessons from Dwight Eisenhower? This represents the culmination of a remarkable turnabout in Reagan's reputation, most n

Barbara Clark Smith: To Be a Paine Patriot

[Barbara Clark Smith is a historian in Washington. She is the author of, most recently, "The Freedoms We Lost: Consent and Resistance in Revolutionary America."] In light of our nation's current divisions, and in honor of Thomas Paine's birthday on Jan. 29, let us revisit the great man's extraordinary rhetoric. "These are the times that try men's souls," Paine famously wrote. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the

Clare Spark: American Slavery vs. Nazi Genocide

[Ms. Spark, an independent scholar, is the author of Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival.]This blog is not about the Civil War or its causes, but about the hijacking of American history by some leftists, who write like the militant black nationalists I encountered at Pacifica Radio, and that David Horowitz described at length in his Hating Whitey. 2011 will see a huge upsurge in articles about whether that conflict could have been prevente

Jonathan S. Tobin: Six Million Dead but Eleven, or Is It Twelve, Million Universalizing Lies

[Jonathan S. Tobin is the executive editor of Commentary Magazine.] While Israel and most Jews commemorate the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah (which this year falls on May 1), which precedes the Jewish state’s Independence Day by a week, the international community has chosen to use the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. So throughout Europe and at UN facilities, there will be ceremonies to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day today. While all efforts to recall the murder

James D. Hornfischer: Revisiting Samuel Eliot Morison's Landmark History

[James D. Hornfischer is the author of a new World War II history, Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal.] On March 23, 1942, the historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote to his friend President Franklin D. Roosevelt to offer himself as a “sea-going historiographer” to chronicle the activities of the U.S. Navy in World War II. “In order to do it the right way,” he told Roosevelt, “I must have a living, intimate connection with the Navy flagrante bello. An armchair history job

Ronald Radosh: The Odd Cold-War Center at NYU

[Ronald Radosh, Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute, has written widely on Communism and anti-Communism. He is co-author of Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left and The Rosenberg File.]Many universities have set up centers to examine the history of the Cold War. The Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington D. C., for example, created an offshoot called The Cold War International History Project. That institute has over the years hosted many c

Robert Shrum: The Enduring Greatness of JFK

[Robert Shrum is an American political consultant.] We are as far removed in time from the inauguration of John F. Kennedy as that day was from the presidency of William Howard Taft. To those of us who were young in 1961, Taft seemed like ancient history. Yet as the nation marks the 50th anniversary of JFK's summons to a new generation, his presence and his presidency still speak, at times powerfully, to succeeding generations. In part, this is because the medium consta

Steve Kornacki: The War That Made Bill Clinton resident

[Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor.] The Gulf War that began 20 years ago this past week ended with America's political class in nearly universal agreement on one point: The Democrats were screwed in 1992. In the months before the war, as he'd dispatched hundreds of thousands of troops to the Persian Gulf in response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, there had been widespread fear among Americans that President George H.W. Bush was leading them into another Vi

Jacob Heilbrunn: Ronald Reagan, the anti-Reaganite

[Jacob Heilbrunn, a senior editor at the National Interest, is the author of "They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons."] A Ronald Reagan boomlet is sweeping the nation, thanks in no small part to an army of conservative admirers who have never missed a chance to buff his image — and then use it for their own ends. Nothing looms larger for Reagan worshippers than the centennial of his birthday on Feb. 6. Fittingly, Californians were first off the mar

John Diamond: The Gulf Gap

[John Diamond is the author of "The CIA and the Culture of Failure: U.S. Intelligence From the End of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq."] Twenty years ago this week, despite fears of "another Vietnam," the House and Senate voted to authorize the use of force against Iraqi troops occupying Kuwait. After days of impassioned debate, the House supported President George H.W. Bush's policy by a comfortable margin. The Senate's 52-47 vote was the close

Robert Fisk: Tombs that bear witness to Algeria's Jewish tragedy

[Robert Fisk is The Independent's award-winning Middle East correspondent.] "Do you want to see the Israelite graves?" the security guard asked me. It was pouring down, a cold storm of rain off the sea, and above the Algerian French cemetery of St Eugène, I read again those familiar words: "Me today, you tomorrow." Almost two decades since I last entered these gates, I felt sure the remains of the Jews of Algeria would not have survived. During the 1

Abbas Milani: The Myth of Operation Ajax

[Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, where he is also the codirector of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. His book, The Shah, was published in January 2011 by Palgrave Macmillan.] The Cold War began in 1945 when Russian leader Josef Stalin refused to take his troops out of Iran; the fall of the shah in 1979 marked the beginning of the war's end. Yet even today real and imagined ghosts of that

David Hajdu: Happy Birthday, Sam Cooke

[David Hajdu is the music critic for The New Republic and a professor of arts journalism at Columbia.] Rock stars of the 1960s have begun turning 70, and the aging of a generation that defined its culture by its youth has prompted the sucking of veiny thumbs. I did mine last October, right here, on the seventieth anniversary of John Lennon’s birth. Earlier this month, Joan Baez turned 70; Neil Diamond will do the same on January 24; Bob Dylan will have his seventieth birthday in May

Thomas G. Mahnken: The Gulf War in Retrospect

[Thomas G. Mahnken is a Visiting Scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at The Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Between 2006 and 2009, he served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planning. In that capacity, he advised the Secretary of Defense and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy on strategy and planning.] On Jan. 17, 1991, a broad based coalition, led by the United States, launche

Jonathan Zimmerman: Sargent Shriver's Lasting Legacy

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and is the author of "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century."] In 1966, my father sent a resume to the Peace Corps. A few days later, he found himself sitting across a table from the agency's director, Sargent Shriver. "Want to go to India?" Shriver asked. My dad was 33 years old, he had three kids, and his only overseas experience was two vacations in Europ

Ron Kovic: In the Presence of My Enemy: A Reflection on War and Forgiveness

[Ron Kovic served two tours of duty as a U.S. Marine in the Vietnam War and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. In combat on Jan. 20, 1968, he suffered a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the chest down. He became one of the best-known peace activists among the veterans of the war.] Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over. (Psalms 23:5) As this, the 43rd anniversa