Roundup: Talking About History

Jonathan Jones: Coalition's Cuts are Final Betrayal of Stonehenge

In a world of specialisms you can fool all of the people some of the time because every case has its own detailed context. We know we don't know all the pros and cons. But the sad story of Stonehenge is one I have followed for the last few years, so this week's ugly betrayal of our greatest national monument is something I know is wrong. The coalition's first cultural cuts include the cancellation of plans for a £25m visitor centre at Stonehenge: a callous and unjustified assault on a wonder of

Kofi A. Annan: The Myth of 'Never Again'

[Kofi A. Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, is honorary president of the advisory board for the Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention Program at the Salzburg Global Seminar.] Many countries in Europe and North America now require all high-school pupils to learn about the Holocaust. Why? Because of its historical importance, of course, but also because, in our increasingly diverse and globalized world, educators and policy-makers believe Holocaust educat

Gal Beckerman: Hijacking Their Way Out of Tyranny

[Gal Beckerman, a staff writer at The Forward, is the author of the forthcoming “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry.”] LATE one summer night 40 years ago this month, Yosef Mendelevich, a young Soviet Jew, camped with a group of friends outside the Smolny airport near Leningrad. The next morning, they planned to commandeer a 12-seat airplane, fly it to Sweden and, once there, declare their purpose: to move to Israel, a dream they had long bee

Freddy Umutanguha: Peter Erlinder Charges in Rwanda: A Genocide Survivor's Perspective

[Freddy Umutanguha is the Director of the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center.] Many people in the United States appear confused as to why a Rwandan court continues to prosecute US lawyer and prominent genocide denier, Peter Erlinder. They say he is 62 years old and unwell, physically and mentally. In their eyes, his views about the 1994 genocide may be extreme and offensive to Rwandans, but surely he is entitled to his opinion. He is a lawyer and an academic, professions that can thriv

Timothy Lavin: Coming Clean on Northern Ireland's "Bloody Sunday"

[Timothy Lavin is an Atlantic senior editor.] ...The report's most obvious benefit is that it illuminates an enormous injustice by the British state, and firmly attributes blame: the troops, "losing their self-control," fired unjustifiably and killed 14 people, most of them teenagers. Many of the victims were shot in the back, or while attempting to help the wounded; none of them were visibly armed. The first official reckoning of this bloodshed (the Widgery Tribunal, whic

William Underhill: Bloody Sunday Redux

[William Underhill is a Special Correspondent at Newsweek.] The folk memory of Northern Ireland is crowded with painful episodes, and Bloody Sunday is among the cruelest. In the space of a few hours in 1972, British paratroopers shot dead 13 unarmed Catholic civil-rights protesters on the streets of Londonderry. A sectarian struggle was already underway, pitting Catholic republicans against Protestants loyal to the British crown. A new bitterness had entered a conflict that was to l

Richard Dannatt: Bloody Sunday ... We must not dwell on the errors of the past

[Sir Richard Dannatt was Chief of the General Staff from 2006 to 2009.] After 12 years of listening to witnesses, exhaustive fact-finding and detailed analysis, it is only proper to conclude that Lord Saville has got as close to the truth about what really happened on January 30, 1972 in Londonderry as it is practically possible to do. The fact that this inquiry has cost more than £190 million is not strictly relevant, but the fact that it has taken nearly 38 years to arrive at the

Christopher Corbett: The Pony Rides Again (and Again)

[Christopher Corbett, a former news editor and reporter, is author most recently of The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West (Atlantic Monthly 2010) and Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express (Broadway Books 2003).] Shortly before last Christmas, a prominent New York auction house put up for bid a collection of 63 postmarked envelopes and stamps that the daring riders of the Pony Express had carried 150 years ago. Experts estimated tha

Mick Fealty: Bloody Sunday Inquiry: Laying the Ghosts to Rest

[Mick Fealty is a writer, analyst and the founding editor of Slugger O'Toole (www.sluggerotoole.com), one of Northern Ireland's leading political blogs.] David Cameron has just outlined the findings of the Saville inquiry. It was not, as he says, his responsibility to defend the indefensible. It was, he says, the fault of the "poor bloody infantry". Not the officers, not the politicians, not the government.... And we

Peter Robinson: Immigration ... What Would Reagan Do?

[Mr. Robinson, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and an editor of Ricochet.com.] In a television advertisement airing in Arizona, John McCain, running for a fifth term in the Senate, strolls through the desert near Nogales with Paul Babeu, sheriff of Pinal County. Beside the two men rises a section of the border fence that the Department of Homeland Security has been erecting to keep undocumented Mexicans in Me

Ben Macintyre: De Gaulle would have hated the Saville inquiry

[Ben Macintyre is Writer at Large for The Times and contributes a regular column.] Charles de Gaulle would have been baffled and outraged by the Saville inquiry. Not by its findings, but that any country would go to such lengths to explore a painful and complicated chapter from the past. This week a handful of surviving members of the French Resistance will come to London to commemorate the 70th anniversary of de Gaulle’s famous radio address from London, in which he to

Richard Overy: The Battle of Britain 70 Years On

[Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of more than 20 books on the second world war, the history of air power and the European dictatorships. His most recent include The Morbid Age: Britain between the Wars (2009) and 1939: Countdown to War (2009). He is also the author of The Battle of Britain Experience (2010) sponsored by the RAF. In 2010 he was presented with the James Doolittle Award for his contribution to aviation history.] ...Se

Edward Tenner: Celebrating 50 Years of the Xerox Machine

[Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian's Lemelson Center and holds a Ph.D in European history.] The most unsung birthday in American business and technological history this year may be the 50th anniversary of the Xerox 914 photocopier. Although it was introduced at New York’s Sherry-Netherland Hotel on September 16, 1959, commercial models were not available until March 1960. The first machine, delivered to a Pennsylvania me

Paul Bew: The Bloody Sunday Inquiry ... Was It Worth It?

[Lord Bew is professor of Irish Politics at Queen's University, Belfast, and was a historical adviser to the Saville Inquiry from 1998 to 2001.] After 12 long years, and at a cost approaching £200 million, the Bloody Sunday inquiry into the killing of 14 civilians in Londonderry will tomorrow report its findings in a document 5,000 pages long. The shootings, by the British Army on January 30, 1972, happened during a civil rights march which had been banned: all marches in Northern I

Martin Johnes: What are Academic Historians For?

[Dr Martin Johnes is from Pembrokeshire and took his BA and PhD at Cardiff University. He subsequently held research posts at the universities of Oxford and Cardiff, before taking up a lectureship at St Martin’s College (of Higher Education) in Lancaster.] The BBC is currently commissioning a major new television series on the history of Wales. No doubt this will be widely welcomed, but some academics are rather snooty about television history. They see it as obsessed by the gruesom

Brian Phillips: The Secret History of American Soccer

[Brian Phillips blogs about soccer at The Run of Play.] In the 1920s, soccer was big in America. Not big in the way that baseball was big (this was the era of Ruth and Gehrig) or college football was big (these were the days when Ivy League rivalries played out as violent eruptions in the mud), but at its height, the top American soccer league had tens of thousands of fans, featured some of the world's best players, and looked set to challenge the fledgling NFL in the competition to

Olivia Judson: The Human Phenome Project, Thanks to Francis Galton

[Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist, writes every Wednesday in the New York Times about the influence of science and biology on modern life. She is a research fellow in biology at Imperial College London.] In 1884, a man called Francis Galton opened the doors of his “Anthropometric Laboratory.” This was “for the use of those who desire to be accurately measured in many ways, either to obtain timely warning of remediable faults in development, or to learn their powers.” The man

Julian Ryall: Did the U.S. Wage Germ Warfare in Korea?

[Julian Ryall is a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph. He lives in Tokyo.] America denies using biological weapons in the Korean War. But North Koreans still claim the US dropped bombs containing disease-carrying insects and food. In the winter of 1952, Yun Chang Bin recalls, the American bombers flying overhead had become a fact of life. The small detachment of Chinese 'volunteers’ stationed in his village, Hwanjin, 40 miles north-east of Pyongyang, was not a w

Seumas Milne: This Attempt to Rehabilitate the British Empire is a Recipe for Conflict

[Seumas Milne is a Guardian columnist and associate editor.] David Cameron's coalition government likes to present itself as consensual, even touchy feely. However threatening its policies, the message is "we're all in this together". But if the latest plans of his close ally Michael Gove were to come to fruition, prepare for an outbreak of culture wars under the new regime: conflicts that would be fought out in classrooms across the country. Last week the new

Michael Korda: Ike’s Decision

[Michael Korda, author of With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain (Harper 2009) and Ike: An American Hero, is the former editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster.] It has been 65 years since D-Day—the early June day when the United States and its allies launched a massive attack on the shores of Normandy in a bid to liberate western Europe from the Nazis. It’s been long enough for most people who still remember the date to have come to think of its success as natur