Roundup: Talking About History

Sean Wilentz: The Return of Ulysses S. Grant

[Sean Wilentz is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton University.] [Ulysses S.] Grant may be on the verge of finally receiving his due. Quietly, outside the view of most readers—including professional historians who do not specialize in the Civil War era—Grant’s reputation, including his service in the White House, has enjoyed a friendly revision over the past fifteen years. A handful of unconventional scholars, including Richard N. Current, Brooks D. Simpson, Jean

Samuel Pisar: Liberation From Auschwitz

[Samuel Pisar is an international lawyer and the author of “Of Blood and Hope.”] Sixty-five years ago, to the day, the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, while the Americans were approaching Dachau. For a survivor of these two infernos to be still alive and well, with a new and happy family that has resurrected for me the one I had lost seems almost unreal. When I entered Eichmann and Mengele’s gruesome universe at the age of 13, I measured my life expectancy in days, weeks at the most.

Alan Hamilton: What's the truth behind the fate that befell the prisoners of Stalag Luft III?

[Alan Hamilton has written articles published in The Independent and The Times.] Why are we asking this now? In January 1945, some 10,000 Allied prisoners of war were evacuated from the prison where the escape made famous in the film The Great Escape had taken place the year before. They were forced on a trek west on Hitler's orders to escape the Russians to the east. This week, veterans of the so-called Long March, and their relatives, are to recreate their ordeal as

Alan Posener: Don't let Auschwitz be forgotten

[Alan Posener is a correspondent and commentator for Die Welt and Welt am Sonntag in Berlin and one of Germany's most influential bloggers. His latest book, Benedict's Crusade, is a critique of Benedict XVI.] On 27 January, Germany will commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet troops. Though most Germans now face up to their past guilt and their present responsibilities, the road has not been easy. It wasn't until 40 years after the second world war t

Michael Gove: We are still in the shadow of the Holocaust

[Michael Gove is MP for Surrey Heath and Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.] This Wednesday we remember the greatest crime ever inflicted by man against his fellow man. Holocaust Memorial Day allows us to reflect on the bleakest chapter in the history of the 20th century. And there is a special urgency in the call to remember this year, of all years - because the shadow of the Holocaust continues to fall over the world today. Mass murder is st

Betty Glad: The Real Jimmy Carter

[Betty Glad is Olin D. Johnston professor of political science emerita at the University of South Carolina and author of An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy.] The hottest new trend of 2010, it seems, is making half-baked comparisons between Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. Writing in Foreign Policy, historian Walter Russell Mead warns us, "[T]he conflicting impulses influencing how [Obama] thinks about the world th

Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh: Why Military History Matters: Another Perspective

[Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh teaches military history at the U.S. Naval Academy.] Sometimes I think military historians fret too much about our relationship with academic colleagues uninterested and unsympathetic to the sorts of issues that exercise us (for some good meditations on the issue, I would direct readers to look at a recent issue of Historically Speaking), but more of us could follow Mark Grimsley’s lead in trying to engage with our colleagues in different sub-disciplines, who

Korea Times: Without Reflecting on Past, Tokyo Can't Plan Future

Several victims of wartime sexual slavery and their supporters held a rally in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul two days ago. It was the 900th such gathering by the former ``comfort women," who have met there every Wednesday for 18 years to demand the Japanese government's acknowledgement [sic] and apology. Sadly, no Japanese officials have bothered to come out of the embassy gate to meet them, or even watch them. Tokyo's ``total neglect" tactic is in line with its s

Oliver Kamm: Truman Myths Again

[Oliver Kamm is a leader writer and columnist at The Times (of London)]I was unimpressed with Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners, and it's unlikely (unless anyone pays me to review it) that I'll read his new book on genocide. But the FT has published its review today, by Hugh Carnegy, and it contains an aside that is worth disposing of. According to Carnegy:"Nor does Goldhagen spare western democracies from his fierce analysis. Britain’s suppres

John Summers: On "Masscult" and Snobbery

[John Summers is the author of Every Fury on Earth.] "Masscult is bad in a new way: it doesn’t even have the theoretical possibility of being good,” Dwight Macdonald scolded in Against the American Grain: Essays on the Effects of Mass Culture. “Those who consume Masscult might as well be eating ice-cream sodas, while those who fabricate it are no more expressing themselves than are the ‘stylists’ who design the latest atrocity from Detroit.” Macdonald wanted to title his book Reaction

Isaac Chotiner: The Legacy of Churchill

[Isaac Chotiner is the executive editor of The Book.] Right-wing Churchill worship is a well-known phenomenon. It has been picked apart with a thoroughness to match the study of Churchill himself. Caspar Weinberger—Ronald Reagan’s first secretary of defense—kept a large store of Churchill memorabilia and rarely passed up the opportunity to laud the British hero. Republican presidents from Nixon to George W. Bush have found it useful to summon the great man’s image. At the dawn of t

Geremie R. Barmé: China's Year of Anniversaries

[Geremie R. Barmé is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow and Professor of Chinese History in The ANU College of Asia & the Pacific. He is also the editor of China Heritage Quarterly.] The year 2009 was marked by a series of important anniversaries in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Some of these were commemorated with due pomp and circumstance in the official media and dissected at length during learned gatherings and discussions. Others, those events

Jonathan Trembley: Mongolia Revokes the Death Penalty: A Relevant History of Capital Punishment

[Jonathan Tremblay is a Historian and Breaking News Editor for the History News Network] Stating “The majority of the world’s countries have chosen to abolish the death penalty. We should follow this path”, Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj has refused to sign any further orders to execute the country’s inmates. He is in full constitutional right to impose a moratorium on the measure but it will be up to the parliament in Ulaan Bator to pass a complete ban on capital punishment

Scott McLemee: History is the Devil's Scripture

[Scott McLemee is an essayist and critic. His reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Nation, Newsday, Bookforum, The Common Review, and numerous other publications. In 2004, he received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle.] One hesitates to refer to the rational kernel in any statement coming from Pat Robertson, of course. But his recent venture into explaining

Juan Cole: The Televangelist Misuse of Haiti's History

[Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute]And you know Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True Story, and so the Devil said OK it's a deal. And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolte

Robert Parry: America's Historic Debt to Haiti

[Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.] Announcing emergency help for Haiti after a devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake, President Barack Obama noted America's historic ties to the impoverished Caribbean nation, but few Americans understand how important Haiti's contribution to U.S. history was. In modern times, when Haiti does intrude on U.S. consciousness, it's usually because of some natural disaster o

Jon Wiener: Nixon and the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium

In 1969, as the anti-war movement was reaching a peak, Richard Nixon's White House staff debated what they could do to "show the little bastards" what kind of man they were up against. They were concerned about what would be the biggest antiwar demonstration in US history on Nov. 15, 1969, when half a million people came to Washington D.C. to demand that an end to the war in Vietnam. Now, newly released documents from the Nixon Library provide fascinating details about the

Richard Cohen: Baader-Meinhof Gang, Fading Into Oblivion

[Richard Cohen is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing on domestic and foreign politics.] To the columnist's obligation to provide a 10-best list of 2009 films, I punt by offering just one. It is "The Baader Meinhof Complex," which Anthony Lane, the film critic for the New Yorker, said he saw "three or four times." When I saw it, I thought that once was enough. Yet the movie lingers because, to me, it is only incidentally about the 1970s-style radicalism of A

Paul Wolfowitz: Wahid and the Voice of Moderate Islam

[Mr. Wolfowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia and assistant secretary of state for East Asia, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.] Abdurrahman Wahid, who died last week at the age of 69, was the first democratically elected president of Indonesia, the world's fourth largest country and third largest democracy. It has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world. Although he was forced from office after less than two years, he nevertheless

Princeton N. Lyman: Paying the Price for Apartheid

[Princeton N. Lyman is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was U.S. ambassador to South Africa from 1992 to 1995 and is the author of “Partner to History: The U.S. Role in South Africa’s Transition to Democracy.”] Early this year, an appeals court in the United States will decide whether a suit against three companies — two of them American — can go forward charging them with contributing to the crimes of apartheid in South Africa. T