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Date:         Mon, 1 Mar 1999 10:51:54 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Elizabeth Fones-Wolf 
Subject:      Re: William Tuttle's Opening Statement
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Hello WWII Forum,

    I have taught a World War II class twice (approx. 50 students).  My
class emphasized the social, economic, and political impact of World War II
on American society, with much less emphasis on diplomatic.  We briefly
surveyed military strategy and spent a bit more time on the GI experience
but the class was certainly not a military history.  The first time I taught
it in the Spring of 1995 with about 20% graduate students, the class was
very successful and most of the students were excited about the material,
but last semester the course was all undergrad and 95% male.  These students
were very unhappy with the course's emphasis on social history (they hated
The Dollmaker, for instance) and made this known in the student evaluations.
Does anyone have suggestions on how to deal with this problem?

Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, West Virginia University


>Dear Colleagues,
>
>Just this week, a group of prominent journalists and scholars ranked the
>top 100 new events of the last 100 years.  Two of the top three events
>related to America's involvement in the Second World War.  The top event
>was the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which ended
>the war in 1945.  Ranked number three was the Japanese attack on Pearl
>Harbor which launched the war in 1941.
>
> The Second World War was a worldwide struggle against racism,
>imperialism, and genocide.  For that reason, some people have called it
>"The Good War."  And since the United States was forever changed by the
>war -- socially, economically, politically, and culturally -- some
>scholars and journalists have called it a watershed in American history.
>
>In teaching the history of the United States during the Second World
>War, I have found not only that students respond well to the questions
>of whether this was a good war or a watershed, but also -- and perhaps
>more importantly -- that they begin to ask their own questions, such as,
>"For whom was this a good war?"  "For whom was this a watershed?"  These
>questions move the discussion away from abstract concerns and on to the
>lives of the American people who fought the war abroad and at home.
>These questions shift the focus to the lives, for example, of working
>women during the war, to African Americans and other people of color, to
>the 112,000 Japanese Americans who were interned, to farmers and
>blue-collar workers, to children and teenagers, and to the more than 16
>million men and women who served their country in the armed forces and
>who were permanently changed, both positively and negatively, by the
>experience.
>
>We should also, I believe, consider the Second World War's lingering
>impact on postwar America.  For example, what was the postwar impact of
>the atomic bomb and the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union?  What
>was the impact of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the GI Bill,
>and the continued migration of African Americans from the South to the
>cities of the North and West, and of Americans generally to the Sun
>Belt?  What was the postwar impact of the war on popular culture, for
>example, on war films from "The Best Years of Our Lives" to "Sands of
>Iwo Jima," and from "The Longest Day" to "Saving Sergeant Ryan"?
>
>Let me confess at the outset that I am not an expert on military or
>diplomatic history, though I am deeply interested in the history of the
>atomic bomb.  (I hope that some in this discussion group will be able to
>offer suggestions for those who have questions about military or
>diplomatic history.)  My strength is what was happening socially,
>economically, politically, and culturally, that is, what was happening
>on the American homefront, and how the homefront experience was shaped
>by race, gender, age, class, religion, sexual orientation, and other
>factors.
>
>
>I have read the opening statements by the historians who have moderated
>prior sessions of "Talking History."  They are very provocative, but I
>would like to introduce this discussion of the Second World War a little
>differently.  First, I would like to contend that the war was a
>watershed in American history.  I recognize that this contention is
>vulnerable to criticism, and I urge you to tear it apart.  Second, I
>have prepared an annotated bibliography for your use.  I hope you find
>it a helpful starting point.
>
>I hope, too, that in our discussions you will talk about teaching
>strategies and sources which you have found successful, including oral
>history projects, specific films and audiovisual aids, other websites,
>etc., and that you will discuss both practical problems and
>conceptual/theoretical problems in teaching the history of the United
>States during the war.  I want you to feel free to submit issues or
>questions, and I hope that you will be encouraged to respond not only to
>me, but to one another as well.
>
>First, here is my annotated bibliography which discusses major
>historiographical themes:
>
>Anderson, Karen, Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the
>Status of Women During World War II, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981
>
>Bernstein, Alison R., American Indians and World War II: Toward a New
>Era in Indian Affairs, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991
>
>Blum, John Morton, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture
>During World War II, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976
>
>Campbell, D'Ann, Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic
>Era, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984
>
>Clive, Alan, State of War: Michigan in World War II, Ann Arbor:
>University of Michigan Press, 1979
>
>Daniels, Roger, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War
>II, New York: Hill and Wang, 1993
>
>O'Neill, William L., A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and
>Abroad in World War II, New York: Free Press, 1993
>
>Nash, Gerald D., The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second
>World War, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985
>
>Polenberg, Richard, War and Society: The United States, 1941-1945,
>Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1972
>
>Terkel, Studs, "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two, New
>York: Pantheon Books, 1984
>
>Tuttle, William M., Jr., "Daddy's Gone to War": The Second World War in
>the Lives of America's Children, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993
>
>Wynn, Neil A., The Afro-American and the Second World War, New York:
>Holmes & Meier, rev. ed., 1993
>
>Few events have so electrified the United States as the Japanese attack
>on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  Americans who lived during the
>Second World War knew that that their world, and their lives, would
>never be the same again -- and they never were.  How their lives did
>change has been the subject of a rich body of historical writing.  In
>recent years historians studying change on the homefront have shifted
>their scholarly focus; instead of looking at the ostensibly united
>homefront, they have disaggregated the population and examined how the
>war affected different groups in society.  From this perspective, "The
>Good War" is a much more complex phenomenon.
>
>"The Good War" (1984) is the ironic title which TERKEL has given to his
>popular oral history which demythologizes the Second World War.  These
>interviews show that while patriotism was deeply held and goals were
>widely shared, national unity papered over deep ethnic, religious, and
>racial divisions, including the race riots that swept the country in
>1943.  Rapid and immense social change on the home front was evident at
>every hand from 1941 to 1945; there were millions of fathers going to
>war, millions of mothers going to work in war factories, and millions of
>families migrating from one part of the country to another.  The Second
>World War resulted in victory for the United States and its allies, but
>as recent histories of the homefront have demonstrated, the social costs
>were high.
>
>In addition to TERKEL, among the most perceptive and widely-read
>histories of the homefront are POLENBERG, BLUM, and O'NEILL.  These
>books all deal with people of color and with race relations as important
>indicators of social strain during the war, but they should be
>supplemented by other books.  Helpful studies of wartime civil rights
>activism, race riots, and the black press have been published; the most
>comprehensive general history of African Americans during the war is
>WYNN.  There is also a rich body of literature, both scholarly and
>autobiographical, on the Japanese-American internment.  The most recent
>history by the leading scholar on the topic is DANIELS.  BERNSTEIN is
>the first book-length study of American Indians during the war.
>
>Scholars with an interest in social history have focused on how the war
>affected women and children.  Histories disagree whether the war was "a
>turning point" in American women's history.  Some contend that it was
>because of the unprecedented job opportunities that arose in defense
>industries.  ANDERSON sees continuity in the persistence of salary
>discrimination against woman and of job segregation by sex as well as
>race and class, but she also sees great change.  For her, the decision
>of large numbers of married women, and mothers, to take war jobs, was "a
>profoundly important event in American social history."  CAMPBELL
>disagrees, contending that the war "did not mark a drastic break with
>traditional working patterns or sex roles."  In presenting the
>children's homefront history, TUTTLE examines father absence and father
>return along with other aspects of girls' and boys' wartime lives,
>emphasizing gender differences in their war games, schooling, popular
>culture, and other experiences.  The war left an indelible imprint onthe
>dreams and nightmares of an American generation not only in
>childhood, but in adulthood as well.
>
>The Second World War was a time of fundamental change on the homefront;
>some scholars have called it a watershed period in United States
>history.  Although the war usually did not initiate new changes, it
>rapidly accelerated those already underway.  Appropriations for the war
>lifted the country out of the Great Depression and stimulated the
>building not only of defense plants, but of war-boom communities of
>newly-arrived migrants.  CLIVE focuses on "the worker's war" in
>Michigan, including the migration to Detroit of both African Americans
>and whites from the South.  Not only cities and towns, but entire
>regions of the country were changed by the war.  NASH shows how the war
>transformed the American West socially and culturally.  It was also a
>time of massive personal change.  BERUBE is an illuminating history of
>gay men and lesbians who served their country in the war, and came out
>in the process.  In this way and in countless others, Americans
>discovered not only new talents and new horizons on the home front, but
>also new identities.
>
>Best, Bill Tuttle
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 1 Mar 1999 11:25:08 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         "David C. Fisher" 
Subject:      a comparative approach?
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Greetings,

I am interested to know what others think about a comparative approach to
World War II.  Is it appropriate for the US survey?  Is there room for it
on the syllabus?

I am a graduate student studying Russian and U.S. history.  For a number of
semesters I have worked with undergrad discussion groups as part of the US
survey.  At present I'm preparing for my oral exams and have been putting a
lot of thought into how I would teach a US survey class.  It makes good
sense to me to focus on the fascinating complexities of the homefront
experience.  However, I'm interested to know if any of you have attempted
to contextualize that experience in the international perspective of the
war?  How do we convey to students in an introductory class that the US did
not fight and win the war by itself?  As I read the list of the top 100
news events of the 20th century I was reminded of how we Americans have a
hard time seeing world events from a global perspective.  For example, No.
24 on the list describes the D-Day invasion as "the beginning of the end of
World War II in Europe."  Many would argue (esp. in Russia) that the
beginning of the end of the war ocurred not in the west but in the east at
Stalingrad and Kursk.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.  Back to the books . . .

David Fisher
Indiana University
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Date:         Mon, 1 Mar 1999 15:40:01 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Robert Shaffer 
Subject:      Re: a comparative approach?
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        David Fisher raises an important issue on a comparative approach
to World War II, and the all-important question of how to fit it into the
U.S. survey course syllabus.  On the specific topic that he raises, the
relative contribution of Stalingrad/Eastern front vs. D-Day/Western front,
I believe that it is essential in any course, at any level, to emphasize
the military contributions and the human costs of the Soviet war effort.
In all courses I have taught -- as a high school teacher years ago, in the
survey course, in diplomatic history courses, in world history courses --
I have emphasized this issue, in part because of its importance to World
War II, but also because of its importance to the development of the Cold
War.  That is to say, the Soviet perception of their sacrifices and
importance to victory in World War II profoundly shaped their views on the
post-war world.  Moreover, the realpolitik of the situation was that the
U.S. and Britain at Yalta had little real leverage over the Soviets in
eastern Europe, just as the Soviets had little leverage over the U.S. in
Italy.  I would recommend a section of William O'Neill's _A Democracy at
War_ on the long-term geostrategic implications of the delay by Churchill
and Roosevelt of launching a real Second Front in Europe as instructive in
this regard.  O'Neill argues, among other things, that while many
anti-Communists in the U.S. and Britain opposed an early Second Front, its
delay in the end strengthened the Soviet position in eastern Europe and
hampered later efforts to contain the spread of Soviet power.  Conversely,
of course, the Popular Fronters who wanted an early Second Front may have
(despite themselves, in O'Neill's view) had a better idea for the U.S.'s
strategic future.  Whether one agrees with O'Neill or not, the issue is
important in order to understand both the war and the post-war period, so
some mention should be made of the relative Soviet and American
contributions to war in Europe.
        While I have not up until now in my courses discussed this next
issue in very much depth, the same argument could be made in terms of
comparing Henry Wallace's view of the war with the rise of social
democracy in Britain (the Beveridge Report, for example, and the Labour
Party electoral victory in 1945) and elsewhere in Europe, and of course
contrasting Wallace's demise with these European currents.  The impact of
war on industry, economic ideologies, and the like is important both in
terms of the social history of the war and of the post-war period.
        While not quite in the same category of "comparative history," the
relatively positive reception which African-American soldiers experienced
in Britain is an important issue to raise which had a profound impact on
the post-war civil rights movement.

-- Robert Shaffer
Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

On Mon, 1 Mar 1999, David C. Fisher wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> I am interested to know what others think about a comparative approach to
> World War II.  Is it appropriate for the US survey?  Is there room for it
> on the syllabus?
>
> I am a graduate student studying Russian and U.S. history.  For a number of
> semesters I have worked with undergrad discussion groups as part of the US
> survey.  At present I'm preparing for my oral exams and have been putting a
> lot of thought into how I would teach a US survey class.  It makes good
> sense to me to focus on the fascinating complexities of the homefront
> experience.  However, I'm interested to know if any of you have attempted
> to contextualize that experience in the international perspective of the
> war?  How do we convey to students in an introductory class that the US did
> not fight and win the war by itself?  As I read the list of the top 100
> news events of the 20th century I was reminded of how we Americans have a
> hard time seeing world events from a global perspective.  For example, No.
> 24 on the list describes the D-Day invasion as "the beginning of the end of
> World War II in Europe."  Many would argue (esp. in Russia) that the
> beginning of the end of the war ocurred not in the west but in the east at
> Stalingrad and Kursk.
>
> I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.  Back to the books . . .
>
> David Fisher
> Indiana University
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 1 Mar 1999 17:59:28 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Kevin Smant 
Subject:      No Ordinary Time

     Has anyone else used Doris Kearns Goodwin's book
NO ORDINARY TIME:  FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR
ROOSEVELT: THE HOME FRONT IN WORLD WAR
II in their upper-division courses on World War II?  [or
in any other course?]

     I've used it three times, and have had pretty good success
with it.   The course I usually teach on the war is officially
titled "America and World War II", and so I use
Goodwin as a kind of textbook.  [which I think is
necessary, given its length].  The book's size
can scare off some students; so I gave them
specific study questions on it, covering each
chapter, for which they would
be responsible when exam time came.  They
were specific enough that students knew what
to look for in reading the book; but broad
enough to ensure that students actually
read it, and didn't resort to skipping and
skimming.

     Students responded well, I think.  I really
enjoyed Goodwin's writing style, and many
students seemed to appreciate it too; beyond that,
students found out a great deal about the
complicated lives of Eleanor and Franklin
[thus getting them beyond the heroic cardboard
cutout version of the two too often given them
in grade school and beyond], and of course
Goodwin goes into a good deal of detail about
the social and cultural changes that the war
wreaked on America's home front; but it does
so in an exceptionally readable, entertaining
way, I thought.

     So if you're looking for something different to
assign concerning the WWII homefront, you might
give NO ORDINARY TIME a try.  But you will need
to give students plenty of time to work through it;
it's a lengthy book.

     Kevin Smant
     Dept. of History
     Indiana University South Bend
     KSmant@iusb.edu
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Date:         Mon, 1 Mar 1999 16:26:57 -0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Ellen Herman 
Subject:      WWII course materials
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Since I am teaching a course on the Depression and WWII right now, I've
been eager to read the first commentaries submitted to this forum. I was
delighted to learn that at least one person had gotten students to read a
very long book. Congratulations to Kevin Smant! I have to admit that I'd be
reluctant to assign No Ordinary Time simply because of its length, though I
agree that it is wonderfully written and has a great deal to offer students.

I wanted to share something I did just a week ago in class for the first
time that seemed to work quite well. I had students read David Guterson's
novel about Japanese-American internment, Snow Falling on Cedars, and then
compare the events described in the novel with the documents (text and
photographs) about the Bainbridge Island evacuation available at the
University of Washington Library www site:
http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/Exhibit/bainbridge.html

In addition to promoting knowledge of a key episode in WWII history, I
wanted to provoke the students to think about the blurry line between
history and fiction, between what historians do with history and what
novelists do with history. This is one of the larger themes of my
particular course, but it may be of some interest to other people on this
list who share my habit of using novels and stories as well as more
conventional historical documents. (I think someone mentioned The Dollmaker
in an earlier posting to this list.)

Finally, I would like to ask William Tuttle, and anyone else with ideas
about this, for suggestions about specific sources to use in presenting the
war from the perspective of children--in Europe and Asia as well as in the
United States. I think that doing this would be an excellent way of
considering the concrete impact of "big events" on ordinary lives and also
introducing the idea that age and development matter in how people
experience history and reflect on its significance. I have not done much
along these lines yet myself, but am interested in incorporating these
sorts of perspectives and materials in the future.

Many thanks in advance for any suggestions.




Ellen Herman
Department of History
University of Oregon 97403-1288
(541) 346-3118 phone
(541) 346-4895 fax
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Date:         Tue, 2 Mar 1999 10:01:10 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
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Hello WWII Forum,


        I am so pleased that our WWII Forum is up and running.

        Items that seem to be of concern are, first, the best books
to assign and, second, exciting topics to concentrate on .

        I was especially struck by Elizabeth Fones-Wolf's observation
that a largely male class she taught was unhappy both with the emphasis
on social history and with the choice of The Dollmaker for reading. Have
others noticed gender differences in responses to topics/emphases and
reading materials?  How can we effectively deal with such differences so
that everyone is motivated to get the most out of the course?

        Bob Cherny kindly offered to share his WWII course syllabus with
us. I hope that others will do the same.

        I have found that some of the standard WWII texts such as those by
Blum, who doesn't treat women at all, and Polenberg are rather dated.
O'Neill is more up to date, but is perhaps limited in others ways, as is
Goodwin.  Do you assign a WWII text?  What have you found works best?

        Finally, David Fisher makes the excellent suggestion that
comparative approaches can be extremely helpful in understanding the
significance of WWII to US and world history.  Have any of you tried
such an approach?  Was it successful?

        It's election day in Kansas, so I need to go vote.


                                Bill Tuttle
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Date:         Tue, 2 Mar 1999 16:06:12 -0500
Reply-To:     Jim Young 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Jim Young 
Subject:      WWII
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An incident arose during topic selection in a writing class this morning =
that reminded me of Elizabeth Fones-Wolf's experience in gendered =
responses to "war."  A young man in this 60% female class said that he =
wants to research and write on some aspect of the Vietnam Conflict; the =
next person, also male, hesitated -- stating that the previous response =
had caused him to rethink his choice -- and then declared that he would =
like to do some aspect of the American Civil War. From across the room =
came a female voice, which chided "Oh, yeah, guys and their war."  There =
was murmered agreement and an apologetic look from the would-be =
chronicler of an aspect of the Civil War, so I related the experience of =
Fones-Wolf and invited discussion of the matter.  Little followed, =
because few -- none, to judge by the open expressions -- found anything =
unusual about the Fones-Wolf experience.  Go figure.  Jim Young

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An incident arose during topic selection in a =
writing class=20
this morning that reminded me of Elizabeth Fones-Wolf's experience in =
gendered=20
responses to "war."  A young man in this 60% female class =
said=20
that he wants to research and write on some aspect of the Vietnam =
Conflict; the=20
next person, also male, hesitated -- stating that the previous response =
had=20
caused him to rethink his choice -- and then declared that he would like =
to do=20
some aspect of the American Civil War. From across the room came a =
female voice,=20
which chided "Oh, yeah, guys and their war."  There was =
murmered=20
agreement and an apologetic look from the would-be chronicler of an =
aspect of=20
the Civil War, so I related the experience of Fones-Wolf and invited =
discussion=20
of the matter.  Little followed, because few -- none, to judge by =
the open=20
expressions -- found anything unusual about the Fones-Wolf =
experience.  Go=20
figure.  Jim Young

------=_NextPart_000_000B_01BE64C6.97F3EBC0--
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Date:         Wed, 3 Mar 1999 14:48:12 PDT
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         JULIE LISS 
Organization: Scripps College
Subject:      Re: WORLDWARIIFORUM Digest - 1 Mar 1999 to 2 Mar 1999 (#1999-4)

I focus on WWII as part of a course on War and Society from 1898 to
(sort of) the present.  The books I use, or have used, include
Terkel's The Good War (always a success); Maureen Honey, Creating
Rosie the Riveter; Erenberg and Hirsch, eds. The War in American
Culture (a good collection of new essays).


Julia E. Liss
Chair, Dept. of History
Scripps College
1030 Columbia Avenue
Claremont, CA  91711
telephone: (909) 607-3541
fax: (909) 621-8323
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 Mar 1999 09:36:56 EST
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         JBrowne865@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: William Tuttle's Opening Statement
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Dear Professor Fone-Wolf,
I recently read Stephen Ambrose's book Citizen Soldiers, which combines
military history with social history to some extent.  This book examines the
experiences and every day life of the GI's in WWII, with special focus in
parts on Nisei, African American, and women soldiers.  It is an easy read, in
my opinion, and is currently being devoured by my father, a military history
buff if there ever was one.  I have never used it in a class, however.  I hope
it is useful.
Best,
Dorothy Browne
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 Mar 1999 09:23:23 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
Subject:      Teaching WWII
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Good morning, friends,

        I was saddened this morning to learn of the death of my boyhood
hero, Joe DiMaggio.  Joe was not only a magnificent baseball player and
quintessential American hero, he also was a veteran of 3 years in WWII.
Thinking about Joe DiMaggio and his life in the 1940s made me reflect upon
our subject: teaching WWII.

        Two of the issues that have most concerned us are 1) students'
gendered responses to the subject and 2) comparative approaches to
teaching the history of WWII.  Perhaps one way of dealing with both of
these issues is to focus on the American men and women who fought the war,
both at home and abroad, including not only DiMaggio and other heroes of
the era, but also the grandparents and great-grandparents of our students
today.  A runaway best-seller is Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation,
based on the recollections of some of these grandparents and
great-grandparents.  In Lawrence, Kansas, where I live, there is an
ambitous oral history program in the public schools.  Fifth-graders,
working with their teachers and with U. of Kansas education students in a
Language Arts Methods class, are interviewing man and women who came of
age during the Great Depression and during WWII.  Their oral histories
have been published in the Sunday editions of the local newspaper.

        These oral histories have illustrated the ways in which women as
well as men contributed to the history of this epochal time.  The
interviews upon which these histories are based were fantastic experiences
for the interviewees as well as for their fifth-grade interviewers.
Interviewed so far have been a retired professor who was a POW of the
Germans for 2 1/2 years and two women who worked in war-production
factories.

        Similarly, my students in an undergraduate honors course are
interviewing members of The Greatest Generation.  Their interviews show
that while the war experience was gendered, women as well as men made
significant contributions both on the battlefield and on the homefront.
Their interviews also show that while America was victorious in the war,
the pyschological toll on Americans -- soldiers and sailors, "Rosie the
Riveters" and war brides, teenagers and children -- was often severe with
significant lifespan consequences.  By looking at these consequences,
students can begin to make comparisons with the experiences of people in
other countries at war.

        I have been re-reading some of Steve Ambrose's books, and what has
made them so compelling for the American reading public is the
first-person testimony by the people who fought the war in Europe.

        When I began the research for my book "Daddy's Gone to War," I had
not anticipated finding so many sad stories -- stories of children's fears
of air raid drills, of wives and children overcome with fears about the
safety and welfare of husbands and fathers, of fathers returning home, but
suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, of the trauma
which children experienced upon seeing the first visual images
of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb.  But when I solicited the homefront
children's recollections and eventually received 2,500 responses to my
author's query in newspapers and magazines, I was overwhelmed by the
complexity of the WWII experience in people's lives.

        In your classes, have you done oral history projects?  How have
you gone about doing these?

        I was pleased to learn from Kevin Smant and Julie Liss about the
WWII books which they have used successfully in your courses.  What books
have others used?  And with what success?

        Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Jim Young have written about gender
issues which they have experienced in teaching WWII.  Have others had such
experiences?  And what are the best ways to deal with them?

        Ellen Herman asked me for ideas about books, articles, and other
specific sources for teaching about the experiences of children on other
homefronts and battlefronts during the war.  I did encounter some
accounts by children who survived the Holocaust, and I did study the
British experience, especially Anna Freud, John Bowlby, and other
psychiatrists' accounts of the evacuation of English children from cities
to the countryside.  Michael Caine, the actor, has also written about the
sadness he experienced as an evacuee.  Beyond these, I really don't know
much about the experiences of other children in Europe and Asia during the
war.  Can anyone help us with this?

        Finally, thanks to Robert Shaffer for his thoughts on comparative
approahces to the teaching of WWII, and especially of the ways in which
such approaches can help us to understand better not only WWII but also
the Cold War that followed.  Can anyone add to the suggestions which he
made about the postwar effects of WWII?  What about the postwar films
about WWII, ranging from "The Best Year of Our Lives" to all the John
Wayne and Audie Murphy films to "Saving Private Ryan"?  I wonder, for
example, how many men who volunteered to fight in Vietnam (e.g., Ron
Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July") did so because of glorified images of
male heroism in postwar films about WWII.
x
        Thanks for your helpful and thoughtful ideas about teaching the
history of WWII.


                                Bill Tuttle
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 Mar 1999 10:18:27 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Glenn Wiebe 
Subject:      oral history
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Glenn Wiebe
Tabor College
Hillsboro, KS  67063
316-947-3121
glennw@tabor.edu

    I am teaching a freshman level US History 1865 - present class for =
the first time and hope to use an oral history assignment as part of a =
WWII unit.  This makes the discussion and questions concerning the "how =
to" of oral history on this list very practical.  I am interested in how =
others have handled this type of assignment.  I am especially curious to =
know what others have done in regards to the writing and use of release =
forms. =20

Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance.

glennw

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Glenn Wiebe
Tabor =
College
Hillsboro,=20
KS  67063
316-947-3121
glennw@tabor.edu
 
    I am=20
teaching a freshman level US History 1865 - present class for the first =
time and=20
hope to use an oral history assignment as part of a WWII unit.  =
This makes=20
the discussion and questions concerning the "how to" of oral =
history=20
on this list very practical.  I am interested in how others have =
handled=20
this type of assignment.  I am especially curious to know what =
others have=20
done in regards to the writing and use of release forms. =20

 
Any=20
suggestions?
 
Thank you in=20
advance.
 
glennw

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=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 Mar 1999 19:25:35 EST
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Pt086@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: oral history
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Probably the best source open to you is the Veteran's of Foreign Wars.  You
also might check the phone book for organizations like Pearl Harbor Survivors.
Don't overlook local retirement home and hospitals.

I've used all of these organizations before with some success.  I have found
that a lot of veterans will gladly share their experiences.

Good luck.

Pat Twiford
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 Mar 1999 23:41:01 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Roy A Rosenzweig 
Subject:      Re: oral history
In-Reply-To:  <003d01be697f$4d284380$49a6f8c6@simons.tabor.edu.tabor.edu>
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I often use oral history assignment in 1865 to present course. I don't
worry much about things like release forms. I do worry more about trying to
make students write something that is analytical. So, I usually require
that they test out propositions and arguments in secondary sources (like
Bill Tuttle's book) against the interviews that they do. In general, I
require that they use at least two secondary sources with their oral
history interviews.
Roy Rosenzweig
George Mason University
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 Mar 1999 10:09:15 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Carl Schulkin 
Subject:      Re: oral history
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I agree completely with Roy's approach and would like to add that it works
well with high school students as well.  We have done a required oral
history project in our U.S. History survey courses for a number of years,
and our students enjoy it.  By insisting, as Roy does, that the students
have an analytical focus for their investigation and that they correlate
what they are told in the interviews with what they find in reputable
written sources, we have received good quality papers in response to this
assignment.  I highly recommend this approach for both high school teachers
and college instructors.

Carl Schulkin
Pembroke Hill School
Kansas City, MO 64112

At 11:41 PM 3/8/99 -0500, you wrote:
>I often use oral history assignment in 1865 to present course. I don't
>worry much about things like release forms. I do worry more about trying to
>make students write something that is analytical. So, I usually require
>that they test out propositions and arguments in secondary sources (like
>Bill Tuttle's book) against the interviews that they do. In general, I
>require that they use at least two secondary sources with their oral
>history interviews.
>Roy Rosenzweig
>George Mason University
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 Mar 1999 14:47:16 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Guocun Yang 
Organization: Manchester Community Technical College
Subject:      Re: oral history
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Concerning oral history, I would very much like to know how to prepare the
students before sending them out to conduct interviews, whether there is a time
cap on such projects, or what is the followup, i.e. whether the students share
their reports/papers toward the end of the semester. Any comments on these
matters will be much appreciated.
Guocun Yang
Machester, Conn.

Carl Schulkin wrote:

> I agree completely with Roy's approach and would like to add that it works
> well with high school students as well.  We have done a required oral
> history project in our U.S. History survey courses for a number of years,
> and our students enjoy it.  By insisting, as Roy does, that the students
> have an analytical focus for their investigation and that they correlate
> what they are told in the interviews with what they find in reputable
> written sources, we have received good quality papers in response to this
> assignment.  I highly recommend this approach for both high school teachers
> and college instructors.
>
> Carl Schulkin
> Pembroke Hill School
> Kansas City, MO 64112
>
> At 11:41 PM 3/8/99 -0500, you wrote:
> >I often use oral history assignment in 1865 to present course. I don't
> >worry much about things like release forms. I do worry more about trying to
> >make students write something that is analytical. So, I usually require
> >that they test out propositions and arguments in secondary sources (like
> >Bill Tuttle's book) against the interviews that they do. In general, I
> >require that they use at least two secondary sources with their oral
> >history interviews.
> >Roy Rosenzweig
> >George Mason University
> >
> >
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 Mar 1999 20:16:01 EST
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Steve Schwartz 
Subject:      A Previous War
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Hello NMC'ers and Goals 2000 people:

I am quite aware that we are into a Second World War Forum, but something
interesting has popped up.

The New York Historical Society has distributed (FREE) a packet of materials
from their exhibit of last year: Militant Metropolis: New York City and the
Spanish American War 1898.

The packet contains photocopies of images from newspapers, manuscripts and
photographs -- primary sources very well reproduced.  In addition, there are
suggested lesson plans and strategies for implementation.  The quality of the
material is excellent.

If you are interested contact:

Cynthia R. Copeland
Education Curator
The New York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
NY, NY 10024-5194
212.873.3400 ext. 218

Steve Schwartz
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 Mar 1999 07:43:44 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Joseph Robert Adams 
Subject:      Common themes and challenges
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I am a teacher in training at North Georgia College and State University working
on independent studies of the First and the Second World War.
One facet of my study is the teaching of the subject from middle school through
junior college levels. In Georgia, the teaching of the World Wars begins in the
fifth grade with the following objectives for the First World War that have
obvious connections for the Second World War later:

(5.12) Recognizes the causes of World War I
-nationalism (honoring and promoting one's own nation above all others)
-militarism (glorifying war and preparing armed forces for conflict), and
-imperialism (creating an empire by dominating other nations). (7)

(5.15) Analyzes and explains major causes, events and personalities of World War
II
- resurgence of nationalism, militarism, and imperialism
- major powers and their leaders
- Pearl Harbor
- the internment of Japanese Americans
- the Holocaust, and
- VE and VJ Day. (10)

As we enter the twentieth century, I wonder how we should approach the teaching
of the Second World War from the perspective of the whole century, including the
First World War. Children need a deeper narrative of imperialism and nationalism
(the "Great Game"of the late nineteenth century, the creation of public schools
in industrializing countries to nationalize the general public, Total War and
genocide of Armenians by Turkish soldiers in the First World War, rejection of
the racial equality claus at the Paris Peace Conference, etc.) For me, the
twentieth century and the World Wars   reflect our struggle to realize a common
humanity and value human rights to protect all. Industrial technology for the
first time brought together the global diversity of humanity for the first time
in human history. The story of our mutually strange perceptions (as viewed from
the present day) of one another as different "races" and ethnic groups and came
into our view for the first time, and our new national identities in the
expanding world economy needs to be told in as broad a manner as possible.
Jumping right into the Second World War, or even an oral history of it, has the
potential for perpetuating decades old misperceptions of one another. In my
exploration of our teaching of the Second World War in middle and secondary
school, the Holocaust, the internment of Japanese Americans and Hiroshima are
common themes taught mainly through novels. Sure these themes teach important
themes of the atrocity of war and violation of human rights most of us can now
take for granted, but we need a broader picture. Genocide is common feature in
world history, not only in Germany during the Second World War. Armenian
genocide in Turkey during the First World War is just as horrifying and set a
precedent for the Second World War. From the twenty-first century, we will have
to do better integrating   complex stories of the twentieth century into better
narratives for all grade levels. And it will be up to college professors in
their survey courses to teach the next generation of secondary school teachers.

Here are a few books and links to college syllabi that may help.

Over Here: The First World War and American Society, by David M. Kennedy
(Oxford, 1980).
War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, by John W. Dower
(Pantheon, 1987).
Japan At War: An Oral History, by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook (The New
Press, 1992).

Ohio State University (full syllabus for a graduate readings course titled, "New
Frontiers in Military History")
http://www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/history/people/grimsley.1/hnew.htm

Oberlin College, Ohio (full syllabus for "World War II: Shaping the Twentieth
Century")
http://www.oberlin.edu/~history/Courses/Hist_170-1998.htm

Kansas State University (syllabus for course "World War II")
http://www.ksu.edu/history/courses/hist514/coursesyll.htm
(specific questions included in the instructions for a take-home exam)
http://www.ksu.edu/history/courses/hist514/514home.htm

University of Connecticut (syllabus for "History of U.S. Foreign Relations in
the 20th Century")
http://www.history.uconn.edu/sylfc249.html


Looking forward to our continuing discussion,

Joseph R. Adams
North Georgia College and State University

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I am a teacher in training at North Georgia College and State University
working on independent studies of the First and the Second World War.

One facet of my study is the teaching of the subject from middle school
through junior college levels. In Georgia, the teaching of the World Wars
begins in the fifth grade with the following objectives for the First World
War that have obvious connections for the Second World War later:
(5.12) Recognizes the causes of World War I

-nationalism (honoring and promoting one's own nation above all others)

-militarism (glorifying war and preparing armed forces for conflict),
and

-imperialism (creating an empire by dominating other nations). (7)
(5.15) Analyzes and explains major causes, events and personalities
of World War II

- resurgence of nationalism, militarism, and imperialism

- major powers and their leaders

- Pearl Harbor

- the internment of Japanese Americans

- the Holocaust, and

- VE and VJ Day. (10)
As we enter the twentieth century, I wonder how we should approach the
teaching of the Second World War from the perspective of the whole century,
including the First World War. Children need a deeper narrative of imperialism
and nationalism (the "Great Game"of the late nineteenth century, the creation
of public schools in industrializing countries to nationalize the general
public, Total War and genocide of Armenians by Turkish soldiers in the
First World War, rejection of the racial equality claus at the Paris Peace
Conference, etc.) For me, the twentieth century and the World Wars  
reflect our struggle to realize a common humanity and value human rights
to protect all. Industrial technology for the first time brought together
the global diversity of humanity for the first time in human history. The
story of our mutually strange perceptions (as viewed from the present day)
of one another as different "races" and ethnic groups and came into our
view for the first time, and our new national identities in the expanding
world economy needs to be told in as broad a manner as possible. Jumping
right into the Second World War, or even an oral history of it, has the
potential for perpetuating decades old misperceptions of one another. In
my exploration of our teaching of the Second World War in middle and secondary
school, the Holocaust, the internment of Japanese Americans and Hiroshima
are common themes taught mainly through novels. Sure these themes teach
important themes of the atrocity of war and violation of human rights most
of us can now take for granted, but we need a broader picture. Genocide
is common feature in world history, not only in Germany during the Second
World War. Armenian genocide in Turkey during the First World War is just
as horrifying and set a precedent for the Second World War. From the twenty-first
century, we will have to do better integrating   complex stories
of the twentieth century into better narratives for all grade levels. And
it will be up to college professors in their survey courses to teach the
next generation of secondary school teachers.
Here are a few books and links to college syllabi that may help.
Over Here: The First World War and American Society, by David
M. Kennedy (Oxford, 1980).

War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, by John
W. Dower (Pantheon, 1987).

Japan At War: An Oral History, by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore
F. Cook (The New Press, 1992).
Ohio State University (full syllabus for a graduate readings course
titled, "New Frontiers in Military History")

http://www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/history/people/grimsley.1/hnew.htm
Oberlin College, Ohio (full syllabus for "World War II: Shaping the
Twentieth Century")

http://www.oberlin.edu/~history/Courses/Hist_170-1998.htm
Kansas State University (syllabus for course "World War II")

http://www.ksu.edu/history/courses/hist514/coursesyll.htm

(specific questions included in the instructions for a take-home exam)

http://www.ksu.edu/history/courses/hist514/514home.htm
University of Connecticut (syllabus for "History of U.S. Foreign Relations
in the 20th Century")

http://www.history.uconn.edu/sylfc249.html

 
Looking forward to our continuing discussion,
Joseph R. Adams

North Georgia College and State University



--------------7E94298D97A125664FC1D56C--
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 Mar 1999 12:08:40 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
Subject:      History Matters article (fwd) -Reply (fwd)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        This is Bill Tuttle.  Our discussions about oral history and how
to do it, generations, memory, and (from Joseph R. Adams) the
responsibility of as "college professors in their survey courses to teach
the next generation of secondary school teachers" have really been
fascinating.

        I think that we as teachers should pay special attention to Joseph
Adams' message about our moral responsibility to find meaning in the
events of WWII and of the 20th century of which it is a part.  One way to
do this, it seems to me, is again comparative history, but of a different
kind.  We have had an excellent discussion about ways in which we can
compare the meaning/impact of WWII on the US as compared with the war's
impact on the USSR, Japan, Germany, China, etc.  But we can also do
another kind of comparison -- a comparison across time: that is, comparing
the impact of WWII on the US with the impact on the US of the Spanish
American War, WWI, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf War.  (Part of
what made me think of this was the message we received from Steve Schwartz
about the New York Historical Society exhibit materials available  on
"Militant Metropolis: New York City and the Spanish American War of 1898)

        I would like to say Hello to my neighbor Carl Schulkin who lives
just a few miles east of here in Kansas City and who, with his colleagues
at Pembroke Hill School and elsewhere in the country, has done some really
innovative things in teaching European and American history.  I thought
that he, and Roy Rosensweig, gave just the right advice on how to prepare
for doing oral history interviews -- above all, having "an analytical
focus for their investigation" and being prepared to "correlate what they
are told in the interviews with what they find in reputable written
sources...."

        I was pleased to hear about oral history programs being done in
retirement centers (and perhaps soon at VFW Halls) and among women (on the
"distaff side") as well as men.  (I have to confess that I, as a Vietnam
era veteran, was invited to join the American Legion, and I did.  I
haven't re-upped for another year, but I can vouch for the many stories
which legionnaires sitting at the bar have to tell.)

        I do think that one of our duties as teachers in any community is
to try to bring together people from different generations.  We have
talked about Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation and Steve Amrbose's
books based on the lives of fighting men of this generation.  I want to
recommend another book to you, one that places this generation in present
time: Mary Pipher's "Another Country: The Emotional Terrain of Our
Elders."  She describes them as the last generation to have come of age in
a communal culture and writes that what defines them, and causes conflcit
with their baby-boomer chidlren, is that they are pre-therapy and
"pre-irony."

        It's amazing how one thing leads to another.  Yesterday I
received an e-mail message about the forthcoming annual meeting of the
Kansas History Association, urging me to consult its website for the
program.  I did and I saw that there is going to be a session, sponsored
by the Spring Hill, KS, public schools, entitled "Student WWII Community
Website: History and Technology in the Secondary Classroom."  It said
that the "webmaster" was Drew Farmer (10th grade).  I contacted the
president of the KHTA for information about this project, and I want to
share with you his reply (Let's stay in touch, WWII Forum
members): ----------
Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 10:33:20 -0600
From: Sam Dicks 
To: tuttle@falcon.cc.ukans.edu, pmichaelis@hspo.wpo.state.ks.us
Subject: History Matters article (fwd) -Reply

Bill* I passed your message on to Dan Lumley in Spring Hill.  He is assistant superintendent for instruction there (I think that is his title).  At any rate he wrote the Educate America grant which involved the Eisenhower Library and Mack Teasley, some of us at ESU, Ed Tech people at KSU, and several middle school and high school teachers and students.  They all did web sites (although not all on WWII).  Spring Hill's is one of the most impressive.  I don't believe they are on the web yet because of some copyright clearances for political cartoons * they may suppress these with a pass code and get the rest of the site up.  It includes several fascinating interviews * one with a Bataan veteran was especially gripping.  After the word got around in Spring Hill * veterans and others of that era were contacting them and wanted to be included.  Although in Johnson County, Spring Hill is still a rural community, although perhaps not for long.

One of the other interesting ones was one about local hostility in a German Lutheran community in WWI (Paola). There were several others also, many very impressive.

Dan Lumley should be in contact with you shortly.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 Mar 1999 21:09:00 +0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         chang 
Subject:      What make the Second World War occur?
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Keynesians, we want peace, get rid of war!

Are you aware that "the crisis of 1930-39 is generally known as the
Great Depression"? Keynesians say "the Great Depression was ended by
the military Keynesianism of the Second World War." Why do they
insist that the Great Depression can be ended by war? It is because
they think that war can increase the government's spending. Spending
increase means the increase of social needs, which can decrease
unemployment and increase GDP and economic growth rate. Keynesians
call it "the military Keynesianism". They judge a country's economic
growth and economic growth rate by means of GDP. (Keynes's Solution
to unemployment was higher public spending which would add to incomes
and through the multiplier process lead to more jobs.)

It was just because Hitler accepted this viewpoint and Hitler
employed state capitalism and central planning very successfully and
made Germany into a world economic and military power in 4 short
years that the Second World War started.

I insist that economic crisis and unemployment can't be solved by
means of war. Although it is possible for the military Keynesianism
to increase GDP and decrease unemployment, it is impossible for it to
raise the people's living standards and increase social wealth, and
it is all the more impossible for it to develop social economics. War
can only cause the destruction of social wealth and heavy casualties.
Nowadays, the American Government still believe in the
above-mentioned viewpoint: war ---- the increase of the government's
spending ---- the increase of social needs ---- the decrease of
unemployment and increase of GDP and economic growth rate. The
American Government now still use GDP to measure the economic growth
of its own country. Therefore, the military Keynesianism is horrible.
It may lead to the world war. Keynesians say: "Any President of USA
that tries to get rid of military Keynesianism will be kicked out of
office."

Nowadays, most countries all over the world use Gross Domestic
Product to judge the economic growth of a certain country and,
according to this GDP, calculate this country's economic growth rate.
This method of calculation is really unfair for poor people, for it
fails to judge whether the poor people's living standards have been
raised. For example, the yearly economic growth rate of some
countries has reached 9-10 percent, but their poor people's living
standards haven't been raised. There are still a lot of people
suffering from cold and hunger. They can't afford to send their
children to school, and, as a result, too many children are deprived
of education. Therefore, a new economic theory is badly needed to
judge a country's economic growth. My article "On The Development of
Social Economy " has established
a set of complete economic theories and also a new model of economic
growth, by means of which we will be able to judge a country's
economic growth accurately and fairly. And I also argue that we
should use the living standards of the poor people and the
sufficiency of the first and second grade consumption goods as the
criterion to judge the economic situations of one country and the
achievements of its government. Only when poverty is eliminated, may
we say that the social economy is developed. Only when the living
standards of the low-income people is improved, will we be able to
take just and accurate measurement of the economic growth of a
country. So, the economic growth of a certain country can't be
measured by GDP. GDP is unscientific. The measurement of social
economic development by means of GDP can only lead to the Military
Keynesianism, lead to war.

How does economic crisis occur? The whole world has publicly agreed
that it is caused by overproduction. So when economic crisis appears,
we shoud make regulation of market and bankrupt the badly-managed
companies with overproduction. In this way, overproduction can be
decreased. When those bankrupted companies and unemployed workers
take up new jobs, social economy will naturally develop forward.
(Please read my articles [2] A model of economy growth, [3] a further
explanation of this model, and [5] How to make Regulation of Market?
in my homepage ) It is in this
way that the USA and West-European countries solve their economic
crisis. We shouldn't let Keynesianism hoodwink our eyes and know
nothing about how these developed countries solve their economic
crisis. Why are the USA and West-European countries still the most
economically developed countries in the world though a lot of
companies in those countries go bankrupt every year? The key to this
question is right here. You might say that Hitler tried to solve
economic crisis and unemployment by means of war instead of
bankrupting the companies. You, however, should make it clear that,
in order to solve economic crisis, you, first of all, have to
bankrupt those badly-managed companies, and then the second step that
follows is to find new jobs for the unemployed. Before the Second
World War broke out, there had been a large quantity of bankrupted
companies and unemployed workers. This was the first step towards the
solution of economic crisis. Hitler's using war to solve unemployment
was the second step, which means that Hitler found jobs of war for
the unemployed. So, the problem of unemployment was solved with war.
However, we should be aware that, apart from finding jobs of war for
the unemployed, we can offer the unemployed other jobs which have
nothing to do with war. Another solution is that the government
distributes relief fund among the unemployed rather than provide them
with jobs. Why should we think that making war upon others is the
only way to solve unemployment? Joblessness is far better than jobs
of war. Why has the government got no money to distribute relief fund
since it is rich enough to make war?

It is in order to maintain the world peace, in order to redress a
grievance for those dying in the war, in order to prevent the war
from occurring again and in order to prevent New Nazism from gaining
ground that I am obliged to write this article.

Sincerely,
Ju-chang He

SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
Welcome to visit My Home Page at

or 
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 15 Mar 1999 10:00:00 -0500
Reply-To:     Jim Young 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Jim Young 
Subject:      War as cause of war, and military Keynesianism
MIME-Version: 1.0
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              boundary="----=_NextPart_000_002B_01BE6ECA.96BA6640"

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   Recent communications bring a couple things to mind.  Most, if not =
all, of my instructors in 20th century European history (back in the =
1960s) saw World War II as basically an extension of World War I, with =
time taken out to raise a new generation of victims.  Italy, suffering =
from the lie of "the lost peace," changed sides, as did Japan, which no =
longer had anything to gain from Germany.  Although this is somewhat =
schematic, we should keep the point in mind.  Of course, one could =
ascribe the outbreak of World War I to imperialistic rivalries dating =
back far into the 19th century or perhaps earlier and thereby create a =
century or more of causal links.  For the moment,  the 20th century =
should suffice.
   Ju-chang He's point about the dangers of military Keynesianism (If =
you build it, they will employ it) is appropriate.  Again citing World =
War I, the weapons races -- the German fleet-building program, France's =
updating Russia's weaponry and technology -- contributed, certainly, to =
an assumption that war was a ready option and, in some quarters, the =
sooner the better.  Chang may not appreciate, however, the political =
difficulty of gaining consensus in the U.S. for major economic efforts =
that cannot be justified by some real or imagined danger from outside =
the country -- consider the fate of national healthcare reform.  Very =
powerful interests oppose any social and economic basis for meaningful =
change, including the rather simple and non-threatening measures =
suggested by Ju-chang He.  Needless to say, very powerful interests also =
oppose significant military reductions because they profit from the =
current situation.  But, I'm ranging perhaps too far.  The upshot is =
that the preparation for war and the war were seen as the engines of =
post-1940 prosperity, and it was a "lesson" that many took to heart.    =
Jim Young
=20

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        charset="iso-8859-1"
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   Recent communications =
bring a=20
couple things to mind.  Most, if not all, of my instructors in 20th =
century=20
European history (back in the 1960s) saw World War II as basically an =
extension=20
of World War I, with time taken out to raise a new generation of =
victims. =20
Italy, suffering from the lie of "the lost peace," changed =
sides, as=20
did Japan, which no longer had anything to gain from Germany.  =
Although=20
this is somewhat schematic, we should keep the point in mind.  Of =
course,=20
one could ascribe the outbreak of World War I to imperialistic rivalries =
dating=20
back far into the 19th century or perhaps earlier and thereby create a =
century=20
or more of causal links.  For the moment,  the 20th century =
should=20
suffice.
   Ju-chang He's point =
about the=20
dangers of military Keynesianism (If you build it, they will employ it) =
is=20
appropriate.  Again citing World War I, the weapons races -- the =
German=20
fleet-building program, France's updating Russia's weaponry and =
technology --=20
contributed, certainly, to an assumption that war was a ready option =
and, in=20
some quarters, the sooner the better.  Chang may not appreciate, =
however,=20
the political difficulty of gaining consensus in the U.S. for major =
economic=20
efforts that cannot be justified by some real or imagined danger from =
outside=20
the country -- consider the fate of national healthcare reform.  =
Very=20
powerful interests oppose any social and economic basis for meaningful =
change,=20
including the rather simple and non-threatening measures suggested by =
Ju-chang=20
He.  Needless to say, very powerful interests also oppose =
significant=20
military reductions because they profit from the current =
situation.  But,=20
I'm ranging perhaps too far.  The upshot is that the preparation =
for war=20
and the war were seen as the engines of post-1940 prosperity, and it was =
a=20
"lesson" that many took to heart.    Jim=20
Young
 

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=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 16 Mar 1999 10:01:06 +0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         chang 
Subject:      Re: War as cause of war, and military Keynesianism
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Jim Young wrote:
> The upshot is that the preparation for war and the
> war were seen as the engines of post-1940 prosperity,
> and it was a "lesson" that many took to heart.

The reason why the war were seen as the engines of post-1940 prosperity was
that they judge a country's economic growth and economic growth rate by means
of GDP. They think that there is no economy development without increase of
GDP and there is no increase of GDP without war.

Nowadays, most countries all over the world use Gross Domestic Product to
judge the economic growth of a certain country and, according to this GDP,
calculate this country's economic growth rate. This method of calculation is
really unfair for poor people, for it fails to judge whether the poor
people's living standards have been raised. For example, the yearly economic
growth rate of some countries has reached 9-10 percent, but their poor
people's living standards haven't been raised. There are still a lot of
people suffering from cold and hunger. They can't afford to send their
children to school, and, as a result, too many children are deprived of
education. Therefore, a new economic theory is badly needed to judge a
country's economic growth. My article "On The Development of Social Economy"
has established a set of complete economic theories and also a new model of
economic growth, by means of which we will be able to judge a country's
economic growth accurately and fairly. And I also argue that we should use
the living standards of the poor people and the sufficiency of the first and
second grade consumption goods as the criterion to judge the economic
situations of one country and the achievements of its government. Only when
poverty is eliminated, may we say that the social economy is developed. Only
when the living standards of the low-income people is improved, will we be
able to take just and accurate measurement of the economic growth of a
country. So, the economic growth of a certain country can't be measured by
GDP. GDP is unscientific. The measurement of social economic development by
means of GDP can only lead to the Military Keynesianism, lead to war.

Sincerely,
Ju-chang He

SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
Welcome to visit My Home Page at

or 
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Young 
To: WORLDWARIIFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

Date: Monday, March 15, 1999 10:56 PM
Subject: War as cause of war, and military Keynesianism


>>>>>   Recent communications bring a couple things to mind.  Most, if not
all, of my instructors in 20th century European history (back in the 1960s)
saw World War II as basically an extension of World War I, with time taken
out to raise a new generation of victims.  Italy, suffering from the lie of
"the lost peace," changed sides, as did Japan, which no longer had anything
to gain from Germany.  Although this is somewhat schematic, we should keep
the point in mind.  Of course, one could ascribe the outbreak of World War I
to imperialistic rivalries dating back far into the 19th century or perhaps
earlier and thereby create a century or more of causal links.  For the
moment,  the 20th century should suffice.
   Ju-chang He's point about the dangers of military Keynesianism (If you
build it, they will employ it) is appropriate.  Again citing World War I, the
weapons races -- the German fleet-building program, France's updating
Russia's weaponry and technology -- contributed, certainly, to an assumption
that war was a ready option and, in some quarters, the sooner the better.
Chang may not appreciate, however, the political difficulty of gaining
consensus in the U.S. for major economic efforts that cannot be justified by
some real or imagined danger from outside the country -- consider the fate of
national healthcare reform.  Very powerful interests oppose any social and
economic basis for meaningful change, including the rather simple and
non-threatening measures suggested by Ju-chang He.  Needless to say, very
powerful interests also oppose significant military reductions because they
profit from the current situation.  But, I'm ranging perhaps too far.  The
upshot is that the preparation for war and the war were seen as the engines
of post-1940 prosperity, and it was a "lesson" that many took to heart.
Jim Young
>>>>>>>>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 16 Mar 1999 09:56:13 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
Subject:      WWII Forum
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Good morning,

        Good morning from Lawrence, Kansas.  The weather is warming up to
70, and it's a wonderfully sunny, blue-sky day here.

        One issue that we skipped over, I think, is our gendered classes
and the observation that what pleases women (e.g., The Dollmaker) might
turn off men, who want blood and guts.  Dorothy Browne suggested as a
compromise Steve Ambrose's Citizen soliders, which combines military and
social history "to some extent."

        Do you have other suggestions?

        Another of Ambrose's books does this too.  I find that his Band
of Brothers is not only compelling battlefield history and a great read,
but it also has a concluding "lifespan" chapter entitled "Postwar Careers,
1945-1991."  In my research and teaching, I have concluded that what is
most important in teaching WWII is, first, to deal with people's lives
(women, Japanese Americans, African Americans, GIs [especially combat
vets], Mexican Americans, Jewish Americans, factory workers and
farmers, etc.) and, second, to explore the war's lifespan consequences
(not only personal, but also economic, political, social, etc.) as
evidenced in postwar America and in the postwar world.  Only then, it
seems to me, can we explore the questions with which I began this forum:

        Was WWII "the good war"?

        Was WWII a "watershed" in American history?

        In addition to Steve Ambrose's book, another recommendation was
the collection of letters edited by David Smith and Judy Litoff, "We're in
This War Too."  This is a fascinating book.  Smith and Litoff have
several other collections of letters as well, including a very moving
volume entitled Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American
Women on the Home Front.

        I would be eager to hear from you  about other materials which
have worked successfully with your students and in your classrooms.  What
books and articles (non-fiction and fiction, have been popular
and have helped you to attain your goals in teaching WWII?  And what films
and videos have worked?

        In my honors section of the US history survey since 1865, which I
teach to 15 students, we will soon be discussing WWII.  I look forward to
your ideas and suggestions.


                                Bill Tuttle
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 16 Mar 1999 16:37:06 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Mike Nagle 
Subject:      Re: WWII Forum
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain

Hello-

I have had a great deal of success using the book Desert Exile by Yoshiko
Uchida.  She and her family lived in California before the war and they were
all placed into the Japanese Internment camps.  Her story is short (about
150 pages) but it is also a very quick read.  The students enjoy the subject
matter, her writing style, and I think her message is good and
straightforward.  I have probably assigned it 5-7 times while teaching the
US History survey course and I always have very positive responses from the
students.

Mike Nagle
West Shore Community College
Scottville, MI

> -----Original Message-----
> From: WILLIAM TUTTLE [SMTP:tuttle@FALCON.CC.UKANS.EDU]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 1999 10:56 AM
> To:   WORLDWARIIFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
> Subject:      WWII Forum
>
> Good morning,
>
>         Good morning from Lawrence, Kansas.  The weather is warming up to
> 70, and it's a wonderfully sunny, blue-sky day here.
>
>         One issue that we skipped over, I think, is our gendered classes
> and the observation that what pleases women (e.g., The Dollmaker) might
> turn off men, who want blood and guts.  Dorothy Browne suggested as a
> compromise Steve Ambrose's Citizen soliders, which combines military and
> social history "to some extent."
>
>         Do you have other suggestions?
>
>         Another of Ambrose's books does this too.  I find that his Band
> of Brothers is not only compelling battlefield history and a great read,
> but it also has a concluding "lifespan" chapter entitled "Postwar Careers,
> 1945-1991."  In my research and teaching, I have concluded that what is
> most important in teaching WWII is, first, to deal with people's lives
> (women, Japanese Americans, African Americans, GIs [especially combat
> vets], Mexican Americans, Jewish Americans, factory workers and
> farmers, etc.) and, second, to explore the war's lifespan consequences
> (not only personal, but also economic, political, social, etc.) as
> evidenced in postwar America and in the postwar world.  Only then, it
> seems to me, can we explore the questions with which I began this forum:
>
>         Was WWII "the good war"?
>
>         Was WWII a "watershed" in American history?
>
>         In addition to Steve Ambrose's book, another recommendation was
> the collection of letters edited by David Smith and Judy Litoff, "We're in
> This War Too."  This is a fascinating book.  Smith and Litoff have
> several other collections of letters as well, including a very moving
> volume entitled Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American
> Women on the Home Front.
>
>         I would be eager to hear from you  about other materials which
> have worked successfully with your students and in your classrooms.  What
> books and articles (non-fiction and fiction, have been popular
> and have helped you to attain your goals in teaching WWII?  And what films
> and videos have worked?
>
>         In my honors section of the US history survey since 1865, which I
> teach to 15 students, we will soon be discussing WWII.  I look forward to
> your ideas and suggestions.
>
>
>                                 Bill Tuttle
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 16 Mar 1999 20:15:06 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Roy A Rosenzweig 
Subject:      Re: WWII Forum
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

        I wanted to mention another excellent first person WWII document
that is available on the "History Matters" web site. It is "A G.I. Artist's
Sketchpad, 1943-1944." It includes 24 sketches done by artist Ben Hurwitz
during  during his two years in North Africa and Italy. It is accompanied
by the artist's commentary transcribed by historian Joshua Brown in
November 1996. You can find the sketches at:
 http://historymatters.gmu.edu/text/s1.html
        You can search for WWII documents more generally at
http://chnm.gmu.edu/us/search.taf
best,
Roy

===============================================================
|                          Roy Rosenzweig                      |
| Dept. of History, MS-3G1             Home:                   |
| George Mason University              511 N. Jackson St.      |
| Fairfax, VA 22030-4444               Arlington, VA 22201     |
| W: 703-993-1247                      H: 703-522-2334         |
| email: rrosenzw@gmu.edu              Fax (work): 703-993-1251|
|          Director, Center for History & New Media            |
|                  http://chnm.gmu.edu                         |
===============================================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 17 Mar 1999 11:18:10 -0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         "Robert W. Cherny" 
Subject:      student research on the domestic impact of WWII
In-Reply-To:  <199903170456.UAA02154@diana.sfsu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I must say that I've not encountered the gender differences that others
have.  However, it is also the case that my course, in its title and in
its catalog description, is explicitly focused on the domestic impact of
the war.  My course is also an undergraduate research seminar, in which
students know from the beginning that they will focus much of their
attention on a paper based on primary sources.

The great advantage of focusing a research seminar on the domestic impact
of the war on California and the West has been that every student (so far)
as been able to find a topic of personal interest, whether that personal
interest be in women's history, African-American history, Latino history,
Asian-American history, labor history, or the history of the left.  I've
gotten excellent papers on the emergence of new religious organizations
among African-American migrants to the shipyards of Richmond, women
shipyard workers at Marinship, the experience of Latinos in the southern
California shipyards, childcare and juvenile delinquency, employment
discrimination (one paper on women, one on African-Americans), wildcat
strikes (specifically--and successfully--challenging the argument that
they were largely racially motivated), the racially integrated public
housing at Marin City, the 1942 and 1944 elections, a comparison of
efforts by ILWU Locals 6 and 10 in their efforts to integrate the wartime
newcomers, a study of who replaced the interned Japanese Americans on
farms in the Central Valley, the position of the California CP on Japanese
internment, and the role of the Federal Reserve Bank as trustee for
Japanese-American property owners.  By focusing on both the domestic
impact and on the need to use primary sources, I've just not encountered
students who wanted to do military history topics.

In this, I have the advantage of being close to some good research
archives--the Labor Archives on my campus has both union and governmental
records relating to the war; the National Archives branch in San Bruno, a
short distance from my campus, has a wealth of federal records; and the
Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

Bob Cherny

  =====================================================================
  Robert W. Cherny           Website:  http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~cherny/
  Professor of History              Voice and messages:  (415) 338-7561
  San Francisco State University            Campus FAX:  (415) 338-7539
  San Francisco, CA  94132                   E-mail:  
  =====================================================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 17 Mar 1999 20:16:39 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
Subject:      WWII Forum
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        I think we all appreciate the need for a somewhat comprehensive
history of American at war in order to teach a course on the history
of WWII,
such as the volumes by O'Neill, Blum, and Polenberg.  Bill O'Neill's A
Democracy at War has been praised in our forum, as has Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary
Time.  I think the value of the O'Neill book is that tells the story of
"America's fight at home and abroad."  One thing about the O'Neill book
does irritate me and that's his decision to use the archaic word "Negroes"
in a book published in 1993.

        But there are other kinds of books about the war.  Some are
highly personal and deeply involved and totally moving memoirs of the
war.  Many of these sell in very limted numbers. Some are out of
print. Others have never been published in paperback.  Thanks to Mike
Nagle and Roy Rosenzweig for two such titles: Yoshiko Uchiga's Desert
Exile and Ben Hurwitz's A GI Artist's Sketchpad, 1943-1944.

        Let me add my favorite: Margaret Sams, Forbidden Family: A Wartime
Memoir of the Philippines, 1941-1945 (U. of Wisconsin Press, 1989).
Margaret Sams and her husband were captured by the Japanese early in the
war.  Her husband survived the Bataan Death March and was a POW.  Margaret
and her 4-year-old son were interned in Manilla from 1942-44.  While
there, she met a man named Jerry --a very heroic American POW in the
camp--and she fell in love with him.  They made love once, the night
before he was to be shipped to the Los Banos camp in another part of the
Philippines. She became pregnant, did not know whether she would ever see
Jerry again, or whether her husband was alive; she could have had an
abortion performed by a doctor/POW in her camp, yet she decided to have
the baby.  In 1944 she and her son and her baby daughter were later sent
to Los Banos, and reunited with Jerry, who also met his daughter for the
first time.  Margaret also learned in the camp that her husband had been
killed when the Japanese POW ship he was on was bombed by American planes
and sunk. Margaret wrote her story after the war; it is at once a love
story, a confession (the guilt she felt about her husband was, and
probably still is, overwhelming), and an apologia (she wrote her memoir
for her children and grandchildren so that they could understand what
happened).

        My summary  doesn't begin to do justice to this book.  It's
very powerful  It's edited by Lynn Z. Bloom of UConn and it's beautifully
written.

        Are there are other obscure but great books that we as teachers of
WWII ought to know about?

                                        Bill Tuttle
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 18 Mar 1999 15:01:29 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Robert Shaffer 
Subject:      Re: WWII Forum
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        I, too, would like to recommend the use of Uchida's _Desert
Exile_, although I have not used it yet for a class assignment.  One of
the main attractions of the book for a college audience is that Uchida in
1942 was about the same age as most of our undergraduates, and she details
the way the war interrupted the kinds of activities that our students
would be doing.
        In response to Bill Tuttle's call for other books that deserve
greater attention, I would like to call the attention of the list-members
to a memoir by Milt Felsen, _The Anti-Warrior_, published by University of
Iowa Press.  (I hasten to add for disclosure purposes that Felsen is the
first cousin of my mother, so I have a personal interest in his story.)
The reason Felsen's autobiography is of broader interest is that he
describes his involvement with the left-wing, antiwar movement at the
University of Iowa in the 1930s, Oxford pledge and all, and then proceeds
to describe his involvement as a soldier both in the Lincoln Brigade of
the Spanish civil War and in the OSS during World War II.  Hence, the
title is partly ironic in showing the pull toward war of an
"anti-warrior."  Felsen's discussion of the relationship between the OSS
and the left is particularly interesting, as are his descriptions of the
politics of several covert operations during World War II.  Felsen was a
POW first in Italy and then in Germany, and the comments on being a Jewish
prisoner are also interesting.  I doubt that most professors would be able
to assign the entire book in a class on World War II, as about half of it
covers the pre-war period, and I myself have only provided photocopies of
a few sections of it for my students.  One section that is guaranteed to
elicit strong student interest is a description of OSS (actually, the
precursor to the OSS at that time) personnel dressed in Germany military
uniforms on the streets of Washington, D.C. in 1940 (I believe) asking
passersby where the telephone company building and the police headquarters
were, and being given directions very politely.

-- Robert Shaffer
Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 19 Mar 1999 11:07:57 -0600
Reply-To:     abaltaki@lsue.edu
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Anthony Baltakis 
Organization: Louisiana State University - Eunice
Subject:      Re: WWII Forum
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

With regards to books used in classes on ww11, I have used The White
Rose by Inge Scholl. It is an account of a resistence movement led by
students at the University of Munich during the second world war.
Students in my classes have responded to the book in a positive manner.
Indeed the book provoked quite a discussion in class.
Tony Baltakis, Louisiana State University at Eunice
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 19 Mar 1999 12:54:47 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
Subject:      WWII Forum
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        Spring break at the University of Kansas starts today, but I will
be at my computer hoping to hear from you.  I had looked forward to
watching some great college basketball on TV, but since Kansas was beaten
in overtime last Sunday by Kentucky, I've lost interest.

        Last Friday Joseph Adams sent us addresses for websites
 where syllabi on WWII were available, at Ohio State, Oberlin, Kansas
State and UConn.  And this week Roy Rosenzweig sent other relevant website
addresses.

        I think we've just scratched the surface of important WWW
resources for teaching the history of WWII.

        Can you help us with the addresses of other relevant websites???

        Thanks.


                                        Bill Tuttle
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 21 Mar 1999 09:42:51 EST
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         JBrowne865@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: WWII Forum
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

I visited a very interesting WWII oral history website this summer; I believe
it was www.thedropzone.org.  It featured mostly recollections of soldiers'
experiences during military operations such as the invasion of Normandy, but
it may be useful nonetheless.
Dorothy Browne
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 22 Mar 1999 18:46:52 +0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         chang 
Subject:      Keynesian spread lies!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="gb2312"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Keynesian who spread lies!

Keynesian is spreading lies that the Great Depression was ended by
Keynesianism and Keynesianism can solve economic crisis.

It is true that after coming to power, Hitler launched a program of massive
public works and military expansion, financed by borrowing, which may look
like Keynesianism. It is true that as soon as the Second World War started,
the labor statistics begin to sky-rocket upwards and the problem of
unemployment was solved, which may look like the Great Depression was ended
by Keynesianism. But it is wrong!

How does economic crisis occur? The whole world has publicly agreed that it
is caused by overproduction. So when economic crisis appears, we shoud make
regulation of market and bankrupt the badly-managed companies with
overproduction. In this way, overproduction can be decreased. When those
bankrupted companies and unemployed workers take up new jobs, social economy
will naturally develop forward. (Please read my articles [2] A model of
economy growth, [3] a further explanation of this model, and [5] How to make
Regulation of Market? in my homepage ) It
is in this way that the USA and West-European countries solve their economic
crisis. We shouldn't let Keynesianism hoodwink our eyes and know nothing
about how these developed countries solve their economic crisis. Why are the
USA and West-European countries still the most economically developed
countries in the world though a lot of companies in those countries go
bankrupt every year? The key to this question is right here.

You might say that Hitler tried to solve economic crisis and unemployment by
means of war instead of bankrupting the companies. You, however, should make
it clear that, in order to solve economic crisis, you, first of all, have to
bankrupt those badly-managed companies, and then the second step that follows
is to find new jobs for the unemployed. Before the Second World War broke
out, there had been a large quantity of bankrupted companies and unemployed
workers. This was the first step towards the solution of economic crisis.
Hitler's using war to solve unemployment was the second step, which means
that Hitler found jobs of war for the unemployed. So, the problem of
unemployment was solved with war. However, we should be aware that, apart
from finding jobs of war for the unemployed, we can offer the unemployed
other jobs which have nothing to do with war. Another solution is that the
government distributes relief fund among the unemployed rather than provide
them with jobs. Why should we think that making war upon others is the only
way to solve unemployment? Joblessness is far better than jobs of war. Why
has the government got no money to distribute relief fund since it is rich
enough to make war?

Many countries all the world, unfortunately, still use Keynesianism to solve
their economic crises. Japan, for example, is still solving its economic
crisis with increasing their government's spending today.

In my opinion, the only way to solve economic crisis is to allow the
badly-managed and salary-defaulting companies to go bankrupt and the workers
be out of job, to issue relief funds to the unemployed, and to encourage and
help them to seek for new jobs.

At the beginning of this century, numberless crises once took place in the
USA and West-European countries. Their governments are achieved great
successes on solving their crises every time they make for use of the
above-mentioned solutions. And they have kept utilizing this solutions up
till now. It is because they have been doing so to eliminate economic crises,
their economy is universally acknowledged as the strongest in the world.

Sincerely,
Ju-chang He

SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
Welcome to visit My Home Page at

or 
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 22 Mar 1999 09:27:17 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Kevin Smant 
Subject:      another book suggestion

     Since we've been tossing out our favorite
books to use in our World War II courses [a very
useful thing, by the way], let me throw out
another one.  I have frequently used the
following book with great success:  Milton
Mayer, THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE
FREE [University of Chicago Press, 1954, 1966,
and still in print].

     What Mayer did was to go and visit Germany
in 1951-1952, when [obviously] many Germans
who had experienced Nazism and even supported
it were still around, and their memories of it
still fresh.  He somewhat disguised
his identity---Mayer actually was Jewish, and
was of course very anti-Nazi.  But he portrayed
himself as simply a writer doing a book on  Germany;
this allowed him to get to know, and be able to
very extensively talk with, some 10 ordinary
Germans, all of whom
had in some way supported Nazi Germany.
He was able to ask them some very pertinent
questions:  what did you think of Hitler?
Why did you support Nazism?  What about
what happened to the Jews---why didn't
you or somebody _do_ something about
it?  And he was able, I think, to get very
honest and fascinating responses out of
them.

     The book is not at all a mere transcription of
these discussions.  Instead, Mayer weaves
what he found into a coherent, topical narrative,
with each chapter dealing with a different issue,
and with Mayer offering quotes from his discussions
with his German friends to illustrate his conclusions..
To me, it's fascinating.  My students have always
gotten a lot out of it too.

     I think this kind of work can do two important
things.  First, these Germans to whom Mayer
spoke were ordinary people.  In many ways,
I think they remind students of people they
know in America.  What they then see is that, partly due
to the Germans' own choices, and partly due
to forces maybe beyond their control, ordinary
Germans soon got caught up in something---Nazism---
that quickly spiraled beyond what anyone had
imagined.  Crucial to this is the realization that,
for ordinary people, it becomes so easy just
to go along with it.  "What would you have
done?", demanded many of the Germans
in Mayer's book.  Indeed, what would we
have done, had we been in those Germans' shoes?
It makes all of us look more
closely at ourselves.  Instead of merely engaging
in cheap, too-easy moral denunciations of
the Germans, it makes us realize:  there but
for the grace of God go I.

     On the other hand, it also gives us a look
into the horrors of Nazism, its unique horrors.
It was a regime that was powerful enough
to simply make many "undesirables"---Jews,
Communists, etc.---disappear; to engage
in barbarities like Kristallnacht; and to have
so intimidated the German people that, despite
misgivings, they went along with it.  I'd disagree
with some of my colleagues on this list; I don't
know that we should focus so much on
drawing connections and likenesses between
Adolf Hitler's genocide against the Jews,
and other 20th century massacres.  The
Nazis killed, after all, 6 million Jews, not
to mention others---Russian POWs, Gypsies,
the mentally retarded, homosexuals, etc. etc.
To me, Nazi genocide stands alone.  It is
a great horror, and especially so because
so many ordinary people _cooperated_ with it.
Yet, we must try to look into
that darkness and seek at least a little
understanding of it [I say a little, because
I doubt our understanding of the Holocaust
will ever be complete].  Mayer's book gives
us yet another way to look....

     And I suppose, ultimately, that I think a
Hitler could come again.  And that it could
happen here.  It could happen, I think, if
our citizens act like some of those in
Mayer's book---if they think that politics
doesn't concern them, if they simply
withdraw from it, or if they simply go
along with whatever the government does,
assuming that it knows best.  That's the
kind of climate in which a Hitler can thrive.
That's the lesson that the story of Hitler
and Nazism can teach us.  If we can getour students to listen, that is.

     Off my soapbox now.  :+))

     Kevin Smant
     Dept. of History
     Indiana Univ. South Bend
     KSmant@iusb.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 22 Mar 1999 12:49:40 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         "Weitzel, Ronald" 
Subject:      Re: Keynesian spread lies!

Whether, in the midst of a depression, the government finds jobs for people
in the (public) war production sector or in the (public) non-war production
sector is probably irrelevant in the sense that both are "Keynesian"
solutions to the problem of unemployment.

To Mr. Ju-chang:  As you continue to work on your English language you will
learn of the need to avoid such constructions as "liars" and "hoodwinked."
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 22 Mar 1999 15:36:38 EST
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Peppre@AOL.COM
Subject:      Parades
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

As with most victorious armies who returned home, the Armed Services paraded
to great crowds and were involved in a myriad of parade displays.  How does
the homefront response to military parades during WWII and in the aftermath
compare to military parades through out history?  In Rome, it was a display of
might and power, was that the same feeling during WWII?
P. Epprecht
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 23 Mar 1999 07:59:32 +0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         chang 
Subject:      Re: Keynesian spread lies!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Dear Weitzel, Ronald,
Do you think that the Great Depression was ended by Keynesianism and
Keynesianism can solve economic crisis?

Sincerely,
Ju-chang He

SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
Welcome to visit My Home Page at

or 
-----Original Message-----
From: Weitzel, Ronald 
To: WORLDWARIIFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

Date: Tuesday, March 23, 1999 1:59 AM
Subject: Re: Keynesian spread lies!


>Whether, in the midst of a depression, the government finds jobs for people
>in the (public) war production sector or in the (public) non-war production
>sector is probably irrelevant in the sense that both are "Keynesian"
>solutions to the problem of unemployment.
>
>To Mr. Ju-chang:  As you continue to work on your English language you will
>learn of the need to avoid such constructions as "liars" and "hoodwinked."
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 23 Mar 1999 09:16:55 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
Subject:      WWII Forum
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Good morning,


        Thanks so much for your book suggestions, all of which sound as
though they would work extremely well in WWII courses.

        A couple of you suggested Yoshiko Uchida's Desert Exile, which has
some of the same attributes as Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D.
Houston's Farewell to Manzanar.  What is so powerful about Farewell to
Manzanar is its description of the impact of internment on the author's
family, particularly the descent of her father into alcoholism as he loses
his authority as head of the family.  Identity issues also figure
powerfully in the book.  For the author, there is her postwar desire to be
invisible, a desire that was later superseded by her desire to be a
cheerleader and perhaps a beauty contest winner.  But, as she wrote, "It
was a pride that Papa didn't share.  While I was striving to become Miss
America of 1947, he was wishing I'd be Miss Hiroshima of 1904."

        Like so much of what I read about ethnicity and cultural
resistance to assimilation and acculturation, this book makes me think of
the many insights I have learned from reading Herb Gutman's seminal essay,
"Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815-1919," AHR
(June 1973).

        This causes me to ask a couple of questions: Do you know of other
WWII-era memoirs that deal with this theme?  And are there such books or
articles that explore either women's or African Americans' personal
experiences during WWII?  Despite the importance of these experiences,
there seems to be a paucity of such literature.

        Thanks.

                                Bill Tuttle

=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 23 Mar 1999 10:14:52 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
Subject:      WWII Forum
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        Thanks to Bob Cherny for his letter about the research course he
offers which focuses on the domestic impact of WWII on California and on
the West.  His students have done research on a variety of topics
involving the history of women, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian
Americans, as well as labor history and the history of the left.  Bob's
very helpful message gave exciting examples of specific topics which
his students have undertaken.

        Bob pointed that he was blessed to be in area rich with primary
sources.  He is.  But it seems to me that since WWII touched almost all
communities in one way or another, most all of us are in a position to
encourage our students to undertake original research topics on the
domestic impact of the war, as well as on the impact of the war on the
men and women who fought it, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

        In Lawrence, KS, where I live, there are rich resources available
for studying: a German POW camp that was located here; the lives of the
thousands of women who worked at the nearby Sunflower Ammunitition Works,
including solutions to their child-care problems; war-inspired civil
rights protests at the University of Kansas, including the organization of,
and sit-ins by, a chapter of CORE; V-12, ASTP, and other training programs
at the university, as well as students' and families' lives under the
postwar GI Bill; etc.  Among our resources are the U. of Kansas Archives,
the Kansas Collection,  local historical societies and community museums,
local newspapers,  and, of course, the memories of the women and men
involved.  We discussed oral history projects earlier, and
recommendations were made about doing interviews to understand the impact
of the war on people's lives.

        What have been your experiences with student research projects?
What sorts of topics have they pursued?  What resources did they find
helpful?

        Thanks.

                                Bill Tuttle
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 24 Mar 1999 20:32:23 +0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         chang 
Subject:      Re: Keynesian spread lies!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Weitzel, Ronald,
Why you don't give me any reply to my post yesterday? Do you think it is true
that Keynesian is spreading lies that the Great Depression was ended by
Keynesianism and Keynesianism can solve economic crisis?

Sincerely,
Ju-chang He

SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
Welcome to visit My Home Page at

or 
-----Original Message-----
From: chang 
To: WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Date: Tuesday, March 23, 1999 7:59 AM
Subject: Re: Keynesian spread lies!

>Dear Weitzel, Ronald,
>Do you think that the Great Depression was ended by Keynesianism and
>Keynesianism can solve economic crisis?
>
>Sincerely,
>Ju-chang He
>
>SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
>Welcome to visit My Home Page at
>
>or 
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Weitzel, Ronald 
>To: WORLDWARIIFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
>
>Date: Tuesday, March 23, 1999 1:59 AM
>Subject: Re: Keynesian spread lies!
>
>
>>Whether, in the midst of a depression, the government finds jobs for people
>>in the (public) war production sector or in the (public) non-war production
>>sector is probably irrelevant in the sense that both are "Keynesian"
>>solutions to the problem of unemployment.
>>
>>To Mr. Ju-chang:  As you continue to work on your English language you will
>>learn of the need to avoid such constructions as "liars" and "hoodwinked."
>>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 24 Mar 1999 09:35:12 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
Subject:      Re: Keynesian spread lies!
In-Reply-To:  <007c01be75f6$9c5d08e0$85685dcb@juchang>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

To Ju-chang He et al.,

        I have enjoyed the debate over "Keynesianism," and I would like to
give some thoughts about how I teach this aspect of my courses on the
1930s and 1940s.

        First, I believe that most historians subscribe to the
interpretation that it was not the New Deal, but preparedness for WWII,
that ended the problem of unemployment in the US.  Historians point to the
progress which the New Deal made in reducing joblessness up to 1937, when
President Roosevelt reverted to his budget-balancing fiscal conservatism
and ordered drastic cutbacks in government spending.  At the same time the
Federal Reserve Board, concerned about a 3.6% inflation rate, tightened
credit.  The two actions sent the economy into a tailspin: unemplyment
climbed from 7.7 million in 1937 to 10.4 million in 1938.  Soon Roosevelt
resumed deficit financing.

        Alan Brinkley, in The End of Reform (1995), has written that in
1937-38 the New Deal was in trouble, and there ensued a wide-ranging
ideological struggle to chart the future of the liberal reform movement.
Some New Dealers urged vigorous trustbusting; others advocated the
resurrection of national economic planning that had existed under the
National Recovery Administration.  But in the end, Roosevelt rejected
these alternatives and instead chose deficit financing as a quick fix to
stimulate consumer demand and create jobs.

        With the massive deficit financing that paid for WWII, this debate
became mute.  I do think that importance of WWII in establishing deficit
financing in times of emergency has been somewhat overlooked.  By blending
New Deal ideology and wartime urgency, the federal government assumed the
responsibility for ensuring prosperity and stepping in when capitalism
faltered.

        In other words, I would re-title the book which Steve Fraser and
Gary Gerstle edited as The New Deal-WWII Order.

        I believe that a more important issue related to the financing of
the war is the development of government contracting and the establishment
of what Dwight Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex" -- to
which I would add higher education and science.

        I agree with Jim Young's observations about "the dangers of
military Keynesianism (If you build it, they will employ it)."  For this
aspect of the military-industrial complex, I would recommend a couple of
books: Michael Sherry's In The Shadow of War: The United States Since the
1930s and Ann Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military
Revamping of Industrial America.

        How do you teach this significant aspect of the history of WWII
and postwar America during the Cold War?


                                        Bill Tuttle
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 24 Mar 1999 12:36:59 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Guocun Yang 
Organization: Manchester Community Technical College
Subject:      Re: Keynesian spread lies!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I am enjoying reading the contributions and debates. I teach American history
at a two year college and would like to ask anyone to recommend a short book
(under 200 pages) you have used and liked in undergraduate courses on any of
these topics: WWII, the New Deal, the Civil Rights movement, or women. Your
help is much appreciated.
Guocun Yang
Manchester Com-Tech College, CT

WILLIAM TUTTLE wrote:

> To Ju-chang He et al.,
>
>         I have enjoyed the debate over "Keynesianism," and I would like to
> give some thoughts about how I teach this aspect of my courses on the
> 1930s and 1940s.
>
>         First, I believe that most historians subscribe to the
> interpretation that it was not the New Deal, but preparedness for WWII,
> that ended the problem of unemployment in the US.  Historians point to the
> progress which the New Deal made in reducing joblessness up to 1937, when
> President Roosevelt reverted to his budget-balancing fiscal conservatism
> and ordered drastic cutbacks in government spending.  At the same time the
> Federal Reserve Board, concerned about a 3.6% inflation rate, tightened
> credit.  The two actions sent the economy into a tailspin: unemplyment
> climbed from 7.7 million in 1937 to 10.4 million in 1938.  Soon Roosevelt
> resumed deficit financing.
>
>         Alan Brinkley, in The End of Reform (1995), has written that in
> 1937-38 the New Deal was in trouble, and there ensued a wide-ranging
> ideological struggle to chart the future of the liberal reform movement.
> Some New Dealers urged vigorous trustbusting; others advocated the
> resurrection of national economic planning that had existed under the
> National Recovery Administration.  But in the end, Roosevelt rejected
> these alternatives and instead chose deficit financing as a quick fix to
> stimulate consumer demand and create jobs.
>
>         With the massive deficit financing that paid for WWII, this debate
> became mute.  I do think that importance of WWII in establishing deficit
> financing in times of emergency has been somewhat overlooked.  By blending
> New Deal ideology and wartime urgency, the federal government assumed the
> responsibility for ensuring prosperity and stepping in when capitalism
> faltered.
>
>         In other words, I would re-title the book which Steve Fraser and
> Gary Gerstle edited as The New Deal-WWII Order.
>
>         I believe that a more important issue related to the financing of
> the war is the development of government contracting and the establishment
> of what Dwight Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex" -- to
> which I would add higher education and science.
>
>         I agree with Jim Young's observations about "the dangers of
> military Keynesianism (If you build it, they will employ it)."  For this
> aspect of the military-industrial complex, I would recommend a couple of
> books: Michael Sherry's In The Shadow of War: The United States Since the
> 1930s and Ann Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military
> Revamping of Industrial America.
>
>         How do you teach this significant aspect of the history of WWII
> and postwar America during the Cold War?
>
>                                         Bill Tuttle
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 24 Mar 1999 19:15:42 EST
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         DAugust101@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: Civil Rights Movement
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

TO:  Guocun Yang

There is a complete teaching package in text and video put out by the American
Civil Rights Movement.  Schools can receive one FREE copy of the kit by
writing:
American Civil Rights Movement.
Teaching Tolerance
400 Washington Ave
Montogmery, AL 36104

This kit comes with a video and text package which contains 108 pages of
history, profiles, and photos.  There is a teacher's guide also with the
package.  The booklet includes many of those who died in the name of freedom.
I got mine a few years ago and use it every year in my Am. Hist. class.

Diane Augustyniak
Illinois
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 25 Mar 1999 23:29:57 +0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         chang 
Subject:      Re: Keynesian spread lies!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="gb2312"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

WILLIAM TUTTLE wrote:
>        First, I believe that most historians subscribe to the
>interpretation that it was not the New Deal, but preparedness for WWII,
>that ended the problem of unemployment in the US.

It is true that preparedness for WWII ended the problem of unemployment in
the US. In my opinion, it is not Keynesianism, but the Second World War, that
ended the problem of unemployment in the US. Why? Because any war can solve
the problem of unemployment notwithstanding there is no Keynesianism. Because
all people must work hard when a war started. Therefore It is wrong to argue
that the Great Depression was ended by the military Keynesianism of the
Second World War. It is war itself that solve the problem of unemployment,
not Keynesianism.

However, we should be aware that, apart from finding jobs of war for the
unemployed, we can offer the unemployed other jobs which have nothing to do
with war. Another solution is that the government distributes relief fund
among the unemployed rather than provide them with jobs. Why should we think
that making war upon others is the only way to solve unemployment?
Joblessness is far better than jobs of war. Why has the government got no
money to distribute relief fund since it is rich enough to make war?

You might say that Hitler tried to solve economic crisis and unemployment by
means of war instead of bankrupting the companies. You, however, should make
it clear that, in order to solve economic crisis, you, first of all, have to
bankrupt those badly-managed companies, and then the second step that follows
is to find new jobs for the unemployed. Before the Second World War broke
out, there had been a large quantity of bankrupted companies and unemployed
workers. This was the first step towards the solution of economic crisis.
Hitler's using war to solve unemployment was the second step, which means
that Hitler found jobs of war for the unemployed. So, the problem of
unemployment was solved with war and economic crisis is solved by my
solution.

Therefore in my opinion, the only way to solve economic crisis is to allow
the badly-managed and salary-defaulting companies to go bankrupt and the
workers be out of job, to issue relief funds to the unemployed, and to
encourage and help them to seek for new jobs.

Therefore Keynesianism can't solve any economic crisis at all.

Sincerely,
Ju-chang He

SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
Welcome to visit My Home Page at

or 
-----Original Message-----
From: WILLIAM TUTTLE 
To: WORLDWARIIFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

Date: Wednesday, March 24, 1999 11:32 PM
Subject: Re: Keynesian spread lies!


>To Ju-chang He et al.,
>
>        I have enjoyed the debate over "Keynesianism," and I would like to
>give some thoughts about how I teach this aspect of my courses on the
>1930s and 1940s.
>
>        First, I believe that most historians subscribe to the
>interpretation that it was not the New Deal, but preparedness for WWII,
>that ended the problem of unemployment in the US.  Historians point to the
>progress which the New Deal made in reducing joblessness up to 1937, when
>President Roosevelt reverted to his budget-balancing fiscal conservatism
>and ordered drastic cutbacks in government spending.  At the same time the
>Federal Reserve Board, concerned about a 3.6% inflation rate, tightened
>credit.  The two actions sent the economy into a tailspin: unemplyment
>climbed from 7.7 million in 1937 to 10.4 million in 1938.  Soon Roosevelt
>resumed deficit financing.
>
>        Alan Brinkley, in The End of Reform (1995), has written that in
>1937-38 the New Deal was in trouble, and there ensued a wide-ranging
>ideological struggle to chart the future of the liberal reform movement.
>Some New Dealers urged vigorous trustbusting; others advocated the
>resurrection of national economic planning that had existed under the
>National Recovery Administration.  But in the end, Roosevelt rejected
>these alternatives and instead chose deficit financing as a quick fix to
>stimulate consumer demand and create jobs.
>
>        With the massive deficit financing that paid for WWII, this debate
>became mute.  I do think that importance of WWII in establishing deficit
>financing in times of emergency has been somewhat overlooked.  By blending
>New Deal ideology and wartime urgency, the federal government assumed the
>responsibility for ensuring prosperity and stepping in when capitalism
>faltered.
>
>        In other words, I would re-title the book which Steve Fraser and
>Gary Gerstle edited as The New Deal-WWII Order.
>
>        I believe that a more important issue related to the financing of
>the war is the development of government contracting and the establishment
>of what Dwight Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex" -- to
>which I would add higher education and science.
>
>        I agree with Jim Young's observations about "the dangers of
>military Keynesianism (If you build it, they will employ it)."  For this
>aspect of the military-industrial complex, I would recommend a couple of
>books: Michael Sherry's In The Shadow of War: The United States Since the
>1930s and Ann Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military
>Revamping of Industrial America.
>
>        How do you teach this significant aspect of the history of WWII
>and postwar America during the Cold War?
>
>
>                                        Bill Tuttle
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 25 Mar 1999 11:43:29 CST
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Art Pitz 
Organization: Black Hawk College
Subject:      Re: Civil Rights Movement
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Thanks for the information!  I am Professor Arthur Pitz at Black Hawk
College in Moline, Illinois.  Do you have a phone number and/or email
address for this agency that I could contact more directly?

Thanks for any help you can provide.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 25 Mar 1999 14:05:33 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Guocun Yang 
Organization: Manchester Community Technical College
Subject:      Re: Keynesian spread lies!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

To Mr. He et al:
Keynesian theory involves fiscal policy, especially in the form of deficit
spending. Preparedness for WWII reflects this spending as do some welfare
programs in that they help maintain consumer buying power. But the problem of
unemployment can not be solved by any war. Nor can it be fully achieved through
government relief. Handing out relief money rarely creates jobs; non-charity
spending usually does. So preparedness is Keynesian and war as such is not. If
"help" means government spending so as to stimulate the economy, that is
Keynesian. All things considered, the American recovery was due to Keynesianism
rather than the war.

Guocun Yang
Manchester, Conn.


chang wrote:

> WILLIAM TUTTLE wrote:
> >        First, I believe that most historians subscribe to the
> >interpretation that it was not the New Deal, but preparedness for WWII,
> >that ended the problem of unemployment in the US.
>
> It is true that preparedness for WWII ended the problem of unemployment in
> the US. In my opinion, it is not Keynesianism, but the Second World War, that
> ended the problem of unemployment in the US. Why? Because any war can solve
> the problem of unemployment notwithstanding there is no Keynesianism. Because
> all people must work hard when a war started. Therefore It is wrong to argue
> that the Great Depression was ended by the military Keynesianism of the
> Second World War. It is war itself that solve the problem of unemployment,
> not Keynesianism.
>
> However, we should be aware that, apart from finding jobs of war for the
> unemployed, we can offer the unemployed other jobs which have nothing to do
> with war. Another solution is that the government distributes relief fund
> among the unemployed rather than provide them with jobs. Why should we think
> that making war upon others is the only way to solve unemployment?
> Joblessness is far better than jobs of war. Why has the government got no
> money to distribute relief fund since it is rich enough to make war?
>
> You might say that Hitler tried to solve economic crisis and unemployment by
> means of war instead of bankrupting the companies. You, however, should make
> it clear that, in order to solve economic crisis, you, first of all, have to
> bankrupt those badly-managed companies, and then the second step that follows
> is to find new jobs for the unemployed. Before the Second World War broke
> out, there had been a large quantity of bankrupted companies and unemployed
> workers. This was the first step towards the solution of economic crisis.
> Hitler's using war to solve unemployment was the second step, which means
> that Hitler found jobs of war for the unemployed. So, the problem of
> unemployment was solved with war and economic crisis is solved by my
> solution.
>
> Therefore in my opinion, the only way to solve economic crisis is to allow
> the badly-managed and salary-defaulting companies to go bankrupt and the
> workers be out of job, to issue relief funds to the unemployed, and to
> encourage and help them to seek for new jobs.
>
> Therefore Keynesianism can't solve any economic crisis at all.
>
> Sincerely,
> Ju-chang He
>
> SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
> Welcome to visit My Home Page at
> 
> or 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WILLIAM TUTTLE 
> To: WORLDWARIIFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
> 
> Date: Wednesday, March 24, 1999 11:32 PM
> Subject: Re: Keynesian spread lies!
>
> >To Ju-chang He et al.,
> >
> >        I have enjoyed the debate over "Keynesianism," and I would like to
> >give some thoughts about how I teach this aspect of my courses on the
> >1930s and 1940s.
> >
> >        First, I believe that most historians subscribe to the
> >interpretation that it was not the New Deal, but preparedness for WWII,
> >that ended the problem of unemployment in the US.  Historians point to the
> >progress which the New Deal made in reducing joblessness up to 1937, when
> >President Roosevelt reverted to his budget-balancing fiscal conservatism
> >and ordered drastic cutbacks in government spending.  At the same time the
> >Federal Reserve Board, concerned about a 3.6% inflation rate, tightened
> >credit.  The two actions sent the economy into a tailspin: unemplyment
> >climbed from 7.7 million in 1937 to 10.4 million in 1938.  Soon Roosevelt
> >resumed deficit financing.
> >
> >        Alan Brinkley, in The End of Reform (1995), has written that in
> >1937-38 the New Deal was in trouble, and there ensued a wide-ranging
> >ideological struggle to chart the future of the liberal reform movement.
> >Some New Dealers urged vigorous trustbusting; others advocated the
> >resurrection of national economic planning that had existed under the
> >National Recovery Administration.  But in the end, Roosevelt rejected
> >these alternatives and instead chose deficit financing as a quick fix to
> >stimulate consumer demand and create jobs.
> >
> >        With the massive deficit financing that paid for WWII, this debate
> >became mute.  I do think that importance of WWII in establishing deficit
> >financing in times of emergency has been somewhat overlooked.  By blending
> >New Deal ideology and wartime urgency, the federal government assumed the
> >responsibility for ensuring prosperity and stepping in when capitalism
> >faltered.
> >
> >        In other words, I would re-title the book which Steve Fraser and
> >Gary Gerstle edited as The New Deal-WWII Order.
> >
> >        I believe that a more important issue related to the financing of
> >the war is the development of government contracting and the establishment
> >of what Dwight Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex" -- to
> >which I would add higher education and science.
> >
> >        I agree with Jim Young's observations about "the dangers of
> >military Keynesianism (If you build it, they will employ it)."  For this
> >aspect of the military-industrial complex, I would recommend a couple of
> >books: Michael Sherry's In The Shadow of War: The United States Since the
> >1930s and Ann Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military
> >Revamping of Industrial America.
> >
> >        How do you teach this significant aspect of the history of WWII
> >and postwar America during the Cold War?
> >
> >
> >                                        Bill Tuttle
> >
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 25 Mar 1999 15:13:06 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         John Spencer 
Subject:      WWII and Civil Rights
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Dear list members,

I don't want to distract too much from Bill Tuttle's helpful comments and
query on the Keynesianism thread, but before it slips my mind I want to
suggest a resource and solicit additional ones on the topic of race
relations and the war. I'm a U.S. History Ph.D. student working with some
high school teachers on their curriculum. Lately we've been developing a
few lessons that address the idea of WWII as a watershed in race relations
-- an idea that I very much endorse. Historians have been paying more and
more attention to the continuities between the civil rights struggles of
the 1930s and 1940s (especially involving A. Phillip Randolph and the labor
movement generally) and the more widely familar events of the 1950s and
1960s (One of my favorite examples, especially useful for Bay Area folks,
is Marilynn Johnson, *The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and The East Bay in
World War II*). But I think these continuities are still not emphasized
heavily enough in U.S. History writing or teaching (or filmmaking, for that
matter -- the otherwise outstanding *Eyes on the Prize,* for example,
begins its in-depth coverage of the civil rights movement with Emmett Till
in 1955)

Anyway, just yesterday we were working with a very useful book that perhaps
some of you have used: Phillip McGuire, ed., *Taps for a Jim Crow army :
Letters from Black Soldiers in World War II* (1983). These letters (most of
them to black newspapers -- in itself an interesting lesson on which
stories get told, and where) wonderfully illustrate the tension between the
rhetorical idealism of the war years and the realities of segregated and
discriminatory military service. When reading them it's not hard to sense
how these experiences and the militance they engendered flowed directly
into the struggles of the following decades.

Of course, the 1941 March on Washington movement is probably the most
obvious link between civil rights in the 1940s and the 1960s. Another
useful document is the set of demands made by Randolph the following year,
in 1942; they show very powerfully and concisely how much the wartime
assault on Jim Crow prefigured Brown v. Board, Montgomery. etc. (reprinted
in Milton Meltzer, *In their own words; a history of the American Negro*)

Aside from the helpful Polenberg, O'Neill, and Blum books that have already
been mentioned, are there any sources or materials that other list-members
have found especially useful? Or any thoughts/experiences that list-members
can share regarding the teaching of this element of the homefront?

Thanks,
John Spencer
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 25 Mar 1999 17:35:25 -0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         j christensen 
Subject:      Re: Keynesian spread lies!
In-Reply-To:  <36FA88FD.EFFC6CA7@commnet.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Professor Ju-chang He, I have read with considerable interest your
comments about the blame being placed on Keynes for World War II and its
aftermath.  Please take a moment to look at _The Commanding Heights_,
which explodes many of the myths of Keynesian economics.

As the writer, Yergin, author of _The Prize_ points out, many governments
in Europe after World War II thought the answer was more government
involvement because of their wrecked economies.  They soon learned that
combination of government and free-market economics made the most
difference in recovery.  Therefore, I propose to you it may be too simple
an answer to blame Keynes and his economics for the woes of Western and
Asian economies.  Most of the wrecked economies after World War II were
looking desperately for answers, and they found their answers in the
forward thinking of Monnet, Erhard, and Bevin.
Best, Dr. Jay
California State University, Northridge
College of Business and Economics
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 25 Mar 1999 20:49:47 EST
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         DAugust101@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: Civil Rights Movement
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

Prof. Pitz:  Don't know if you were refering to the info I sent to Guocun Yang
about the video and text on America's Civil Rights Movement.  To be on the
safe side, no telephone number, e-mail, or fax was listed.  Just the address
in Montgomery, Alabama.  Sorry.

Diane Augustyniak
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 26 Mar 1999 22:58:01 +0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         chang 
Subject:      Re: Keynesian spread lies!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Guocun Yang wrote:
>Preparedness for WWII reflects this spending as do some welfare
>programs in that they help maintain consumer buying power.
>But the problem of unemployment can not be solved by any war.

Do you think the problem of unemployment can be solved by  Preparedness for
WWII, but can not be solved by any war? Your statement is not logical.

In my opinion, both war and Preparedness for WWII can solve the problem of
unemployment. War and Preparedness for WWII both are war. Both of them have
the same meaning. There is no Preparedness for WWII without war.

>Nor can it be fully achieved through government relief.
>Handing out relief money rarely creates jobs; non-charity
>spending usually does.

It is true that handing out relief money rarely creates jobs; non-charity
spending usually does. However, we should be aware that, apart from finding
jobs for the unemployed, another solution of unemployment is that the
government distributes relief fund among the unemployed rather than provide
them with jobs. If the government distributes relief fund among the
unemployed, they will be maintained a reasonable life notwithstanding they
have no job. Why should we think that we must find jobs for the unemployed?
Why should we think that making war upon others is the only way to solve
unemployment? Joblessness is far better than jobs of war. Why has the
government got no money to distribute relief fund since it is rich enough to
make war?

>So preparedness is Keynesian and war as such is not. If
>"help" means government spending so as to stimulate the economy,
>that is Keynesian. All things considered, the American recovery
>was due to Keynesianism rather than the war.

In my opinion, both war and Preparedness for WWII can solve the problem of
unemployment. War and Preparedness for WWII both are war. Both of them have
the same meaning. There is no Preparedness for WWII without war. You say "So
preparedness is Keynesian and war as such is not". So your statement is not
logical. If preparedness is Keynesian, Keynesian will be war, which we must
get rid of. If you argue that Keynesian is not war, it will be war itself
that solve the problem of unemployment, not Keynesianism, because any war can
solve the problem of unemployment notwithstanding there is no Keynesianism,
and because all people must work hard when a war started.

Sincerely,
Ju-chang He

SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
Welcome to visit My Home Page at

or 
-----Original Message-----
From: Guocun Yang 
To: WORLDWARIIFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

Date: Friday, March 26, 1999 3:09 AM
Subject: Re: Keynesian spread lies!


>To Mr. He et al:
>Keynesian theory involves fiscal policy, especially in the form of deficit
>spending. Preparedness for WWII reflects this spending as do some welfare
>programs in that they help maintain consumer buying power.
>But the problem of
>unemployment can not be solved by any war.
>Nor can it be fully achieved through
>government relief. Handing out relief money rarely creates jobs; non-charity
>spending usually does.
>So preparedness is Keynesian and war as such is not. If
>"help" means government spending so as to stimulate the economy, that is
>Keynesian. All things considered, the American recovery
>was due to Keynesianism
>rather than the war.
>
>Guocun Yang
>Manchester, Conn.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 26 Mar 1999 10:01:27 CST
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Art Pitz 
Organization: Black Hawk College
Subject:      Re: Civil Rights Movement
In-Reply-To:  <1b12b376.36fae7bb@aol.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Thanks for checking.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 27 Mar 1999 06:56:23 +0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         chang 
Subject:      Re: Keynesian spread lies!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="gb2312"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

j christensen wrote:
>Therefore, I propose to you it may be too simple
>an answer to blame Keynes and his economics for the woes of Western and
>Asian economies.  Most of the wrecked economies after World War II were
>looking desperately for answers, and they found their answers in the
>forward thinking of Monnet, Erhard, and Bevin.

I don't blame Keynes for the woes of Western and Asian economies. The whole
world has publicly agreed that it is caused by overproduction. Why the woes
of Western and Asian economies is caused by overproduction? My article "On
The Development of Social Economy " has
established a set of complete economic theories and also a new model of
economic growth, by means of which we will be able to answer this question.

Sincerely,
Ju-chang He

SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
Welcome to visit My Home Page at

or 
-----Original Message-----
From: j christensen 
To: WORLDWARIIFORUM@ASHP.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

Date: Friday, March 26, 1999 9:43 AM
Subject: Re: Keynesian spread lies!


>Professor Ju-chang He, I have read with considerable interest your
>comments about the blame being placed on Keynes for World War II and its
>aftermath.  Please take a moment to look at _The Commanding Heights_,
>which explodes many of the myths of Keynesian economics.
>
>As the writer, Yergin, author of _The Prize_ points out, many governments
>in Europe after World War II thought the answer was more government
>involvement because of their wrecked economies.  They soon learned that
>combination of government and free-market economics made the most
>difference in recovery.  Therefore, I propose to you it may be too simple
>an answer to blame Keynes and his economics for the woes of Western and
>Asian economies.  Most of the wrecked economies after World War II were
>looking desperately for answers, and they found their answers in the
>forward thinking of Monnet, Erhard, and Bevin.
>Best, Dr. Jay
>California State University, Northridge
>College of Business and Economics
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 26 Mar 1999 21:04:15 +0000
Reply-To:     Jliss@Scrippscol.edu
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         Julie Liss 
Organization: Scripps College
Subject:      Re: WORLDWARIIFORUM Digest - 25 Mar 1999 to 26 Mar 1999 (#1999-
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

I have found Howell Raines' oral history of the civil rights
movement, My Soul is Rested, which starts in the 1940s, very useful.

Julie Liss

Julia E. Liss
Chair
Department of History
Scripps College
1030 Columbia Avenue
Claremont, CA  91711
(909) 607-3541
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 29 Mar 1999 09:29:32 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
Subject:      African American and civil rights history
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Good morning,

        I have been very interested in our discussion of African American
history, race relations, and the civil rights movement during WWII.

        First, I have long been depressed about the relative lack of books
and articles on these topics.  Perhaps the best general study is Neil A.
Wynn's The Afro-American and the Second World War, rev. ed. (1993).
Dominic Capeci has written several books on the Detroit and Harlem race
riots of 1943.  There are a couple of rather dated books on the March on
Washington Movement, as well as August Meier and Elliott Rudwick's history
of CORE, which was established in 1942.  I think there is a new
generation of books emerging, such as Marilyn Johnson's The Second Gold
Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in WWII, which John Spencer mentioned in
his message.

        One of the most important WWII topics is the participation of
American troops of color in the war as well as the postwar impact of this
participation.  Joyce Thomas of Cleveland State University is currently
finishing a book on black soldiers and the civil rights movement within
the military during the war.  Her study deals directly with one of the
issues raised by John Spencer: Was WWII a watershed in the history of
American race relations.  She shows that many of the black troops, e.g.,
Tuskegee airmen, had been civil rights activists before the war.  She
found a great deal of material in the National Archives records of
the Research Branch of Army Special Services.

        When I deal with the issue of whether or not WWII was a watershed
in African American history, I separate the question.  First, like Joyce
Thomas, I see many continuities in civil rights activism.  Recent books
affirm this position, including Patricia Sullivan's Days of Hope: Race and
Democracy in the New Deal Era and John Egerton's Speak Now Against the
Day: The Generation before the Civil Rights Movement in the South.

        On the other hand, I see WWII as a watershed with the second Great
Migration which began in the 1940s and last for thirty years.  More than 5
million blacks made the migration North and West, and in the process
transformed American politics, making African Americans the "balance of
power" in large urban-industrial states.  With WWII, moreover, a new black
middle-class leadership class emerged, composed of war veterans, college
graduates, and CIO members and leaders.  Finally, I believe that the
democratic ideology of WWII (Four Freedoms, a war against racism, "The
House We Live In," etc.) did cause many whites to reevaluate the "American
Dilemma" in favor of racial and religious tolerance.

        What are your thoughts not only on the war's impact on African
Americans, but also the impact on Mexican Americans and Latinos generally,
on American Indians, on Japanese Americans, on Jewish Americans, and on
other racial, religious, and ethnic groups in America?


                                Bill Tuttle
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 29 Mar 1999 16:14:52 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Robert Shaffer 
Subject:      Re: WWII and Civil Rights
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        In response to John Spencer's request for materials on World War
II and civil rights, may I recommend Penny Von Eschen's recent book, _Race
Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957_.  I
assigned it in an undergraduate U.S. diplomatic history class; my students
had difficulty with the later chapters but the chapters focusing on World
War II itself are quite good and quite accessible to undergraduates.  Von
Eschen's references to the African-American press, such as the _Pittsburgh
Courier_ and the _Chicago Defender_, as well as _The Crisis_, would not be
difficult for students to follow up on.  Michael Denning's _The Cultural
Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the 20th Century_ is also
filled with great anecdotes and vignettes that can be adapted at all
levels of teaching.  Both Von Eschen's and Denning's books address the
question that Bill Tuttle has raised about World War II as a watershed, by
showing the background to wartime movements for racial equality, as well
as their fate in the postwar period.
        At the risk of immodesty, I will also refer to two of my own
articles: "Cracks in the Consensus: Defending the Rights of Japanese
Americans During World War II," in _Radical History Review_ #72 (Fall
1998), which argues that there was more opposition to removal and
internment by the liberal-left than historians have generally
acknowledged, and "Multicultural Education in New York City During World
War II," in _New York History_ 77 (July 1996), which raises issues which
secondary education teachers in particular might wish to explore with
their students.

-- Robert Shaffer
Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, John Spencer wrote:

> Dear list members,
>
> I don't want to distract too much from Bill Tuttle's helpful comments and
> query on the Keynesianism thread, but before it slips my mind I want to
> suggest a resource and solicit additional ones on the topic of race
> relations and the war. I'm a U.S. History Ph.D. student working with some
> high school teachers on their curriculum. Lately we've been developing a
> few lessons that address the idea of WWII as a watershed in race relations
> -- an idea that I very much endorse. Historians have been paying more and
> more attention to the continuities between the civil rights struggles of
> the 1930s and 1940s (especially involving A. Phillip Randolph and the labor
> movement generally) and the more widely familar events of the 1950s and
> 1960s (One of my favorite examples, especially useful for Bay Area folks,
> is Marilynn Johnson, *The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and The East Bay in
> World War II*). But I think these continuities are still not emphasized
> heavily enough in U.S. History writing or teaching (or filmmaking, for that
> matter -- the otherwise outstanding *Eyes on the Prize,* for example,
> begins its in-depth coverage of the civil rights movement with Emmett Till
> in 1955)
>
> Anyway, just yesterday we were working with a very useful book that perhaps
> some of you have used: Phillip McGuire, ed., *Taps for a Jim Crow army :
> Letters from Black Soldiers in World War II* (1983). These letters (most of
> them to black newspapers -- in itself an interesting lesson on which
> stories get told, and where) wonderfully illustrate the tension between the
> rhetorical idealism of the war years and the realities of segregated and
> discriminatory military service. When reading them it's not hard to sense
> how these experiences and the militance they engendered flowed directly
> into the struggles of the following decades.
>
> Of course, the 1941 March on Washington movement is probably the most
> obvious link between civil rights in the 1940s and the 1960s. Another
> useful document is the set of demands made by Randolph the following year,
> in 1942; they show very powerfully and concisely how much the wartime
> assault on Jim Crow prefigured Brown v. Board, Montgomery. etc. (reprinted
> in Milton Meltzer, *In their own words; a history of the American Negro*)
>
> Aside from the helpful Polenberg, O'Neill, and Blum books that have already
> been mentioned, are there any sources or materials that other list-members
> have found especially useful? Or any thoughts/experiences that list-members
> can share regarding the teaching of this element of the homefront?
>
> Thanks,
> John Spencer
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 30 Mar 1999 09:40:02 +0800
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         chang 
Subject:      Send a letter to the media.
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Dear All,
Do you think Keynesianism is still a science? Is it true that the Great
Depression was ended by the military Keynesianism of the Second World War? My
answer is "No!"

Therefore, if we want peace, we must get rid of the Military Keynesianism.

Please help me send a letter to the media, involving  newspaper reporters. Or
send me some e-mail address of reporters. For some reason in China today, I
can't access internet easily. I can only access some e-mail discussion list.
Thanks.

The letter followes:

Keynesian is spreading lies!

Keynesian is spreading lies that the Great Depression was ended by the
military Keynesianism of the Second World War and Keynesianism can solve
economic crisis.

It is true that after coming to power, Hitler launched a program of massive
public works and military expansion, financed by borrowing, which may look
like Keynesianism. It is true that as soon as the Second World War started,
the labor statistics begin to sky-rocket upwards and the problem of
unemployment was solved, which may look like the Great Depression was ended
by the military Keynesianism of the Second World War. But it is wrong!

How does economic crisis occur? The whole world has publicly agreed that it
is caused by overproduction. So when economic crisis appears, we shoud make
regulation of market and bankrupt the badly-managed companies with
overproduction. In this way, overproduction can be decreased. When those
bankrupted companies and unemployed workers take up new jobs, social economy
will naturally develop forward. (Please read my articles [2] A model of
economy growth, [3] a further explanation of this model, and [5] How to make
Regulation of Market? in my homepage ) It
is in this way that the USA and West-European countries solve their economic
crisis. We shouldn't let Keynesianism hoodwink our eyes and know nothing
about how these developed countries solve their economic crisis. Why are the
USA and West-European countries still the most economically developed
countries in the world though a lot of companies in those countries go
bankrupt every year? The key to this question is right here.

You might say that Hitler tried to solve economic crisis and unemployment by
means of war instead of bankrupting the companies. You, however, should make
it clear that, in order to solve economic crisis, you, first of all, have to
bankrupt those badly-managed companies, and then the second step that follows
is to find new jobs for the unemployed. Before the Second World War broke
out, there had been a large quantity of bankrupted companies and unemployed
workers. This was the first step towards the solution of economic crisis.
Hitler's using war to solve unemployment was the second step, which means
that Hitler found jobs of war for the unemployed. So, the problem of
unemployment was solved with war. However, we should be aware that, apart
from finding jobs of war for the unemployed, we can offer the unemployed
other jobs which have nothing to do with war. Another solution is that the
government distributes relief fund among the unemployed rather than provide
them with jobs. Why should we think that we must find jobs for the
unemployed? Why should we think that making war upon others is the only
way to solve unemployment? Joblessness is far better than jobs of war. Why
has the government got no money to distribute relief fund since it is rich
enough to make war?

Many countries all the world, unfortunately, still use Keynesianism to solve
their economic crises. USA, for example, is still decreasing their
unemployment rate by the military Keynesianism today.

In my opinion, the only way to solve economic crisis is to allow the
badly-managed and salary-defaulting companies to go bankrupt and the workers
be out of job, to issue relief funds to the unemployed, and to encourage and
help them to seek for new jobs.

At the beginning of this century, numberless crises once took place in the
USA and West-European countries. Their governments are achieved great
successes on solving their crises every time they make for use of the
above-mentioned solutions. And they have kept utilizing this solutions up
till now. It is because they have been doing so to eliminate economic crises,
their economy is universally acknowledged as the strongest in the world.

Therefore, the Military Keynesianism can only lead to fascism and war, not
economic development.

Sincerely,
Ju-chang He

SHENZHEN, P.R. CHINA
Welcome to visit My Home Page at

or 
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 31 Mar 1999 13:51:11 -0600
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE 
Subject:      Re: forum (fwd)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        Sadly -- for me, at least -- it is time to wrap up our WWII Forum.

        Before doing so, however, I would like to emphasize what, for me,
is the most satisfying WWII topic to teach.  That topic is the democratic
thrust of so much of the wartime ideology.  The bywords were tolerance,
cooperation, brotherhood and sisterhood, and the essential unity
of humankind across all boundaries.

        I mentioned "The House I Live In" in my last message.
As many of you know, this song was sung by Frank Sinatra in an
Oscar-winning short subject in 1945.  Interestingly, the song was written
by Abel Meeropol, who also wrote "Stange Fruit" because, as he explained,
"I hate lynching, and I hate injustice, and I hate the people who
perpetuate it."  Abel Meeropol and his family also raised the sons of
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.  For me, Meeropol exemplifed this democratic
ideology.

        A wonderful article that examines these democratic values does so
by exploring how school teachers in New York City tried to operationalize
these values and make them a central part of the curriculum. The article
is by Robert Shaffer, whose comments have been so helpful during our WWII
Forum.  His article is "Multicultural Education in New York City During
WWII," New York History, 77 (July 1996).

        Thanks to all of you who participated in the WII Forum.

        I have received a really helpul critique of the WWII Forum by
Katie Curtiss which I am forwarding to you.

        If you have time, give us your response to the Forum.  How
could it have been improved?  What worked, and what didn't?

        Thanks again for your time and energy.


                                        Bill Tuttle

         ----------
Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 10:29:22 -0700
From: KCURTISS@radar.sc.whecn.edu
To: tuttle@falcon.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: RE: forum

Mr. Tuttle,
        You suggested topics are terrific; however, I think that there are
two things happening in the discussion, or two different kinds of
participants so to speak. Perhaps it is the nature of the forum, rather than
the weakness of topics which leads to a lack of discussion on the
suggestions at hand. Many participate in the discussion based on an interest
in sharing web sites on the topic at hand and how to incorporated new
technologies in the classroom.  Those suggestions and web sites I find
extremely helpful and I greatly appreciate them. Thus on one level the forum
seems to be about exchanging teaching "aids", web sites and using technology
in the classroom which does not generate discussion about "ideas"..

     On the other hand there are some who participate in the Forum, based on
their desire to share ideas, more than web sites and technology. And I think
there are fewer of these kinds of participants. There seems to be few, who
participate in a discussion as to how people incorporate the big
picture/themes in lecture and discussions. I often feel that if I admitted,
in the Forum, I am still a novice in the web site world (and still rely for
the most part on the lecture mode) the laughter would ripple all through the
information highway.

In addition, rather than respond to forum discussion topics, all too often
people respond with personal perspectives as though the forum were a debate
about the rightness or wrongness of an event, policy or "era" , rather than
respond by engaging in a discussion  of the subject at hand and ways to
apply ideas in the classroom or various ways in which to approach  the
subject in the classroom setting, so that student's are exposed to a variety
of opinions and angles.

I hope during the final week of this discussion, people do respond to your
suggestions for discussion. I think the points you suggest are a great
jumping off place, to discuss the war and its repercussions. In fact I am
considering putting my students in a discussion groups and giving them the
very same questions you suggest. Even though I am hesitant to jump in with a
thought or two (maybe I will become more brave in the future) I thoroughly
enjoy the forum.

Katie Curtiss

> ----------
> From:         WILLIAM TUTTLE[SMTP:tuttle@falcon.cc.ukans.edu]
> Sent:         Wednesday, March 24, 1999 3:32 PM
> To:   KCURTISS@radar.sc.whecn.edu
> Subject:      Re: forum
>
> Dear Katie Curtiss,
>
>       Thanks so much for your message.
>
>       As I'm sure you could tell, I've spent some of my time in our WWII
> Forum trying to suggest topics, approaches, books, websites, etc., that
> would evoke responses.  Some have worked, but most have, I'm afraid,
> fallen flat, including whether WWII was a good war," a "watershed,"
> the war's lifespan consequences, etc.
>
>       Do you have any ideas about fruitful topics that people might want
> to discuss?
>
>       Thanks again for your message.
>
>                               Bill Tuttle
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 31 Mar 1999 18:59:01 CST
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Art Pitz 
Organization: Black Hawk College
Subject:      Re: African American and civil rights history
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
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One of the interesting watersheds in this area was that WWII directly
led to the integration of baseball--of enormous symbolic influence
given that it was 'the American pastime'.  WWII convinced
'Happy'Chandler and Branch Rickey that blacks should
play in the big leagues.  If baseball could (& should) be integrated,
then why not the rest of American society?
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 31 Mar 1999 22:52:32 -0500
Reply-To:     WORLD WAR II FORUM 
Sender:       WORLD WAR II FORUM 
From:         Stephen Homick 
Subject:      Re: African American and civil rights history
In-Reply-To:  <199904010051.SAA27246@support2.bhc.edu>
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El 31 Mar 99, a las 18:59, Art Pitz  scripsit:

> One of the interesting watersheds in this area was that WWII directly led
> to the integration of baseball--of enormous symbolic influence given that
> it was 'the American pastime'.  WWII convinced 'Happy'Chandler and Branch
> Rickey that blacks should play in the big leagues.  If baseball could (&
> should) be integrated, then why not the rest of American society?

I wonder if it wasn't a case of realpolitik, American style? After
all, the nascent African-American political class clamored for a war
not only against Nazi racists but rather against the home-grown
variety on this side of the pond, as well.  Wasn't that the so-called
"Double V Campaign's" rhyme and reason? Likewise, didn't the NAACP's
membership increase ten-fold during the war years; wasn't it the
BSCP's Randolph who brandished the threat of a "thundering march" on
Washington, if FDR failed to stomp out the vermin of race exclusion
in the civil service; didn't Roosevelt ultimately hand down in
consequence Executive Order 8802, the first presidential directive on
race relations since Reconstruction; and wasn't CORE founded in '42?

More important, didn't something on the order of a million African
Americans serve in uniform? Weren't the nation's cities wracked by
outbreaks of racial warfare about half way through the war; and
didn't Myrdal's _An American dilemma_, published in '44, if memory
serves, state that not since Reconstruction was the time so ripe for
a sea change in race relations? Above all, after acquitting
themselves valorously in the struggle against the fascist beast, was
there any reason to believe that the heroic veterans of the 761st.
Tank Batt., the 99th. Pursuit Sqdn. and other African American units
would return home, and let cracker kleiner fuhrers continue to
trample on their constitutionally-guaranteed rights, privileges and
immunities? I believe Robinson himself was court-martialed for
refusing to take the customary rear seat on a bus, and won acquittal.
Indeed, the attitude of more than few of his brother vets of color
was one of mounting angry intolerance of and belligerent resistance
to any attempt by the white racist reich to deny them the plenitude
of liberty's blessings.

So, in the last instance, I think it was the enraged thunder of the
rising African American political voice, and not simply WWII, that
egged on Chandler and Rickey's momentous decision.

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Desde orillas del hermoso lago Champlain, saludos virtuales de

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#mailto:shomimid@pop.k12.vt.us                                      #
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