Last Lecture: The History of the European Union

In today's lecture, our final one of the course, we looked at the specific steps by which Europeans turned their backs on the history of virulent nationalism that had wracked Europe for so long. Beginning with the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950, they constructed an ever-expanding union which ultimately surpassed the original goals of wealth creation and economic development.

Vodcast of Last Lecture: The History of the EU

PDF Handout for The Cold War and the European Union

Below is a link to a pdf handout of the slides from today's lecture and the two lectures before that, on the Cold War (complete) and the European Union. I hope that it--and all the other handouts found on WebCT Vista--will help you study for the Final exam. The date for the Final exam is on the calendar found on your WebCT site.

Handout for the Cold War and the European Union

Lecture 23: Cold War (Conclusion) and the EU

Today we concluded our overview of the Cold War and saw how and why it ended not with a bang but with a whimper (or, rather, a celebration). But, above all, it ended peacefully. We first looked at the intensification of the Cold War, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the aftermath when both sides began the long road to detente. Finally, we looked at the nature of the European Union in general, as a backdrop to tomorrow's discussion of the historical development of the EU.

Cold War (Conclusion) and the EU

Lecture 22: The Cold War: Dangerous Years

In today's lecture we looked at the Cold War's early, very dangerous years (1943-1962). As these dates suggest, the Cold War began in World War II, when suspicions between the Soviet Union and the U.S. were ignited by wartime strategy of the Big Three. Other sources of the Cold War are discussed, as well as its domestic impact upon the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Lecture 22, The Cold War: Dangerous Years

URL for World War II, The Web Site

Click on the link below for the web site on the Second World War, discussed in class yesterday and described below.

Link to Web Site on World War II

Lecture 21: World War II, The Web Site

Today I took the class on a tour of my web site for World War II (after a brief PowerPoint overview of how the war actually began). Students will need to study at least the front page of this web site because it contains all of the lecture information that I would normally deliver in class on the subject of World War II, and for which you are responsible for the exams. Pay particular attention to the information on the six stages of the war, the reasons for the failure of Holocaust rescue, and the ways in which the war planted the seeds for the Cold War.

Lecture 21: Vodcast of World War II, The Web Site

Lecture 20: Stalin's Russia, Fascism and the Rise of Hitler

The geopolitics of the 1920s and 1930s cannot be understood without an appreciation for the momentous changes that occurred in the Soviet Union and Germany. To comprehend these, we had to look as much at personality as ideology. Although we defined and analyzed the ideology of Fascism and saw its takeover of Italy and Germany, we also examined the biographies of Hitler and Stalin and how these shaped the history of the interwar years and affected a world careening toward a second global conflict in the twentieth century.

Vodcast of Stalin's Russia, Fascism and the Rise of Hitler (Video Ipod format)

PDF of Short Lecture: By Popular Demand

Today some of you inquired about the availability of a pdf file of the PowerPoint presentation of the lectures on World War I and the interwar years. By popular demand, here it is. Remember that the vodcasts for this expanded lecture are in the posts just below this one. For the pdf, either right-click on the link to the pdf below and choose open or just click on the link. One or the other method (or both) should permit you to open and view the pdf of this lecture.

PDF of World War I and the Years Between the World Wars

Short Lecture: Background to Appeasement, 1930s

Because we finished watching The White Rose (1982) today, we has very little time for a lecture. But we did spare nearly nine minutes for a discussion of the obstacles that the Western democracies faced in the 1930s in confronting a resurgent Germany. These numerous obstacles rewarded Hitler's expansionist foreign policies, which were reckless in the extreme, with a degree of success that they never would have had in "normal" times. But the times were far from normal. In today's lecture, we saw how.

Vodcast on Short Lecture, Background to Appeasement

Description of Your White Rose Assignment

Also today I introduced your assignment for the essay on the White Rose. Remember that you can always find the Learning Module for the assignment on the WebCT home page. The vodcast below provides you more description of what you need to do in the essay. In sum, you need to describe how each document tells the story of the White Rose differently, AND which of the three influences upon a history document is (or are)revealed by each of the six documents. If you have questions, do not hesitate to ask them in class.

Vodcast of the In-Class Description of the White Rose assignment

Lecture 19: War, Revolution and the Interwar Years in Depth, 1919-1939

Today we looked at the conclusion of the Great War, including the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Europe emerged from the war battered, broken, in the grips of revolution, and rendered hopeless by the slaughter of the preceeding years. The Treaty of Versailles made the situation even worse, paralyzing the democracies and emboldening the parties on the far right for years to come. We also defined two leading conditions of the 1920s and 1930s, anomie and appeasement.

Vodcast of Lecture 19, War, Revolution and the Interwar Years

Lecture 18: The Lamps Extinguished: The Great War and its Consequences

In today's lecture we looked at the final causes of the Great War, including the reactions to the new ideas of relativity, the Alliance System and the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The main focus of the lecture, however, was THE BIG PICTURE of the war's impact on the mind, map and political structure of Europe between the two world wars. At the conclusion of the lecture we began looking at the course of the war (THE LITTLE PICTURE), but we got no further than the early months of the war, culminating in the first Battle of the Marne (1914). By the end of today's lecture, however, the listener will be in a position, when hearing of significant wartime events, to anticipate their impact on the interwar period (1919-1939).

Vodcast of Lecture 18, "The Lamps Extinguished"

Lecture 17: Irrational Ideas and the Long Fuse to War

During the fin de siecle period before World War I, an intellectual revolution took place that may have had something to do with the causation of that war. Isaac Newton's optimistic worldview was de-throned, and a far darker Darwinian vision of inherently irrational impulses gained ascendance. Nietzsche, Freud and Einstein were among the luminaries that defined the age and the popular understanding as well as misunderstanding of what they discovered left a bitter after-taste that may have had something indefinable to do with a world of nation-states careening out of control. This brief vodcast touches on the era.

Vodcast of an Age of Irrationalism, 1880-1914

Lecture 16: Nationalism, the New Imperialism and the Long Fuse to World War I

Today we examined the factors that propelled Europe toward political suicide in the form of the Great War of 1914-1918. The roster of factors that are candidates for this list is a long one: unfulfilled nationalism, irrational ideas, alliances, an arms race, and the New Imperialism among them. We examine here the nature of multinationalism and irredentism as problems with nationalism as well as the role and course of the New Imperialism. All other factors are merely introduced here, to be developed at greater length in the next lecture.

Vodcast of Lecture 15, Nationalism and the New Imperialism

Lecture 15: German Unification and the Long Fuse Introduced

Today's lecture is reproduced here in an audio podcast only (mp3). We surveyed the process by which Germany because a unified nation-state and its implications for the future. Although Otto von Bismarck cobbled together the factors and supplied his own crucial motive force (statecraft and war), many things happened before he became Prussian Prime Minister in 1862 that set the process in motion: the Confederation of the Rhine, Prussian militarism, the Zolverein, and the revolutions of 1848 among them. At the end of the podcast, I introduce the story of what Leonard Lafore called "the long fuse" to World War I, the developments between 1871 and 1914 that brought the curtain down on the nineteenth century and triggered the Great War.

Audio podcast of the unification of Germany and intoduction to the "long fuse"