Neither orderly nor humane - NBIH

Population transfers are of all ages and although they are considered a crime against humanity these days, or at least bordering on it, there is a rich history of transfers and they were mostly regarded as legitimate at the time. I was aware of big transfers between Turkey and Greece in the 1920s and between India and Pakistan in 1947. I knew of the transfers in Europe after the Second World War, but had no idea that the transfer of Germans that took place was the largest in history. This is what we are told in a recent issue of New Books in History, when Marshal Poe interviewed Ray Douglas about his 10 year research project into this transfer, resulting in the book Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (Yale University Press, 2012). (feed)

Vae Victis, woe to the vanquished, could have been another title for the book. Nazi Germany lost the war, and after all its own demographic scheming to benefit the ethnic Germans, the ethnic Germans got to taste the reverse. What Ray Douglas adds to what we'd already know about this history is the sheer size of the transfer: up to 14 million Germans were transferred from Poland, Czechoslovakia and other places in Eastern Europe. The transfer was premeditated and sanctioned way in advance by the Allies. The swiftness of the transfer necessarily implied that the transfer was carried out neither orderly nor humanely as was originally the goal. And the Germans underwent it without resistance.

The operation added such a huge number of Germans to the other displaced multitude that was roaming about Europe at the time, that relief aid became a political hot potato - aiding the displaced persons, would imply aiding, mainly, the Germans, the vanquished. It would be a follow-up question whether this finding of Douglas's implied that for example this is another reason why the displaced Jews, were not helped at all?

I also assumed that these displaced Germans were integrated pretty well, but as Poe brings this issue up, Douglas suggest otherwise, however without much detail. More than the measure to which integration was successful, I was more surprised again by the numbers: Douglas claimed that about 20% of Germans today are transferred Germans or their offspring.

Many more surprising issues arise during this riveting interview.

More New Books in History:
Big History, Big Lands and Big Men
Hans Kundnani about Germany's left after the war,
Ottoman Age of Exploration,
The mysteries of whites and of mass,
A Soviet Memoir.

Big History, Big Lands and Big Men

Here are four recent installments of New Books in History that I enjoyed tremedously and want to recommend in particular. (feed)

The Ottoman and the Russian empire
For ages the Ottoman and the Russian empire had been rival neighbors and within the time span of less than a decade both empires dissolved. Michael Reynolds relates the complex relations between the two empires and describes how the new ideology of nationalism drove the two of them towards a new incarnation. In the process one also gets a better handle on the Armenian genocide.

The problem of order
Isn't it actually quite surprising to what extent there is political order? Modern states can exist by virtue of a very deep and broad, complex social coherence. Francis Fukuyama made a very long ranging study after the historic roots of political order. This is big history as it has become so fashionable of late with the work of Jared Diamond and Ian Morris (to which Fukuyama also refers in the interview).

Why the West?
More big history we get in the interview with Ricardo Duchesne. Like Fukuyama and Diamond and Morris, Duchesne digs broad and deep into world history and his goal: to identify what is unique to the West that made its domination of the last 500 years. And Duchesne comes with a different answer. Slightly different from Diamond and Morris and very different from the Marxist onset, that all is triggered by material circumstance. Duchesne makes an argument to show how Western culture is fundamentally different and allowing for the rapid development of the last 2000 years.

Who is Otto von Bismarck?
Veteran history podcast listeners probably remember (fondly) Professor Margaret Lavinia Anderson who gave us through UC Berkeley two foundational history courses History 5 (Europe from renaissance until today) and History 167b (The Second Reich), Anderson is a specialist in German history and Otto von Bismarck got a fair share in the narrative. Here we alreayd learned how he was larger than life. But how so? For that you have to turn to Marshal Poe's interview with Jonathan Steinberg on New Books In History. It is only a beginning, but there is a disturbing remark Steinberg makes. After he has written his biography of Bismarck, using very unique up close and personal prime resources - he still feels he does not know him.

More New Books in History:
Hans Kundnani about Germany's left after the war,
Ottoman Age of Exploration,
The mysteries of whites and of mass,
A Soviet Memoir,
This I accomplish.

Hans Kundnani about Germany's left after the war

The flag ship of the New Books Network is of course the podcast New Books in History. Marshall Poe interviews authors of newly published, interesting, history books (feed). He has been doing it for three years and there is a wonderful wealth of subjects to choose from. One of them is the modern history of Germany.

A very particular and not often described (at least not in English) part of the history of Germany is the kind of intellectual struggle with the Nazi past that took place in West-Germany. Especially the more left-leaning generation after the war had an intense confrontation with its parents' and teachers' past. On NBiH Marshall Poe interviews journalist Hans Kundnani about his book Utopia or Auschwitz: Germany’s 1968 Generation and the Holocaust (Columbia UP, 2010).

Kundnani (who grew up in Britain and is the son of a Dutch woman and an Indian man) investigated the new left in West-Germany - he calls it the Federal Republic. He describes how they began to view almost the entire previous generation as 'fascists' and therefore politically bankrupt and began to heavily theorize about right politics. Many of them seriously radicalized, but not all of them ended up as RAF (Rote Armee Faktion) terrorists. Notably Joschka Fischer made it to German foreign minister, for the Green Party. Kundnani is a very captive guest on the show and wonderfully effectively explains the intricacies of the leftist intellectual landscape of West-Germany in the sixties and seventies.

More New Books in History:
Ottoman Age of Exploration
The mysteries of whites and of mass,
A Soviet Memoir,
This I accomplish,
Not your idea of World War II.

Ottoman Age of Exploration

I am always ready to recommend any issue of the podcast New Books in History, but here is one that I consider among the essentials in history podcast listening: Marshal Poe interviews Giancarlo Casale about “The Ottoman Age of Exploration” (feed)

The great thing about history podcast listening is to get a grip on the general narrative of history. That is why I keep looking in all corners for good history podcasts: I am trying to have a fairly detailed idea of human history from the moment our ancestors stood upright until today. Frequently I find immense lacunae in the narrative as I got it from school. Giancarlo Casale fills such a lacuna.

We have heard plenty about the European age of exploration and we may have heard about the explorative journeys the Chinese undertook in the centuries before the Europeans began. But in between, there are also the Ottomans. Just like everybody else, they tried to explore the Indian Ocean, found their bases and profit from the spice trade. Casale explains when they did it, why and how. Casale also gives the best concise explanation I have heard ever, why exactly spices were such an excellent commodity. In short, this is stuff you must know to get a better understanding of what you had already learned.

More NBIH:
The mysteries of whites and of mass,
A Soviet Memoir,
This I accomplish,
Not your idea of World War II,
When Akkadian was Lingua Franca.

The mysteries of whites and of mass

New Books In History is my weekly stop for good history podcast (feed). Apart from some recurring themes in the series, host Marshall Poe frequently comes up, also, with very unusual, sometimes obscure, but invariably hugely interesting unexpected subjects. Take these two:

Massive for example, is a book about the history of the hunt for the Higgs-boson, the sub-atomic particle that is supposed to make up for the lack of mass in the known particles that atoms are comprised of. Marshall Poe speaks with Ian Sample who wrote the book and tells the most fascinating tale of this project in physics. It appears it is not just a project in physics, it is also about huge building projects (the Large Hadron Collider) therefore about money, politics and also about prestige.

Another subject was Poe's interview with Nell Irvin Painter about the history of white people. It is not politically correct and not even fashionable to speak of white or black or colored people anymore, but these ideas about different races among humans did arrive in the collective conscience at some point in time. Painter sought the origins of this racial thinking out and especially the origins of the concept of white people and skin color as the defining element of race.

More NBIH:
A Soviet Memoir,
This I accomplish,
Not your idea of World War II,
When Akkadian was Lingua Franca,
The 1910 Paris flood.

A Soviet Memoir - New Books in History

Here is yet another warm recommendation for New Books In History, Marsahll Poe's weekly podcast in which he interviews the author of a recently published book in history. (feed)

This week he spoke with Deborah Kaple about her book Gulag Boss, a Soviet Memoir. While Kaple was in Moscow for research on another project, she ran into Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky who had been a boss in a Gulag work camp and had written his experiences down. He had tried to find a publisher for it, but to no avail. Kaple translated and delivered some additional material to the work of Mochulsky.

The interview (and the book obviously) give a very fine insight in the workings of Soviet society, of the NKVD and the Gulag camps. Mochulsky is a faithful and dedicated communist yet also has to find his way between strict obedience and proper treatment of the prisoners. The prisoners, by the way, are not just men and not just political prisoners, making for a very challenging environment for Mochulsky to run the camp.

More NBIH:
This I accomplish,
Not your idea of World War II,
When Akkadian was Lingua Franca,
The 1910 Paris flood,
Stasi agents and informants.

This I accomplish - New Books in History (NBIH)

I tend to recommend all issues of the excellent podcast New Books In History with the caveat that you obviously must select the subjects that appeal to you. For myself I thought I might skip for example the latest interview which was with Kyra Hicks who has written a biography of a quilter. I thought: "Quilts... hm ... no, not for me." Yet, I could not stop listening to the interview. (feed)

The excitement eventually even is with the craft of quilting, which was originally putting me off, but what initially kept me glued to the podcast was the careful way the host, Marshal Poe, built up the interview. He revealed that Hicks made some exciting discovery during her research, but directed his questioning according to a build-up towards the climax.

And this makes you listen and guess what it is going to be and really get into the person about whom the biography is. Harriet Powers, a former slave, whose quilt she made by the end of the nineteenth century can be seen in the Smithsonian Museum. Hicks took on this interesting character and with determination added to what little was known about her. Mrs. Powers comes to life, quilting comes to life and of course, eventually she makes her amazing discovery.

It goes to show that New Books In History is good to listen to even if you feel no direct connection with the subject.

More NBIH:
Not your idea of World War II,
When Akkadian was Lingua Franca,
The 1910 Paris flood,
Stasi agents and informants,
War in Human Civilization.

Not your idea of World War II - New Books In History

I cannot recommend enough the podcast New Books In History (NBIH). Marshall Poe interviews authors of recently published books in history. Here you will earn some real insight in history topics that have your interest. Moreover, the interview format and the length of the show makes it extremely fit for podcast and accessible for all audiences. (feed)

NBIH is the podcast that frequently teaches me something radically new in history. Take for example the recent show with Joe Maiolo about the origins of World War II. Maiolo's book 'Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War 1931-1941' does away with a major consensus about WW2 which especially lives among the lay: Without Hitler no war. Maiolo attempts to show that the international politics of the interbellum and the ensuing arms race pushed Europe to a second version of the Great War. Hitler only facilitated and expedited it.

Then there was another consensus challenged, more implicitly though and apparently the challenge was not new, but again, for the lay public, that is, for me, this was also a radically different view: Germany was to lose the war, always. Germany lost the war already before it started. The victory over France in 1940 was a fluke. I always thought the attack on the Soviet Union (1941) did the Germans in, as they got overstretched, but the facts as Maiolo sees them (and apparently not just he) is that from the onset this was a war of industry and Germany never had a chance the meet the capacity of England and the US, even without France and Russia. It is a miracle they came as far as they did and the sheer industrial disparity only came out as late as 1942, 1943.

Eventually one thing nags me after the interview. In light of the second point the first actually loses some weight. If the objective power balance was such that Germany could never win, neither the arms race, nor the total war, why would you be so sure ANY other German ruler had let the whole things slide into war? It actually sort of suggests that it took a warmonger and megalomaniac such as Hitler to take on all German enemies in spite of the stack being against him. Yet, the interview makes it also clear that much of Maiolo's findings have the clarity of hindsight. Few of the leaders involved saw it as clear as all that. So maybe indeed, WW2 had to happen, although it was more likely to become a short repetition of WW1, not the huge disaster we know. So, how is that?

More NBIH:
When Akkadian was Lingua Franca,
The 1910 Paris flood,
Stasi agents and informants,
War in Human Civilization,
Always recommended: New Books in History.

When Akkadian was Lingua Franca - NBIH

Today we will have two similar posts. They will both point to a podcast about ancient history and both these podcasts will teach something fascinating about ancient technologies (writing, metal working and more) even if both podcasts intend to actually talk about some other subject and bring these early technologies only up as an aside. Here is the first.

New Books In History had Amanda Podany on the show to talk about her book Brotherhood of Kings. This is an amazing study about the diplomatic system in the near-East in pre-Hellenic ancient times. It turns out that Mesopotamia and Egypt had full fledged diplomatic traffic that looks more like the 19th century international system than what you'd associate with the second millennium BCE. To give one amazing fact: the diplomatic language was Akkadian and the system was assuming equality between the players. Even the mighty deified pharaohs of Egypt submitted to this.

I was struck by the technology item in this conversation. Host Marshall Poe and Ms Podany discuss at length the intricacies of the cuneiform writing system and this I found truly mind-boggling. You really get a lifelike grip on how the scribes learned the art of writing. How they must have struggled with the stylos and the clay, with the texts, with the dictation and obviously with the languages and the translations. You have to hear for yourself.

More NBIH:
The 1910 Paris flood,
Stasi agents and informants,
War in Human Civilization,
Always recommended: New Books in History,
The best varied history podcast,

The 1910 Paris flood - NBIH

I never knew Paris had been flooded in 1910. It seems most French and even Parisians have forgotten about it, yet, as we learn from New Books in History this flood has been the last and the worst that hit the modern city of Paris and its scenario still counts as the defining flood, its high points still serve as the marker that measures against flooding have to meet.

Host Marshall Poe spoke with Jeffrey Jackson who wrote the book Paris under water about the flood of 1910. They go through the causes of the flood. As usual with floods it was caused by a combination of factors each of which come with high waters. In addition, the then new and modern sewer system added to the flood; the system actually connected all the parts of the city and allowed for the rising water to reach everywhere.

A major point of interest for Poe and Jackson was how the city and its inhabitants pulled together and dealt with the flood as a cohesive society. While this is indeed a very interesting historic and sociological point, I myself was wondering about the technicalities of flood prevention. Why are they still using the 1910 high points as a standard? Hasn't the environment entirely changed? Aren't there more floodings in modernized countries these days, because of more canals, because of climate change and such? I fear Paris may be flooded despite the 1910 markers in the 21st century.

More NBIH:
Stasi agents and informants,
War in Human Civilization,
Always recommended: New Books in History,
The best varied history podcast,
The Caucasus.

Stasi agents and informants - NBIH

The podcast New Books in History is a great program to subscribe to by all means, but in case you are interested in content about the Cold War, the end of it and the rise and fall of the Soviet world. In this realm there is a great wealth of issues to be had. One of which came out just in this past weeks. (feed)

In this program Marshal Poe interviewed Gary Bruce about the inside story of the Stasi, the secret police of communist Germany (DDR). Did the DDR need a secret police? Poe and Bryce emphasize how paranoid the communist regimes were and how they expected traitors and saboteurs always and everywhere. Hence the extended network of agents and the even more extended network of informants. In the end I wonder how exaggerated it is the state that one half of the DDR citizens was spying on the other half.

Bruce's research as you get to know it from the interview, although it does reveal the pumped up paranoia of the soviet system, does teach rather something else. It shows how the Stasi was organized. Where did the agents come from, how were they trained and employed. And once there were agents, there was the recruiting and management of informants. Bruce's story about his research also reveals what happened to the Stasi and its files once the DDR fell apart and with it its secret police. This all went so swift, the Stasi disintegrated before it could destroy its archives. And this allows many historians such as Bruce to study the Stasi and by extension the reality of a surveillance state.

More NBIH:
War in Human Civilization,
Always recommended: New Books in History,
The best varied history podcast,
The Caucasus,
The genocide and the trial.

War in Human Civilization - NBIH

I am amazed at New Books in History. Marshall Poe manages to produce new chapters every week. He reads the book and he interviews the author for about an hour. He must be reading more than just those books. He has got his position as a history professor at the University of Iowa, he has to write and he has to teach. In addition he must have got all those would be interviewees, but he won't pick each and every book only those whom he deems good enough.

What a selection we therefore get every week. Still it is one thing Poe gives an implicit recommendation of the book, it means even more if he explicitly does so. When he speaks with Azar Gat about War in Human Civilization, he recommends with special enthusiasm. And he adds he is going to use Gat's book for a course he wants to give. That kind of endorsement we have not yet witnessed often in NBIH.

Sure enough, Gat and Poe are off to a very spirited discussion. The subject is huge: how does war feature in human civilization? Has it always been there? Has it become worse, or perhaps better? Should we go with Rousseau and assume that war comes with civilization and man is deep down a noble savage. Or should we lean towards Hobbes and agree that man is a wolf to man and war is the state of nature, which civilization so feebly attempts to restrain? And what about nationalism and globalization? Poe and Gat are not done in the end. They will continue with Gat's next book.

More NBIH:
Always recommended: New Books in History,
The best varied history podcast,
The Caucasus,
The genocide and the trial,
Nation and Culture.

Always recommended: New Books in History

The weekly interviews on New Books in History will always draw my attention and it is extremely rare I do not listen until the end. This is the most valuable history podcast and it should be able to offer something for literally everybody. In addition, for those who take a closer look, there are some grander themes that can be picked up by combining several of the issues. A lot can be learned about Jewish history, about the history of the Cold War, World War II, World War I, American History and the history of Fascism/Nazism to name some recurring themes on top of my head. (feed)

Three recent episodes I especially liked are:
Jerry Muller, “Capitalism and the Jews”
In the Jewish theme and carefully discussing the actual and alleged ties of Jews and Judaism to both Capitalism and Socialism.

Ruth Harris, “Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century”
Look also at other podcast about the Dreyfuss affair and then listen how Ruth Harris adds new perspective. As Marshal Poe says in this interview: history is never definitively written.

Heather Cox Richardson, “Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre”
The traditional last question in an NBIH interview is: what is your next project and it serves to know ahead of time what Richardson's next project will be: a history of the Republican party. Then listen to her analysis of the defeat of the Indians in the US. Party politics does not feature in the title in vain, though it took me some time to figure out its importance.

More NBIH:
The best varied history podcast,
The Caucasus,
The genocide and the trial,
Nation and Culture,
Three New Books In History.

The best varied history podcast - NBIH

Anybody interested in history podcasts must keep a constant eye on the feed of New Books in History. Probably not all of the passing subjects are of your interest, but each week there is a new issue and there are over a hundred shows to look back at and there inevitably is a lot to find that is exactly to your liking.

Issues that I have browsed through over the past weeks are a couple of old ones, along with the new issues each week:
Tim Snyder, “The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke” An interview from 2008 about the eccentric Archduke Wilhelm of Austria.

John Lukacs, “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning” Also an old interview from 2008, about Winston Churchill's inaugural speech in 1940.

Three new recent issues were:
Andrew Donson, “Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism, and Authority in Germany, 1914-1918″
Amy Bass, “Those About Him Remained Silent: The Battle Over W. E. B. Du Bois”
Patrick Manning, “The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture”

I was especially inspired by the very last issue, P. Bingham and J. Souza, “Death From a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe”, which contains an interview with both these authors, none of whom are historians. They combine their knowledge in biology and social science and have come up with a theory of history. They point out how human society lives by the measure to which it can police its members and they explain the developments from the development of weapons. The weapons allow for a certain scale of policing and therefore command the size and complexity of society and hence the course of history. As the host Marshall Poe already points out, historians generally do not engage in such grand theories and it really begs the question how Bingham and Souza's work is received. For the podcast listener it is by all means interesting and thought provoking.

More NBIH:
The Caucasus,
The genocide and the trial,
Nation and Culture,
Three New Books In History,
The fourth part of the world.

The Caucasus

As usual, Marshall Poe did a fascinating interview at New Books In History and it reminded me of two old university lecture series from Stanford you can still get on iTunes. Guest on the show was Charles King to speak about his book The Ghost of Freedom which attempts to tackle the history of the Caucasus.

Poe lets King explain how intricate and unusual it is to write a history book that focuses on a geographically defined place and a large one at that. Also, the Caucasus is an area with a complicated history torn between many different ethnicities and influenced from three very different imperial or cultural spheres: the Turkish, the Russian and the Persian. Besides, this is not a place we are particularly familiar with and so it is even more difficult to find our way in the labyrinth. Here is where the Stanford course lends a helping hand.

Martin Lewis offered two series of enhanced podcasts which also made a stop at the Caucasus. Geography of World Cultures (feed) and Global Geopolitics (feed) which were taught in 2007 and 2008 at Stanford. With the help of maps (added to the enhanced podcast) Lewis dove into the spread of cultures, languages and religions in this mountain range. On top of that, he offered a passage to the geopolitical tensions of the area, and there are not a few. I add the Caucasus map from the series about World Cultures (part of lecture 6).

Marshall Poe picks out three dualities from the Caucasus and lets Charles King elaborate upon them. These are relationships between locals and one of the big neighbors and King describes how they are close and strained of late. Those are the relationships of the Georgians with the Russians, of the Armenians with the Turks and of Azerbaijan with Iran.

More NBIH:
The genocide and the trial,
Nation and Culture,
Three New Books In History,
The fourth part of the world,
How the Soviet system imploded.

More Martin Lewis:
Guantanamo Bay,
Africa,
Descriptive and prescriptive mapping,
Global Geopolitics - Martin Lewis,
A listener's guide to Geography of World Cultures.

The Great War - WW1 in podcasts

About a week ago I already wrote a Dutch post about the First World War in podcasts and that is because one of the very best podcasts about The Great War is in Dutch (Veertien Achttien), more about this by the end of this post. If you wish to make a study of WW1 through podcast alone, you have many formidable other podcasts to choose from as well.

There are two big stories about WW1. One is the geopolitical, diplomatic one, which goes back until the 1870's and arguably shows the effect of WW1 until at least the Cold War, if not until today (look at the Middle East for example). This perspective that can be stretched over a near century and a half is fantastically covered by Stanford's James Sheehan in the lecture series The History of the International System (feed). Part of this story is the question how the war came about and who is to blame, which is an issue every modern history series will deal with (History 5, MMW 5, European Civilization 1648 to 1945, History 1c) but is especially well done by Margaret Anderson in an old version of Berkeley's Renaissance to Today. Also interesting is the interview in New Books in History with Norman Stone.

Another big story of WW1 is that of Trench Warfare, or a little bit more broadly, how the war went and how it culminated in the wretched peace of Versailles. Many good podcasts give ample attention here. (New Books in History, History 151c, France since 1871, The Armistice Podcast)

The special quality of Veertien Achttien ('14 - '18) lies in this that it takes on both these themes and more by the method it applies. Veertien Achttien brings every week a short biography of one of the people involved in the war. Through this you get some chronology of the war, and frequently one stretching from earlier to way beyond, highlighting aspects that go beyond the to big narratives referred to above. Especially in this podcast you can find the effect of WW1 on everyday life, on the peripheries of the war, on culture, on science and as such, mare than any other podcast it convincingly shows how deep and fundamental the war altered our world.

While Veertien Achttien is expected to run until 2012 in Dutch, there are some rumors it may be translated into English at some point in time. We can only hope that this challenge will indeed be met.

The genocide and the trial - NBIH

Before I direct you to the two recent issues of New Books in History that touched on the issue of genocide and the trial of the perpetrators, I would want to advise you to listen to an old episode of Philosophy Bites. In this interview Chandran Kukathas of the London School of Economics analyzes the concept of genocide, its history and its legal meaning. He also formulates a proposal for improvement of the term. The points that stick out are that in a wide definition, genocide could imply acts that are not mass murder or destruction, but that are still aimed at eradicating a certain group, such as the burning of libraries, forced assimilation and measures to stop breeding. Yet Kukathas wants to refocus on the methods and make sure genocide will cover especially the murderous aspects of the crime. And then he wants to add more groupings to the definition and not reserve genocide only for the mass murder of ethnic and religious groups.

His expose of definitory problems are relevant in both issues of New Books In History, that I would like to recommend here, but especially for the interview Marshall Poe conducted with Ben Kiernan who witnessed the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer regime in Cambodia (both he and Kukathas define this as genocide even if it might be problematic definition-wise). He wrote a book about genocides (Blood and Soil) and even though he seems to engage in an entirely different kind of definitions than Kukathas (More historic and less legal) he comes up with the same examples and Poe takes him through those after having extensively touched upon Kiernan's experiences in Cambodia.

The next issue of NBIH to high-light goes into the details of one example of the genocide par excellence, the holocaust. Marshall Poe had a fascinating conversation with Hilary Earl about the history of the SS-Einsatzgruppen and their trials in Nuremberg. Apart from grazing the problems of definition (and of trial) again, Earl's research also gives a little bit more insight in how ordinary people, even educated, upper-middle-class people can be turned into murderers. And once a whole nation has been turned into a nation of murderers, how can trials be conducted, is a large additional part of the story.

A lot more about the subject of genocide can be had from the podcasts of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (which is also on iTunes). Another interesting addition is to follow Berkeley's History course that delves into the history and practice of Human Rights. Last but not least the LSE Podcast had several relevant issues, among others about the genocide in Rwanda and about the ICC.

More Philosophy Bites:
Dirty Hands,
Understanding decisions,
Nietzsche repossessed,
What can you do with philosophy?,
Morality without God.

More NBIH:
Nation and Culture,
Three New Books In History,
The fourth part of the world,
How the Soviet system imploded,
Vietnam War perspectives.

Nation and Culture - NBIH

As a citizen of Israel, I am always engaged in understanding the history of the state of Israel, of Zionism and of Judaism as a culture. As a consequence, when I listened to Marshall Poe's interview with Kenneth Moss at New Books in History, I heard all history of Zionism and of Judaism as a culture. However, Kenneth Moss's book is about Russia: Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution.

Still, this was all about a renaissance of Jewish culture and a struggle with the question whether, if there was a Jewish nation, what made it a nation or how it could be constructed and preserved. Did it need a unified language and a geographical nation state in addition? Listen to the interview as this is one of the most exciting questions and the Jews serve as an example to a much deeper question. I can testify that in many ways, even today when there is a geographical nation state for Jews in Israel and it has a unified language (Hebrew), these questions are still not (fully) resolved.

More profoundly it makes me wonder how could ever have taken the nation state as a self-explanatory thing. The example of the Jews show how essentially it is constructed or in other terms an imaginary unity. As imaginary for Jews as it is for seemingly unproblematic nations such as France, as you can learn in the Yale courses by John Merriman European Civilization and France since 1871 - by the way.

More NBIH:
Three New Books In History,
The fourth part of the world,
How the Soviet system imploded,
Vietnam War perspectives,
1989 - Padraic Kenney.

More Merriman:
France since 1871,
History of India or Europe?,
Industrial Revolutions,
Modern Western History in podcasts.

Three New Books In History - NBIH

A podcast that I do not miss an episode from is New Books in History (which I have been abbreviating as NBIH, but I saw the maker uses NBH). Each week there is an hour long interview with the author of a new book, in history of course. The host and interviewer, historian Marshall Poe, invariably has read the book and then conducts an interview that is very well tailored to book, subject as well as author. Every week this allows you to get a good insight in some subject of history.

Here are the three latest issues, each of which are definitely worth a listen:

Julian E. Zelizer, “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security From WWII to the War on Terrorism” - In this interview Marshall Poe prompts Zelizer to take us through all of the recent wars the US was involved in, from Korea to Iraq and let him explain how the internal politics of the US influenced the decision of the President and his government to enter the war. Much to Poe's surprise, without exception, the President got into the war he wanted to get into. There was always some weighing of the power balance between Republicans and Democrats that, if not forced his hand, strongly influenced the move. It reminded me of Henry Kissinger's line about Israeli politics: Israel has no foreign policy, there is only internal policy. Apparently he did not have to look for to get that idea.

Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson, “Natural Experiments of History” - Although the book was edited not by Jared Diamond alone, the guest on the show is Jared Diamond only. Although there is ample talk of what is meant with Natural Experiments and some examples are discussed, the most interesting part of the interview dwells on another subject. Diamond and Poe get to discuss and criticize the current state of affairs in academia as far as the discipline of history is concerned. History is completely compartmentalized. Historians delve solely into one niche subject and stick to one research method - reading primary sources. According to Diamond this is unfortunate and he argues how history could be enriched with broadening subjects, getting historians out of their small fields and have them apply methods of social sciences together with reliance on primary sources.

Alan E. Steinweis, “Kristallnacht 1938″ - While NBIH comes out weekly on the beat, somehow it delivered two episodes this week with a mere two or three day difference. And so we could enjoy a most informative interview with Allan Steinweis about the Kristallnacht. We learn how fine and gradual the distinction were from an organized to a spontaneous pogrom. And this is all set in a historical perspective of the deteriorating position of the Jews since 1933, of a Nazi regime that was all set for this deterioration, but was also aware of its international position and had ample reason to keep the simmering pogroms in check and in the perspective of an incident two days earlier in Paris. At the German embassy a Polish Jew shot a German diplomat and although the whole affair was clearly the doings of an individual, it fitted so neatly with the widely adopted idea of a Jewish conspiracy that it could bring the simmering pogrom to burst.

More NBIH:
The fourth part of the world,
How the Soviet system imploded,
Vietnam War perspectives,
1989 - Padraic Kenney,
The Ossie twilight.

The fourth part of the world - NBIH

The last episode of New Books In History treated the circumstances of the discovery of the Americas. From Columbus's idea to sail to the Indies by going westward to the first map that fully recognized the Americas as a separate continent. A fourth part of the world, named after Amerigo Vespucci.

To this end host Marshall Poe interviewed Toby Lester and he gave a thrilling account of how the Americas got shape in the concept of the world. In this respect one needs to immediately set aside the myth that people thought the world was flat. It was known the world was round and there was even relatively sound data about the extent of the Asian continent in addition to a fairly accurate idea of the circumference of the earth. On the basis of those data Columbus's journey was folly, considering the vast amount of ocean that needed to be crossed. An intermediate continent was not expected and Columbus just thought he'd found some islands along the way when he got onto Hispaniola. Like the Canary Islands and the Azores.

We all know Vespucci eventually sailed around and this is how the new continent got its name. And since the world had always been conceptually assumed to consist of three parts (Europe, Africa and Asia), this was the fourth. This we know quite well, but the really interesting part of the show is the description of how the idea of what was lying in the west got shape. Starting from the discovery of the Canary Islands, through Columbus's journey, the development of ideas and additional data from the likes of Vespucci. In this respect you should listen and pay special attention to the finer details around the Canary Islands - it has nothing to do with canaries, more with dogs. And: the islands were inhabited - I never knew that.

More NBIH:
How the Soviet system imploded,
Vietnam War perspectives,
1989 - Padraic Kenney,
The Ossie twilight,
The first day of LBJ.