Historians/History

Noam Chomsky and the Cuban Missile Crisis

by Sheldon M. Stern

President John F. Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in an ExComm meeting during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. Credit: White House.Noam Chomsky’s October 15 TomDispatch article (cross-posted on HNN) on the Cuban missile crisis quotes extensively from my work. Unfortunately, he also distorts the historical record and decontextualizes my conclusions. His insistence that the crisis was actually about U.S. “ownership of the world” tell us little or nothing about how real people behaved in real circumstances in October 1962.Several of Chomsky’s key contentions require additional discussion:

The Week the World Stood Still

by Noam Chomsky

Jupiter IRBM installation in Alabama, similar to those in Turkey and Italy. Credit: U.S. Army.The world stood still fifty years ago during the last week of October, from the moment when it learned that the Soviet Union had placed nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba until the crisis was officially ended -- though unknown to the public, only officially.

An Open Letter to Southern Historians on the Alabama Immigration Law

by T.R.C. Hutton

An anti-HB56 rally in Alabama on August 11. Credit: Flickr/Steven Ross Photography.In early November historians and historians-in-training will gather in Mobile, Alabama for the seventy-ninth annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association (SHA). A lot of regular attendees call it, “the Southern.” The SHA’s members look forward to their annual meeting not only for the diverse array of panels but also for the conviviality that most academic conferences don’t have. Since I first attended in 2003 I’ve found the Southern to be an unmatched combination of professional development and recreation. Many of us consider it one of our favorite annual holidays.

Obama Wasn't the First President Who Hoped to Bridge the Partisan Divide

by Ray Raphael

Obama was not the first president to arrive at the office with hopes of bridging a partisan divide, only to see the center collapse and the chasm widen. George Washington was.The nation had divided over ratification, and the first president wanted to heal the wounds. Although allied to the Federalists, he broke with them and supported a Bill of Rights to appease Anti-Federalists, who had opposed the new Constitution. Transcendent leadership to check partisan bickering -- that’s exactly what the framers of the Constitution had hoped the president would provide, and that’s why they finally decided, less than two weeks before they adjourned, that the president should not be elected by Congress. They did not want him subject to the “intrigue” and “cabal” they suspected would characterize that body.

The Cuban Missile Crisis ExComm Meetings: Getting it Right After 50 Years

by Sheldon M. Stern

It is just over thirty years since, as historian at the JFK Library, I listened for the first time to the then classified recordings of the Cuban missile crisis White House meetings of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm).

What If Nixon Had Been President During the Cuban Missile Crisis?

by Harvey Simon

Credit: Flickr/Wikimedia Commons/HNN.Fifty years ago this month, the world got lucky. With a show of force and a secret trade, President John F. Kennedy persuaded Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to dismantle a clandestine nuclear missile base the U.S. had discovered in Cuba without a single shot -- or missile -- being fired.Ever since, scholars, statesmen and academics have plumbed the Cuban Missile Crisis for lessons about leadership, nuclear weapons and international relations, focusing on the possible miscalculations or accidents that could have sparked World War III during those tense thirteen days in 1962.But these what-if scenarios leave out the most revealing counterfactual of all: Would there have been war without Kennedy as president?

Eric Hobsbawm's Brilliance ... and His Blindspot

by Kelsey McKernie

Eric Hobsbawm in 2009. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.Just a few days after Eugene Genovese’s passing, another prominent Marxist historian has died. Eric Hobsbawm, one of the most influential British historians of any political persuasion, lost his battle with pneumonia and leukemia on Monday, October 1, at the age of 95. He leaves behind a large family, well over a score of books, and a very controversial legacy -- for unlike Genovese, who left behind his Marxist beginnings and moved toward Catholic traditionalism, Hobsbawm remained an unrepentant Marxist to the very end.Born in Alexandria, Egypt to a Jewish father of Polish heritage and a Viennese mother, Hobsbawm was raised first in Vienna and then in Berlin. He joined the Sozialistischer Schülerbund (“Socialist Schoolboys”) at the age of twelve, and the Communist Party in 1936, three years after his family moved to Britain.

Eugene D. Genovese, R.I.P.

by Paul Gottfried

Betsey and Eugene Genovese in an undated photograph from the 1960s. Credit: Tina Trent.

Eric Hobsbawm, 1917-2012

Eric Hobsbawm in 2009. Credit: Wikipedia. Table of Contents Michael Burleigh Niall Ferguson Eric Foner Roy Foster Stephen Kotkin Catherine Merridale David Priestland Timothy Snyder Associated Press Commonweal Guardian (UK) New York Times Jonathan Jones Ed Miliband   Michael Burleigh

Eugene Genovese, Historical Giant, Leaves Behind Legacy of Achievement and Principle

by Kelsey McKernie

It takes a particular kind of fearlessness to stand by an unpopular personal belief, a particular kind of brilliance to defend it persuasively, and a particular kind of integrity to gain the respect of those who disagree. Historian Eugene Genovese had all three of these qualities in abundance, and his death on Wednesday, September 26, at the age of 82, has left the world a little less colorful. Best known for his revolutionary work Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, Genovese was one of the most prominent and influential historians of American slavery -- as well as, at varying times, a Marxist, a socialist, a Roman Catholic, and finally a traditionalist conservative.Born in 1930 to an Italian family in Brooklyn, Genovese was active in the Communist Party from 1947 to 1950, but was finally expelled for, as he put it, “having zigged when I was supposed to zag.” He continued to call himself “a Marxist and a socialist,” and in 1965, while a professor at Rutgers University, he made his opinions perfectly clear by stating, “I do not fear or regret the impending Viet Cong victory, I welcome it.”

Eugene Genovese, 1930-2012

Table of ContentsObituary released by the Genovese familyKelsey McKernie: Eugene Genovese, Historical Giant, Leaves Behind Legacy of Achievement and PrincipleNew York TimesMarc Bauerlein in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionReason.comRobert P. George: Tribute to Eugene Genovese [VIDEO]Obituary released by the Genovese family

Sitting in Dupont Circle Talking About Its Most Famous Progressive Residents: Interview with James Srodes

by David Austin Walsh

Rowhouses on N Street in Washington, D.C., a few blocks away from Dupont Circle.James Srodes is a veteran journalist in Washington, D.C. He joined United Press International's Washington bureau in 1967 and has written for various publications during the subsequent forty years, including Business Week, Forbes, Financial World (the latter two as bureau chief), and The Sunday Telegraph. He is a regular contributor to the American Spectator, the Washington Times, and comments on the radio for the BBC World Report.Srodes is also a biographer of prominent American politicians, including Benjamin Franklin and Allen Dulles. His latest book is On Dupont Circle: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Progressives Who Shaped Our World.

Georgia State Archives Closure Sparks Outcry, Backtracking

by Kelsey McKernie

Credit: Flickr/dolescum.In a move that has left many Georgia residents stunned, Secretary of State Brian Kemp has announced that the State Archives will be closing their doors to the public as of November 1. The reason is financial: over $730,000 is to be cut from next year’s state budget. In an official statement last Thursday, Kemp admitted that current Archives staff would be reduced, and that public access to the building would be restricted to appointment only. Kemp is anxious to emphasize that this was a decision of last resort. “While Archives does provide a great service to the citizens of Georgia,” he explained in an email, “the department only generates a fraction of the revenue that it costs to operate. We simply do not have the money to keep it open to the public.”

Rough American Justice: Interview with Tomaz Jardim on the Mauthausen Trials

by Robin Lindley

Defendants in the Mauthausen trial. Standing: August Eigruber.When Nazi war crimes and justice are mentioned, many recall the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg that tried 22 captured military and political leaders of Germany’s Third Reich and led to the execution of ten of the defendants. The Nuremberg trials are often seen as reflecting the highest democratic ideals of the American justice system.However, almost 1,700 less prominent war criminals were tried in a series of largely overlooked postwar American military commission proceedings. The atrocities at issue were monstrous, but questionable interrogations, lax rules of evidence, lack of appellate process, and other vexing issues flawed the expedited proceedings.

MPAC Calls Me an "Expert on Islam"

by Daniel Pipes

Salam al-Marayati , Executive Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Credit: Flickr/orangperlis.Why thank you, Muslim Public Affairs Council, for this endorsement. It’s much appreciated, even if came in a 65-page pamphlet, Not Qualified: Exposing the Deception Behind America’s 25 Top Pseudo-Experts on Islam.According to MPAC, a leading Islamist group based in Los Angeles, those 25 would be Andrew Bostom, William Boykin, Stephen Coughlin, Nonie Darwish, Steven Emerson, Brigitte Gabriel, Frank Gaffney, David Gaubatz, William Gawthrop, Pamela Geller, John Giduck, Sebastian Gorka, John Guandolo, Tawfik Hamid, David Horowitz, Raymond Ibrahim, Zuhdi Jasser, Andrew McCarthy, Walid Phares, Patrick Poole, Walid Shoebat, Robert Spencer, Erick Stakelback, David Yerushalmi … and me.The gravamen of MPAC’s analysis is that members of this group overwhelmingly are not what it calls experts on Islam, where this term is defined as

What Nixon Wrought With the Checkers Speech ... And What Romney Can Learn

by Kevin Mattson

Credit: Flickr/HNN staff.

Losing Our National Historic Parks -- And Our Memory

by Scot Faulkner

Antietam National Battlefield. Credit: Flickr/Doug Kerr.Six months before the Afghan-based Al Qaeda terrorists blew up the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Afghan-based Taliban blew up the 1700-year old Bamiyan Buddha statues. The world decried this wanton destruction of history.Unfortunately, every day America’s history is also being wantonly destroyed. These touchstones of our national identity are not being leveled by Taliban tanks, but by developer bulldozers.America is in the middle of commemorating the sesquicentennial of its Civil War and the bicentennial of the War of 1812. It is heart-breaking to watch these events against a backdrop of impending threats to core historical properties and viewsheds.

Mitt Romney is Not the First Mormon to Run for President

by Thomas B. Allen

1842 portrait of Joseph Smith by an unknown painter.Mitt Romney is not the first Mormon to run for president. That title belongs to Joseph Smith, who was in fact the first Mormon. He founded what became the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based on a divine vision that he had seen as a teenager in 1820. Unlike Mitt Romney in 2012, Smith in 1844 campaigned as a Mormon -- the head of the Mormon Reform Party, with Sidney Rigdon, a high-ranking Mormon leader, as his running mate.

Katyń: A History Written in Blood and Tears

by Padraic Kenney

A memorial to the Katyń massacre in Krakow. Credit: Flickr/themactep.

The Grand Old Party Ain't What It Used To Be: Interview with Lewis L. Gould

by David Austin Walsh

Barry Goldwater buttons from his 1964 presidential campaign. Credit: Flickr/Wofford College.Lewis L. Gould is the Eugene C. Barker Centennial Professor Emeritus in American History at the University of Texas -- Austin. A prolific writer and presidential historian, he is the author of numerous books on the presidency and the Progressive era, including, most recently, a new biography of Theodore Roosevelt. An updated paperback version of his 2003 book Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans, has just been released by Oxford University Press.I recently spoke to Professor Gould on the telephone about the presidential history of the Republican Party.