Historians/History

The Study of History Should Give Us Pause in Contemplating 9/11

by Tom Palaima

The cover of the September 12 Newsweek shows a solitary plane in the kind of spacious blue sky we praise in "America, the Beautiful."  On this background in white letters we read: "9/11 Ten Years of RESILIENCE."  Three words in black, "FEAR GRIEF REVENGE," are placed vertically above the much larger word "RESILIENCE."This image conveys one take on a national moment of suffering and how we have lived through ten years of history in reaction to it:  the color-coded dark emotions of fear and grief fueling the equally dark human instinct to take vengeance. The Newsweek editors believe what we ourselves want to believe about what we have been through and where we are now.  We are resilient.  We have bounced back to where we were before.

The United States and Terror on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/20

by C. Douglas Lummis

September 11, 2011 marks ten years since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington D.C.  However, I would also like to call attention tomorrow’s date, September 20, which marks ten years since the United States entered its present state of perpetual war.  It was on September 20, 2001 that then U.S. President George W. Bush declared the opening of the “war on terror.”It was this announcement, not the 9/11 attacks, that radically changed U.S. foreign policy and the nature of U.S. wars.  Before 9/11 (non-state) terrorism had been treated as a crime, to be dealt with by police and the courts.  By declaring a “war on terror,” Bush was announcing that thenceforth it would be dealt with by the military.To grasp the significance of this, it is useful to recall the differences between what police officers do and what soldiers do.  Police officers are trained to examine evidence and search for suspects.  When they have sufficient evidence, they are authorized to make arrests.  But they are not authorized to make a final judgment as to a person’s guilt:  that is for the courts to decide.  No matter how convinced they may be of a suspect’s guilt (and contrary to what you see in American movies and TV dramas) they may not execute suspects.

The New Deal Didn't Cause a Democratic Realignment—World War II Did

by Helmut Norpoth, Andrew H. Sidman, and Clara Suong

The story is familiar.  American politics in the 1930s underwent a historic electoral realignment, traces of which can still be felt today.  The Great Depression toppled the Republicans as the dominant party, a status it had enjoyed in national politics since the Civil War, and very comfortably so since the 1890s.  The New Deal then helped install the Democrats as the newly dominant party for years to come.  But the story is wrong.Contrary to scholarly consensus, the “New Deal realignment” was not forged during the New Deal or the Great Depression.  Those events, to be sure, led to electoral landslides in 1932 and 1936, as well as some shift in party identification.  But what gave the Democratic Party its overwhelming hold on the American electorate for much of the second half of the twentieth century was the wartime experience and the postwar prosperity. 

Jane Fonda and Her Friendly North Vietnamese Intelligence Officer

by Merle L. Pribbenow

Back in July, actress Jane Fonda published an article on her website titled “My Trip to Hanoi.” In the article Ms. Fonda tried to explain her two-week visit to Hanoi during the summer of 1972—and by doing so, dispel all the “slanderous” internet rumors and accusations of “treason” that have been made against her because of her actions during that trip.Why address this old controversy now?  Because a few days before that, the television shopping network QVC, after receiving many protests, had abruptly canceled a scheduled appearance by Ms. Fonda to promote her new self-help memoir.  So the article was intended to set the record straight.  The Oscar-winning actress did offer an apology of sorts (really more of an excuse than an apology) for the famous photograph of her manning a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun.  But the bulk of the article was a defense of the trip and her motivations.

Don't Thank LBJ and FDR for the Welfare State—Thank Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln

by William Nichols

Over the past decades, the notion that the federal government is the guarantor of the welfare state has come under increasing criticism.   For most, the idea that the federal government should take a proactive role in providing not only for the security, but also for the well-being, of its citizens, comes from the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson.  But is this really the case?  If we look at the arguments of the Whig Party during the 1830s and 1840s, there are astonishing similarities between the rhetoric employed by the Whigs and the policies later adopted by Roosevelt and Johnson. Daniel Webster was one of the two most prominent members of the Whig Party, alongside Henry Clay, during its brief life.  At a public dinner given in his honor in New York City, Webster explained the role he was in favor of for the federal government.

Volcanoes Can Seriously Ruin Our Day ... So Let's Look to History for Clues on How to Deal with Catastrophic Eruptions

by Clive Oppenheimer

I’m not an historian—my trade is volcanoes.  But volcanoes have been an integral part of human history, from a near human extinction 75,000 years ago due to a volcanic eruption to the grounding of aircraft in Europe last year due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland. But that eruption was only modestly sized.  To appreciate the full range of risks we might face in future, we must turn to the past.For an example of what can happen when even more volcanic sulfur is released into the atmosphere, we can look back to 1816, “the year without a summer.”  This followed the massive 6.9 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia a year earlier.  Many contemporary diaries attest to the extraordinary weather of 1816, among them the memoirs of horologist Chauncey Jerome, then living in Plymouth, Connecticut.  In his History of the American Clock Business, he recalled:

America Isn't an Innocent Abroad

by Ron Briley

While the beaches of Hawaii provide rest and relaxation for many tourists, others visiting the Hawaiian Islands stand in long lines to observe the submerged battleship Arizona as a monument to December 7, 1941, a day which President Franklin D. Roosevelt assured Americans would live in infamy.  Thus, Pearl Harbor, almost seventy years after the Japanese attack on the American naval base, remains hallowed ground to many Americans who equate Pearl Harbor with the 9/11 plane hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.  In both cases, the conventional wisdom dictates that the United States was the victim of unprovoked aggression.  American innocence was shattered by those who attacked without warning and inflicted death and destruction upon a people and society serving as a beacon of freedom in a hostile world.

Stetson Kennedy's Decades-Long Pursuit of Truth and Justice

by Paul Ortiz

Stetson Kennedy passed away August 27.  He was ninety-four years old.  Stetson died peacefully, in the presence of his beloved wife Sandra Parks, at Baptist Medical Center South in St. Augustine, Florida.Stetson Kennedy spent the better part of the twentieth century doing battle with racism, class oppression, corporate domination, and environmental degradation in the American South.  By mid-century Stetson had become our country’s fiercest tribune of hard truths; vilified by the powerful, Stetson did not have the capacity to look away from injustice.  His belief in the dignity of the South’s battered sharecroppers, migrant laborers, and turpentine workers made him the region’s most sensitive and effective folklorist.

School Reform Grudge Match: Diane Ravitch vs. Steven Brill

by David Austin Walsh

Few would claim that the tone of civic discourse in America is amiable.  Bitterness and invective are now hard-wired into our political life, with conservatives castigating Obama as an irresponsible, dangerous Marxist and liberals returning fire with the “craziness” of Michelle Bachmann (whose husband, they whisper, is a closeted homosexual).

The Flight from Justice: Historian Gerald Steinacher on How Nazis Fled Europe after World War II

by Robin Lindley

At the end of the Second World War, thousands of Nazi Party members, war criminals and collaborators fled Europe and escaped arrest and prosecution for their role in war crimes including genocide.  Perpetrators such as leading Holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann and Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death” Dr. Josef Mengele were on the run after the defeat of Germany in 1945.  They eluded justice with the assistance of sympathizers as well as the knowing or inadvertent aid of overwhelmed and imperfect humanitarian, religious and political institutions.

The Delicious Irony of the Federal Government Memorializing MLK

by Jo Freedman

In all the celebrations going on this week over the (now-delayed) dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, few have noted the irony that Dr. King was often at odds with the federal government, as well as a lot of state governments.  Only fifteen months after Dr. King’s famous speech at the August 28, 1963 march and rally, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told a group of women reporters that Dr. King was "the most notorious liar in the country."  This came in reaction to newspaper reports of a mild criticism by Dr. King of the FBI’s handling of civil rights complaints in the South.Indeed it was that very march that convinced Hoover that Dr. King and the civil rights movement were serious threats to his America.  He shifted the Bureau’s policy from observing the movement, while providing information on it to local law enforcement in the South, into actively undermining it.  Dr. King was his primary target.  At Hoover’s direction, the FBI not only harassed Dr. King, but did not even warn him when it knew of threats on his life.

MLK Would Be Against the Wars Today

by William Loren Katz

It has taken a hurricane to postpone the dedication of the long-awaited monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington over the weekend—the first time a man who is not a president, not awhite man and not a war leader has been so honored on the Mall.   But how will Dr. King be presented to the American public and remembered by children?  One clear viewpoint was offered this January 13 when the Pentagon commemorated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with an address by Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department’s general counsel.In the final year of his life King became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, Johnson frankly told a packed auditorium of Defense Department officials.  However, Johnson hastily added, today’s wars are not out of line with the iconic Nobel Peace Prize winner’s teachings.  “I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack.”Really?

Is an Apology Enough for Genocide?

by Edwin Black

Everyone knows that Nazi Germany designated Jews and others for mass murder. Some know that Hitler's racial ideas were inspired by the early twentieth-century pseudo-scientific American eugenic concepts he studied and adopted.  But few are aware that long before Jews and blacks were targeted by eugenicists, white Virginian Appalachians with dark hair were chosen for extinction.  They were not only targeted by academics, but by Virginia's own state government.  The state perniciously traced their ancestry and, periodically, agents rounded them up and dispatched them to sterilization mills.More than twenty-seven states joined the shameful decades-long campaign.  Virginia led in developing the legal concepts and merciless enforcement that propelled eugenics into the annals of genocide.

American Historical Association:  Pacific Coast Branch (Videos)

This conference was held in Seattle in August 2011.Mom:  The Transformation of MotherhoodRebecca Jo PlantBush's Wars:  Roundtable on Terry Anderson's BookTerry AndersonDavid SchmitzKyle LongleyVietnam

Vietnam: Jessica Elkind

The History News Network recorded this video of Jessica Elkind speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. In her talk Ms. Elkind discusses recent Vietnamese interpretations of the Vietnam war. She spoke at session 30: "Roundtable: The Never Ending Question: Understanding the Origins of U.S. Intervention in Vietnam."

Vietnam: Matthew Masur

The History News Network recorded this video of Matthew Masur speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. In his talk he discusses recent changes in interpretations of the Vietnam war. He spoke at session 30: "Roundtable: The Never Ending Question: Understanding the Origins of U.S. Intervention in Vietnam."

Vietnam: David Schmitz

The History News Network recorded this video of David Schmitz speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. In his talk he discusses recent changes in interpretations of the Vietnam war, focusing on Richard Nixon's war. He spoke at session 30: "Roundtable: The Never Ending Question: Understanding the Origins of U.S. Intervention in Vietnam."

Vietnam: David Anderson

The History News Network recorded this video of David Anderson speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. In his talk he discusses recent changes in interpretations of the Vietnam war. He spoke at session 30: "Roundtable: The Never Ending Question: Understanding the Origins of U.S. Intervention in Vietnam."

Bush's Wars: Kyle Longley

The History News Network recorded this video of Kyle Longley speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. He spoke at a roundtable devoted to the discussion of Terry Anderson's book, Bush's Wars (Oxford University Press).

Bush's Wars: David Schmitz

The History News Network recorded this video of David Schmitz speaking at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association on August 13, 2011. He spoke at a roundtable devoted to the discussion of Terry Anderson's book, Bush's Wars (Oxford University Press).