History 5: TUESDAY 29 APRIL 03
MOVIE ‘CONSPIRACY’ (2001)
CONSPIRACY is based on the only surviving record of the 20 January 1942 Wannsee Conference, that provided the blueprint for Hitler’s Final Solution. The importance of the conference lies in the fact that so little evidence of top-level Nazi decision-making has survived. For example, we have no actual order signed by Hitler. This record of the planning of genocide constituted a prime prosecution document in the Allied prosecution of Nazi leaders at the postwar Nuremberg war crimes trials.
The Conference assembled 15 officials, ministers and SS officers at Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin. At this date German’s victory in the war still seemed very likely-the decisive battles of 1942- Midway in June, El Alamein (North Africa) October; Stalingrad Oct-Feb 1942-3 were yet to come. The conference decided the fate of 6 million of Europe’s Jews
SS Major Adolph Eichmann (1906-1962), [Stanley Tucci], organized the meeting acting on the orders of Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942), [Kenneth Branagh], Deputy Chief of the SS and Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (former Czech half of Czechoslovak Republic, invaded by Germany in March 1939). In 1945 Eichmann escaped from American custody and fled to Argentina. Seized by Israeli agents in 1960, tried and executed. Heydrich died a few months after the Wannsee meeting. On 5 June 1942 Czech partisans parachuted in from UK assassinated him. In the murderous reprisals that followed the Czech village of Lidice, just northwest of Prague, was razed and every male put to death.
History 5: Lecture 27,
Outline
COLONIZATION AND DECOLONIZATION
INTRODUCTION
• New post-World War II superpowers, USSR and USA, colonize
Europe by dividing it into two informal empires, American and Soviet
• As a result, high politics removed from traditional European
powers: they lose their freedom as independent world actors
• Other consequences for Europe: Cold War > decolonization
overseas; America pushes for economic, military and political integration>European
Union.
I Cold War colonization
• Division of Germany into 4 occupation zones>two Germanys
1949: Communist East Germany (GDR); West Germany (Bonn Republic).
• Cold War origins: ideological clash; inevitable power play;
Germany is bone of contention; America’s atomic monopoly 1945-
1949
• First Cold War, 1947-1963: Churchill’s “Iron Curtain”
speech; America’s Containment Doctrine; Communist coup in Czechoslovakia
1948; Soviet blockade of Berlin, 1948-9; Korean War 1950-3; Nato military
alliance 1949; Warsaw Pact 1955; Berlin crisis 1958-61, Berlin Wall
1961; 1962 Cuban missile crisis; Test Ban treaty 1963
II Impact on Europe
Domestic homogeneity within the two empires: cuius regio eius religio
revisited; large Soviet garrisons in central and eastern European
vassal states; network of American bases in Western and Southern Europe;
Cold War culture suppresses dissent; rival military alliances, Nato
and Warsaw Pact, curb freedom of European powers. Handful of small
states by staying neutral avoid absorption: Switzerland, Finland,
Austria, Sweden, and Yugoslavia
* Homogeneity not total: in Soviet empire-Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia
1968 make bids for some independence. Marshal Tito takes Yugoslavia
out of Soviet
Orbit but stays communist; Albania leaves Warsaw Pact 1968 and becomes
client of China.
• France under General de Gaulle, 1958-1969 challenges US informal
empire and calls for a European Europe, leaving Nato military organization
in protest 1966.
• American shield saves Europeans money>strengthens economic
recovery
• Superpowers adopt different strategies for dominating Europe:
Moscow uses brute force-Hungary 1956, Prague 1968; Washington while
relying on non-coercive diplomacy is prepared, if necessary, to apply
strong economic and diplomatic pressure, e.g. Suez affair 1956; CIA
funds pro-US political groups and journals and promotes pro-European
movement.
III Decolonization Abroad
* Overview: Phase 1: 1918-1939: Iraq independence 1932; Irish Free
State 1922; Indian self-government 1935; Egypt 1922; Phase 2: 1945-48;
India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Palestine>Israel 1948. Phase 3: 1958-1962:
most of Europe’s Asia and African territories freed; highlights:
Algeria 1962, Vietnam 1954, Belgian Congo 1960; Phase 4: 1975 Angola,
Mozambique.
* Contrasting British and French experiences: French fight two long
colonial wars, First Vietnam war, 1946-1954; Algeria 1956-1962; British
exit gracefully.
• Origins of decolonization: four approaches: metropolitan theory,
international politics, peripheral forces, neo-colonialism
• No single explanation-all four approaches have some validity.
Most important factor is international: postwar weakness of European
colonial powers + both USA and USSR oppose traditional colonialism
and exert pressures.
Conclusion
* France’s use of torture in Algeria completes demise of European
“civilizing mission”
• Algerian war destroys France’s Fourth Republic (1944-1958),
creating present Fifth Republic with De Gaulle as first president
• Cold War and decolonisation boost European unity movement>stronger
sense of identity and belief in a European Europe and- for some- a
hope of a Third Force between the superpowers.
• Decolonization does not= end of Europeasn influence. Formal
empire replaced by informal economic, military and cultural influence.
linguistic legacies: English , French, Spanish, Portuguese
• Decolonization = second colonization of Europe 1962-2003:
immigration>redefinition of European identities