Podcasts

From the podcasts, one thing in particular that I hadn't really thought about before was how the economic problems in the U.S. affected the economy in Germany. It's pretty common knowledge that Germany had significant economic problems after World War 1, but I guess I never considered how a depression in America could add to this problem. In the Post-War Economic problems podcast, Evan or Rem, I don't remember which, mentioned that a major concern was that the U.S. was going to have to pull funds from the rebuilding of Germany. So, indirectly, you could even say that the Depression was somewhat of a factor in causing World War 2, as Germany was left in a greater state of despair than they would have been if the United States had been capable of helping them.

Book Report

The book I read was Flyboys by James Bradley, about the mistreatment and murder of 8 prisoners of war taken at Chichi Jima during World War 2, just 25 miles away from Iwo Jima. This book was really interesting to me because it was about the perspective of both the United States and Japan. The story of these 8 prisoners was a focus, becaue it had been classified for so long, but the bigger picture was looking at all of the little factors and cultural trends that led to the way that Japan and the United States were at the time of World War 2. I thought this was really cool because the event that the author was talking about was something that the Japanese did that was really horrific, but he still managed to tell both sides relatively without bias. I learned a lot about Japanese culture that I didn't know, including that the suicidal kamikazes and samurai and stuff, was not originally part of their military culture, it was mostly the government twisting tradition to control people. I also learned that the U.S. wasn't as innocent as they pretended when it came to Imperialism and their policies in colonized nations. This book was very interesting due to the fact that it gave me such a new perspective on things that I already thought  I had a pretty good understanding of.

124-137 Goff Reading

This totalitarian government business is confusing to me. World War I was the downful of a lot of the old monarchies because people began to see how ineffective it was to have one person ruling. So why, right after realizing this, would they allow a dictator to take power? I guess I understand that they wanted security after the uncertainty of the war, but it seems like this is not really the way to go. Totalitarian governments ended up being a huge cause of World War II, and this really shouldn't have come as a huge surprise. When you give one, power-hungry, unbalanced person and in most cases, former military leader, all of the power, you really shouldn't expect that ehy're going to do their best to stay out of a war, or that they even have the diplomatic capabilities to avoid war. Obviously it's easier to say this in hindsight, people at the time were pretty scared, but seriously, crazy dictator doesn't scream "security" to me.

Gilbert pg. 80-98

 The part of the reading that I was kind of confused by was the part about Romania and Bulgaria. I had never really learned anything prior to this about Romania or Bulgaria having a significant effect on the war, so I really had no idea they were even involved to such extent. The book calls the declaration of war against Romania by Bulgaria Germany's "trump card". Why is this such a big deal? I've never even heard of this before. So either the public education system has failed me or I'm just really bad at retaining information. Neither Romania or Bulgaria was obligated to join in the war by treaty or alliance, neither one had anything significant to gain, neither one was big enough to come in as some kind of superpower and end the war. So why did this happen? And why was is it so important?
So I "Googled" it! Yay! And apparently, Bulgarians were still angry about the Balkan wars, as Romania controlled land in the Balkans that was previously Bulgaria's. So when Germany promised to restore their territories, they joined the war. Germany benefited because Romania  was a Russian ally, but I still don't see why it was so important.

102-115 Homework Assignment

Question 9: Was German "unrestricted submarine warfare" an avoidable mistake?
This question was difficulte for me to answer because it is easy to see why it was a mistake, but it was difficult to see an alternative to the decision. Germany had really nothing over the Allies except their U-Boats, and if they let U.S. supply ships through to Britain, they would lose their only edge. So from that standpoint it seems like they had no choice. However, it is obvious that if they started consistently attack U.S. ships, the U.S. would join the war and probably end it. So, I don't really know whether the mistake was avoidable, or if they had indirectly lost before they even reached this point.