Ah, Christmas memories from childhood… Playing elf to my pediatrician father’s Santa at the Children’s Hospital party. Honoring my Swedish heritage by choking down one bite of lutefisk every Christmas Eve. Getting a pile of Reader’s Digest books about topics like natural disasters and true crime from Grandpa Gehrz the next morning… Good times. And … More A Very Nazi Christmas!
Here’s what happened here and at other blogs and sites in the past week. Here Can historians engage in both empathy and judgment (all without “hindsight bias”)? The case of Neville Chamberlain, as presented by anti-appeaser/historian Winston Churchill. The greatest hero in Swedish military history… Still not quite sure why that should cause me any … More That Was The Week That Was
Last Friday I posted a Wilfred Owen poem, Owen being the greatest poet of World War I and November 11 being the day (a week after Owen’s death) that the fighting on the Western Front ended — and the day that people around the world still commemorate as Remembrance Day (or, in this country, Veterans’ … More Chamberlain and Churchill: Empathy, Judgment, and Hindsight Bias
I wish I had something much more impressive to offer for this, my 200th post at The Pietist Schoolman, but the week being as busy as it’s become, I’m going to punt a bit and devote a post to asking a question: What’s your favorite World War II film (or TV series, or episode of … More WWII in Film
November 8, 1923 – The Beer Hall Putsch in Munich November 8, 1937 – The “Eternal Jew” exhibition opens (also in Munich) It’s an important week for Nazi-related anniversaries. I’ve blogged earlier about the Putsch (on the 16th anniversary of which — November 8, 1939 — Georg Elser failed in his attempt to assassinate Hitler). … More This Day in History: The Worst of Sinners
September 19, 1945 – “Lord Haw Haw” is sentenced to death One of the courses I teach at Bethel University is the capstone of our major program, Senior Seminar, in which students spend the spring semester conducting original research on a topic of their choosing, produce an article-length paper, and close the year by giving … More This Week in History
August 22, 1942 – Brazil declares war on Italy Well, on Germany really; I’m guessing Italy was an afterthought. But I’ve got to think this was close to the last straw for even the most fervent supporters of Mussolini. Imagine with me, if you will, the following dialogue that fateful morning of August 22nd, 1942: … More This Week in History
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Thursday, January 24, 2013 – Dachau Tomorrow we’ll hop a plane back to the States, but as a last experience of post-WWI Europe, we’re … More Pretending
A series of posts taking you day-by-day through a proposed travel version of my course HIS230L World War I. Read the introduction to the series here, or the previous post here. Wednesday, January 23, 2013 – Munich One must know Munich if one would know Germany… That certainly is true of the post-1918 era of … More “The Capital of the Movement”
Now that weather in Minnesota actually resembles July and not March or November, I think I’m finally in the proper mood to ask that overasked question: What to read on one’s summer vacation? The English novelist Andrew Miller — author of the well-received Pure, set in pre-revolutionary Paris — recently shared his list of top … More Beach Reads
The Pietist Schoolman 