Blog 4 History

Received some info from the good folks at HBO about their upcoming documentary called WARTORN 1861-2010 from executive producer James Gandolfini, which premieres this Veterans Day, November 11th at 9pm on HBO.

Civil War doctors called it hysteria, melancholia and insanity. During the First World War it was known as shell-shock. By World War II, it became combat fatigue. Today, it is clinically known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a crippling anxiety that results from exposure to life-threatening situations such as combat.

With suicide rates among active military servicemen and veterans currently on the rise, the HBO special WARTORN 1861-2010 brings urgent attention to the invisible wounds of war. Drawing on personal stories of American soldiers whose lives and psyches were torn asunder by the horrors of battle and PTSD, the documentary chronicles the lingering effects of combat stress and post-traumatic stress on military personnel and their families throughout American history, from the Civil War through today’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The HBO Documentary Films presentation debuts on Veterans Day, THURSDAY, NOV. 11 (9:00-10:15 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.

Historymasters.org identified the Top 50 American History Blogs (Now I know they do it strickly for promotional purposes, but still it is nice to get recognized):

The United States has had a rather eventful history — in spite of its being considered a somewhat young nation. Born out of a revolution, the United States is full of interesting turning points. History scholars have long been fascinated with the mix that has led to the rise of one of the most powerful nations ever to exist in a relatively short period of time.

You don’t have to be a history professional, though, to enjoy the history of the United States. Many people find history — specifically U.S. history — a great hobby. If you are interested in learning more about the history of the U.S., you can read some of these 50 American history blogs:

Blog 4 History: Looks at interesting facts, stories and more related to U.S. history.

The Guide To Online Schools, which is an online education directory that specializes in online degrees, online schools, and distance learning, picked Blog4history.com as one of its 100 Best History Blogs.

From the publisher:

Reading about history on encyclopedia-type sites can be a drag. The information is completely static, and new research and discoveries take time to make their way into the text. History blogs, on the other hand, recognize that history is a dynamic field: they update frequently and find new and interesting ways to interpret old information. Here you will find a list of the best historical blogs out there, organized by both time period and region.

The list for United States History:

United States History

* Religion in American History: A group blog written by two academics and various guest bloggers, this site discusses issues of religion in America. From the founding and colonization to current issues, no (religious) stone is left unturned.
* U.S. History Blog: General U.S. history makes up this blog. Other media concerning American history are aggregated here.
* Historian: Written by a professor of history at the University of Colorado, this fun blog explores history and sexual politics in America, from 1492-present. She discusses LGBT issues, current research, pop culture, and more.
* Boston 1775: J.L. Bell writes this blog about Boston in the time leading up to the American revolution.
* Native America, Discovered and Conquered: The Lewis and Clark law school library maintains this great blog about what happened to Natives of America during the country’s “discovery.”
* Naval History Blog: If you’re interested in military history, this is the place to go. Maintained by the U.S. Naval Institute, this blog has lots of guest bloggers and multimedia content.
* Civil War History: This blog covers the period of history in the mid 19th century during the American Civil War.
* Blog 4 History: This aesthetically pleasing page has great posts about happenings in U.S. history. There are also primary documents, such as diaries and letters, on the site.
* U.S. Intellectual History: This group blog has posts about the history of thought in America, and the intellectuals that have shaped American national identity.
* Western Americana: The American West is the historical focus of this blog. The fur trade, mining, ranching, cattle, and the frontier are covered.
* Explore Southern History: Cities in the Southern U.S. are highlighted on this blog. Natural wonders, forts, and archaeological sites are some of the subjects explored.

Nincompoop Hollywood writer/director Oliver Stone told the Sunday Times of London (would link to it but you have to pay, a simple internet search finds commentary on this topic) — while promoting his documentary South of the Border about South American politics — that “Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support. Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people.”

He spews on: “We can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good,’…[Hitler] is the product of a series of actions. It’s cause and effect. People in America don’t know the connection between WWI and WWII.”

Stone proclaimed that the “Jewish domination of the media” is why Hitler gets the historical shaft….

My God, then again this guys loves Hugo Chavez and Castro.

The government wants to regulate and in some instances start taxing blogs and other websites. Great! More government cuz you know it does such a good job regulating and taxing and dealing with oil spills and hurricanes…. yea, more government can’t wait for government run health care! But I digress.

Read these news stories:

FCC set to reconsider broadband regulations

High-Speed Internet Rules Might Prove Costly

New Bill Gives Presidnet ‘Kill Switch’ To Shut Down The Internet

FTC floats Online News tax

Now I am sure that the government knows best and is doing what is best for us. I’m sure they are only looking out for our best interests and have no political agenda…. you know now that we’re in an era of “transparency” and “change we can believe in…”

The History Channel’s “America: The Story of Us,” began with a nice introduction by President Obama. Rolfe at Jamestown, the horrible conditions, and the exceptional nature of the survival of the early colonies. Then in an even more grand style, it reveals the Revolution and heroci struggles at battles such as The Battle of Yorktown. Featuring a mixture of reenactments, CGI and commentary by Americans from politics, media, business and academia the series is compelling and informative. Also, for educators, your principle can request the DVD for FREE: Click Here.

There were a slew of news stories last week that specifically mentioned that Stone worked with two unnamed historians for his up-coming documentary on Hitler and other mass murders in an attempt to give us “empathy” for them and “provide” us with historical context to their rise to power. According to hundreds of news articles:

“…two historians are helping him [Stone] with [the doc]… to offer a fuller understanding of the 20th century…”

Stone’s message, “Hitler [was] enabled by Western bankers.” This should be interesting to see what connections Stone attempts to make and what sources he uses, but most importantly who are the two historians? I searched, and searched, and could not find them.

What I do know about post-WWI American businesses is that they wanted Great Britain and France to ease the reparations and the United States to forgive war payments in an attempt to protect their investments in Europe and Germany.

Now what Stone will attempt to establish is that it was not monetary interests alone, but more importantly racist, Jew hating capitalists somehow facilitated Hitler’s rise…

So who are Stone’s historians that apparently will provide him with the proper historical data?

Stay tuned.

[the photo is of our guy Stone and one of his heroes, Hugo Chavez. Need we say more?]

Oliver Stone is no stranger to conspiracy theories and to gross historical inaccuracies (see JFK for starters, Oswald was the lone shooter), and it looks like he is taking on yet more “misunderstood” events and people (thank God for Oilver Stone or we would all be , as he says “ignorant.”); only this time his focus is frankly mind-boggling. (Oh how I wish he’d stick to movies like Platoon, that was a great flick!)

According to the Progressive/Marxist director, “Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy — these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history,” – as quoted at the Television Critics Association in Pasadena. Stone is a Cultural Relativist who is not interested in “secret” or “true” stories about history. (Interesting  how he groups McCarthy with those other three. Whatever.)

We could say that Stone just wants to reexamine these controversial figures and figure out what made them tick, and how they came to be!? Not so fast.

Consider the following:

“Stalin has a complete other story,” Stone said. “Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good.’ Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He’s the product of a series of actions. It’s cause and effect … People in America don’t know the connection between WWI and WWII … I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view. We’re going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions … Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated.”

Let me get this right!? He is going to tell a more “factual representation” of fascists dictators who did not kill millions, but tens of millions. His comment, “Hitler is an easy scapegoat…” is so full of ignorance and intellectual hogwash… only the mind of a Progressive nincompoop could utter such a stupid statement. Who has used and how has Hitler been used as a “scapegoat”? Neo-Nazis? Facists? I can’t wait to see.

How about this comment, “People in America don’t know the connection between WWI and WWII.” This is pure lunacy. Maybe the Hollywood hacks he hangs out with don’t! Every student that leaves 90% of United States history classrooms in this country was exposed to the relationship between those two events. If anyone does not know how WWI lead to WWII they are ignorant – War reparations, war guilt, the loss of key industrial territory, and thus Germany was destined during the Great Depression to be a breeding ground for a radical, eloquent, and charismatic persona such as Hitler. This purely evil person has nothing that needs to be studied, other than the environment (as already mentioned and including: hyper-inflation in Germany. If you are starving and someone tells you they know who is to blame and how you can live better, you will listen as well.) Besides, what led to Hitler was Germany’s neighbors and what they did; it was created in part by the French and their desire to punish Germany. Will this be explained? I hope so. Will the German people be held accountable? Lot’s of questions.

So will the above be covered and highlighted? Keep reading.

“I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view,” says Stone. Good, glad to hear it. Only you would want to walk in their shoes.

Understanding the past is a part of the historiography, indeed. Yet the implication for Stone, it seems from the above quote, is to put America in a cause and effect relationship with Hitler, “Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM.” It could be interesting to see how American corporations were duped by Hitler, just like so many politicians and political leaders. However, will this simply be a way for Stone to imply we are at fault for Hitler’s rise and his designs on Jews and Europe? (I wonder if Stone will talk much about “Mein Kampf”, Appeasement, Ambassador Kennedy to England who saw nothing wrong with the Nazis and Hitler, ect.?)

Note: If you are a teacher who wants to show a good and historically accurate account of Hitler, show your class Hitler in Colour.

According to reports, the 10-part documentary series from Showtime will also focus on events that “at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America’s unique and complex history of the last 60 years.” Such events as: President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Showtime is behind the curve here, big time. I wonder if they are aware of how much the Left and the New History movement has already written about these two events for what is going on 3-4 decades now?

However, perhaps the point is that this simply is an opportunity to show America as being just as evil for having dropped two nuclear bombs on innocent civilians when it did not have to (according to one point of view that is not widely accepted by historians)? Forget Hitler, might their point be: how many millions have we killed? I guarantee you there will be some kind of comparison that will imply how we are morally no better than them (the Nazis). Just wait.

I hope I am way off base here. I liked Stone’s movie W. It was an interesting look into Bush and I thought it was fair and revealing.

But knowing Stone’s political viewpoints and his actions abroad, I suspect this series will not be a fair or balanced presentation. It will not be History, and therefore it belongs on Showtime.

So I suggest you get a copy of The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders or maybe to a lesser extent, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, and read them if you want to understand how culture, acute malignant culture, can lead to Hitler. As I doubt Stone will tell that story.

I got a chance tonight to catch a re-airing of the History Channel’s Aftershock: Beyond The Civil War. Though I enjoyed the documentary and as far as I can tell it did an excellent job establishing the general mood and conditions of the South and the state of continued violence that ravaged blacks, whites, and Indians, it did so by sensationalizing, and in at least one instance, flat out misrepresentation.

In a small region of North Carolina, a group of Indians and former slaves become bandits dedicated at first to steal from wealthy white plantation owners. The group was lead by Henry Berry Lowry, who became a legend and to this day is idealized as a kind of Robin Hood. According to the History Channel, Lowry was a freedom fighter who was inspired to wage war because of the brutal execution of his father and brother by KKK and Home Guard members out to intimidate innocent law abiding people. And though they were executed, it did not happen as dramatized by HC and nor were the actual circumstances even mentioned. In the scene depicted in the documentary, a group of Home Guard Southerns show up with rifles loaded, take aim at the helpless pair standing along a lonesome road, and fire away in a brutal scene of white racism and terror – which indeed happened time and again in the South during Reconstruction. However, this is not how this particular incident happened. Here is what really happened:

“On March 3, 1865, Allen Lowry and his son William were tried in a hastily organized sham court, declared guilty of theft, and executed in Robeson County. While William was almost certainly a member — and perhaps even the leader—of a gang that committed robberies, it is unlikely that the elderly Allen was involved in any raids. What is certain is that the two men’s deaths sparked North Carolina’s famous Lowry War, a seven-year period of raids, robberies, and murders.” [Jenny McElroy, "March 1865 — Executions Spark the Lowry War," This Month in North Carolina History, March 2008.]

The gang was indeed a kind of Robin Hood band, only they were not interested in helping the poor, freedom, or helping their neighbors. They were motivated by jealousy, and “the riches of their more affluent neighbors became too tempting for four of Allen Lowry’s sons…”

They were not freedom fighters, but as I understand it, gangsters who wanted to “Get Rich, or Die Try’n.” Kind of the 50 Cent of their time. They were, at their core, outlaws bent on revenge and plunder. However, the HC has decided to use their interesting and sensational story as a narrative device.

Tell us about history, show us dramatic recreations, just do it honestly. Just because the idea of the Lowry Gang being freedom fighters who steal from the evil racists Whites and give to the minority poor makes us feel better, does not mean it is a license to make fiction. There is plenty of examples of terror and terrorism by Whites, as properly shown in the HC‘s handling of the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee and Arkansas. Stick to the facts HC, and stop sensationalizing history, stop Hollywoodizing your productions. You might lose some viewers who want HISTORY!

Whether you appreciate Reagan or not. Whether you think he had much to do with the Berlin Wall coming down or not, his “Tear Down This Wall” speech is historic and prophetic. In honor of the anniversary of the “fall” of the Berlin Wall and the flourishing of freedom in Eastern Germany: