Author: shelbycanonico

“Our perception of history derives from past events as transmitted via the written word, not from the events themselves” (Masaaki vii). The connection between history and historiography can be a trepidatious one. While the opinions of those involved in events first hand can yield valuable insight into the feelings of the time, they can also […]

One of the biggest atrocities of World War II was the semi colonization of Europe by Germany. Prior to this time period Europeans had always been the colonists. However, this shift from colonizers to colonized was, baffling enough, not enough to convince European powers that colonial rule was in fact cruel and oppressive. European powers […]

“His blue American passport allowed him to sit on the beach where he swam as a boy with dolphins and turtles, the beach his mother could see from her window as she drank her coffee. It was his unthreatening white hair and turtleneck shirts that allowed him to pass as a foreigner, not a dangerous […]

The ultimate goal of Adolf Hitler regarding the Jews in Europe was to remove them. His initial plan was not to kill them but to have them resettled in another place, Madagascar, where they could not “disturb” German success. While this already radical plan was clearly further radicalized into the eventual systematic murder of the […]

A DP is a term that nations use to generally describe a large group of people otherwise known as refugees. Over the years there has been a movement to standardize the treatment of these people and thereby make them more easy to deal with. However, due to the overwhelming number of refugees following World War […]

While the Marshall plan is generally heralded as a success, its intentions were murky at best and more accurately self-serving. The Marshall Plan was disguised as a European Recovery act, and while it did provide monetary aid to the struggling post-war European countries, the Marshall Plan placed heavy contingencies on this aid. Primarily, the plan […]

Wars are polarizing times that often result in changes in ideology. Each side is forced to pick a side and they then revert to the extremes of the ideological spectrum of that particular issue. Human rights became that issue in World War II. Human rights talks gained importance during the World War II period first […]

In every war there is always a multitude of perspectives. World War II was no different, particularly in regard to the US use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While the traditional US opinion is that dropping the bombs was a necessary evil that eventually saved more lives than it took, the Japanese however, […]

Today we have learned just how important and real mental illness is in our society, particularly among our veterans and military personnel. However, in the World War II era these men were not given this same respect or aid. They were viewed as cowards or deserters and told that they were weak (similar to the […]

The photograph above depicts the lost children of Lidice, a group of juveniles that were taken from their Czechoslovak homes and repatriated into German families. This was done in an attempt to “Germanize” them and thus increase the German population without decreasing the feelings of national identity. However, these children were not the only victims […]