Should history teachers use Blackadder in the classroom?

In an article on the teaching of the First World War in The Daily Mail on 2nd January, 2014, Michael Gove wrote: “Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage. The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths.”


Gove then goes on to argue: "The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war. The ruthless social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified.”

The Education Secretary says it is time to listen to historians such as Margaret Macmillan who has “demonstrated how those who fought were not dupes but conscious believers in king and country, committed to defending the western liberal order”.

Gove then goes on to attack Professor Sir Richard Evans, the Cambridge historian by claiming that he has argued that “the men who enlisted in 1914 may have thought they were fighting for civilisation, for a better world, a war to end all wars, a war to defend freedom: they were wrong”. Just to make sure that The Daily Mail readers will support his argument about Evans, he points out that he also writes for The Guardian. 

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Solomon Northup, Wikipedia and the 12 Years a Slave film.

In an article in yesterday's Guardian, the British director, Steve McQueen, of Oscar-tipped drama 12 Years a Slave, criticised Hollywood for a historical paucity of movies on slavery. The film is based on the autobiography of Solomon Northup. McQueen argues the industry has largely ignored the subject of slavery. The article quotes an interview given by McQueen to Sky News: "The second world war lasted five years and there are hundreds and hundreds of films about the second world war and the Holocaust. Slavery lasted 400 years and there are less than 20 films. We have to redress that balance and look at that time in history."

The same is true of websites in the USA. Do a search at Google for "Solomon Northup" and see what you get. At the top you will get his Wikipedia entry. In its early days Google attempted to give you the best page at the top of its searches. With its reliance of "domain authority"the situation has changed. If Wikipedia has produced a page on a subject, it will appear at the top of any search. Google has a domain authority of 100. Whereas the Guardian has a score of only 96 (American newspapers are rated higher as this is Google's plan to allow its country to dominate mass communications). Even our top universities like Cambridge and Oxford only have domain authority ratings of 94. 

The Wikipedia entry is fairly detailed account of his life (this has been increased dramatically since the release of 12 Years a Slave). My problem with the entry for Solomon Northup is that it makes no attempt to capture what it was like to a slave in the United States. There is no excuse for this as Northup produced a magnificent memoir of his experiences.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASnorthup.htm

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The Angel of Auschwitz

Gisella Perl was born into a Jewish family in Hungary in 1907. At 16 years old, Gisella Perl graduated first in her secondary-school class, the only woman and the only Jew. She asked her father to send her to medical school, but he refused at first, saying "I do not want my daughter to lose her faith and break away from Judaism.'' Several months later, she approached him again, this time with a prayer book he had given her, and said, ''I swear on this book that wherever life will take me, under whatever circumstances, I shall always remain a good, true Jew.'' Maurice Perl now changed his mind and she was able to enroll in medical school.

She married a surgeon and was working as a gynecologist in Máramarossziget when the German Army invaded the country in 1944. Gisella and the rest of her family, were deported to extermination camps. Anne S. Reamey has pointed out: "As with many Jews across Hungary, Dr. Perl and her family were forced into a ghetto before being transported to Auschwitz in March 1944. After eight excruciating days packed tightly into cattle cars with almost no food or water, Dr. Perl's transport arrived at the gates of Auschwitz. As they entered into what, for many, would be their final resting place, families were separated into two lines: those going to the right were subjected to forced labor (about 3,000 people) while those going to the left were exterminated immediately in the gas chambers (7,000-9,000 people)."

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Adolf Hitler and Women

If you study the murder of Geli Raubal in the classroom, a follow up lesson could look at Hitler's relationship with other women. This is always taken into account when examing the death of Geli Raubal. Hitler's first significant relationship took place in 1927. Hitler, then aged 37, became involved with the sixteen-year-old Maria Reiter. Hitler appears to have been strongly attracted to teenagers. He later explained: "A girl of eighteen to twenty is as malleable as wax. It should be possible for a man, whoever the chosen woman may be, to stamp his own imprint on her. That's all the woman asks for." Maria later explained: "We went out into the night.... Hitler was about to put his arm around my shoulders and pull me toward him when the two dogs suddenly attacked each other.... Hitler suddenly intervened, like a maniac he hit his dog with his riding whip... and shook him violently by the collar. He was very excited.... I did not expect that he could hit his dog so brutally and ruthlessly, the dog which he had said he could not live without. Yet he beat up his most loyal companion." Maria asked him "How can you be so brutal and beat your dog like that?" He replied "It was necessary." 

Ian Kershaw has argued Hitler 1889-1936 (1998): "He (Hitler) was thirty-seven years of age; she was sixteen. Like his father, he preferred women much younger than himself - girls he could dominate, who would be obedient playthings but not get in the way. The two women with whom he would become most intimately associated, Geli Raubal (nineteen years younger than he was) and Eva Braun (twenty-three years younger), fitted the same model - until, that is, Geli became rebellious and wanted a level of freedom which Hitler was unwilling to permit." Ronald Hayman has pointed out that there was a regular patten to Hitler's relationships: "Though he found it easy during his twenties and early thirties to make friends with children and with women in their forties and fifties, he was nervous of being rebuffed or humiliated by women of his own age. But at thirty-seven he was old enough to treat a teenage girl as if she were a child. With Maria, once they were sufficiently relaxed in each other's company, there was nothing to stop them from making love." 

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Maria_Reiter.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERrenate.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERbraunE.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERhitler.htm

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Murder Cases in the Classroom

I first started teaching in 1977. The school was using some new Schools Council Project materials called "What is History?" It included the "Mystery of Mark Pullen". The lesson went really well until the end when the students were told that Mark Pullen was not a real person. They felt cheated that they had spent time investigating what they considered a murder case that was not true. My response to this was to create a lesson on a real mystery. I had recently read a book on the Mary Celeste. I therefore decided to create a lesson on a real-life mystery. The students loved it and a couple of years later the material became the first publication of Tressell, the teacher-run cooperative based in Brighton. For many years it was our best selling booklet. Children (and teachers) love mysteries. They especially love murder mysteries. Another best selling booklet was the "Assassination of John F. Kennedy".

One of the reasons that students are attracted to such issues is that it gives them a role in the learning process. Their opinion becomes important and they become active learners. It is also a marvellous exercise for inspecting the evidence. It gives them the chance to be a detective (or more importantly, an historian). The problem is finding enough time in the curriculum to spend on "mysteries". I recently came across a case which might indeed be worth spending a lesson on. 

The case involves the death of Hitler's young niece, Geli Raubal. Officially, Geli killed herself on 18th September, 1931. She was aged 23 and had been having a sexual relationship with her uncle for over two years. The anti-Nazi press published stories suggesting that Adolf Hitler was romantically involved with Geli and that he had murdered her because she was expecting a child by a Jewish music teacher. Hitler issued a statement denying any involvement in her death but the left-wing newspapers continued to carry these stories. Rudolf Hess claimed that Hitler became suicidal because of the rumours that he had shot Geli. "He was so fearfully vilified by this new campaign of lies that he wanted to make an end of everything. He could no longer look at a newspaper because this frightful filth was killing him. He wanted to give up politics and never again appear in public." 

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERraubal.htm

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Major Truman Smith and the Funding of Adolf Hitler

I was reading Hitler: The Missing Years (1957) recently. The book is by Ernst Hanfstaengel, one of Hitler's first financial backers. Hanfstaengel became one of Hitler's inner circle. He was one of his earliest financial supporters and in March, 1923, provided $1,000 to ensure the daily publication of Volkische Beobachter. The newspaper, an anti-Semitic gossip sheet had previously appeared twice a week. With Hanfstaengel's money it was published every day. This was a real breakthrough as it enabled Hitler to build up both membership and funds. Hanfstaengel claims that he was encouraged to meet Hitler by Major Truman Smith, as assistant military attaché at the American embassy in Berlin. This might seem surprising but it reflects the role of intelligence agencies soon after the First World War. We now know that the head of MI6 in America, William Wiseman, was funding anti-Bolshevik groups in Russia since 1917. Was Truman Smith arranging funds for anti-socialist groups in Germany? 

I decided to do some research on Truman Smith. I found his papers are lodged at the the Hoover Institution Archives. In a biographical note it said he was involved with Charles A. Lindbergh in the 1930s. I have a copy of Lindbergh's Autobiography of Values (1976) and A. Scott Berg's biography Lindbergh (1998). These sources reveal that that Truman Smith was definitely working for military intelligence in the early 1920s. He completed a course at the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth. He then became an instructor at the U.S. Infantry School until 1932 when he attended the Army War College. He then served with the 27th infantry regiment in Hawaii. 

In 1935 Truman Smith was appointed as military attaché in Berlin. He was told that his chief responsibility was "to report to Washington about the growth of the German army, including the development of new weapons and new battle tactics." In 1936 he arranged for Charles A. Lindbergh to visit the country. Lindbergh wrote to his mother about the proposed trip: "Comparatively little is known about the present status of Aviation in Germany, so I am looking forward, with great interest, to going there. Even under the difficulties she has encountered since the war, Germany has taken a leading part in a number of aviation developments, including metal construction, low-wing designs, dirigibles, and Diesel engines. If it had not been for the war she would probably have produced a great deal more. On the other hand, if it had not been for the war it is doubtful whether aviation would be as far advanced as it is today."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Truman_Smith.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlindbergh.htm

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Unity Mitford and Adolf Hitler

In June 1933 Unity Mitford and Diana Mitford, joined the British Union of Fascists, the extreme right-wing group founded by Oswald Mosley the previous year. Mosley described her as "young, ingenuous, full of enthusiasm, in a way stage-struck by the glamour and panoply of the national socialist movement and the mass admiration of Hitler" She was active in the women's section headed by Esther Makgill, the daughter of John Makgill: "I created the women's section of the BUF... Unity Mitford didn't mean anything to me in those days. She was swept in by her sister." Her friend, Mary Ormsby-Gore, said that she sold The Blackshirt on the streets of London: "She began to go to the East End, and I went to one meeting with her... One day she took me to Selfridges saying, let's make a record, and she spoke into it, The Yids, The Yids, We've gotta get rid of the Yids." 

Unity told Armida Macindoe that she was determined to meet Hitler: "She used to go to the Osteria Bavaria restaurant and sit waiting for Hitler. She'd sit there all day long with her book and read. She'd say, I don't want to make a fool of myself being alone there, and so she'd ask me to go along to keep her company, to have lunch or a coffee. Often Hitler was there. People came and went. She would place herself so that he invariably had to walk by her, she was drawing attention to herself, not obnoxiously but enough to make one slightly embarrassed. But the whole point was to attract his attention. She'd talk more loudly or drop a book. And it paid off."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WRmitfordU.htm

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