Friday, February 1, 2008
Countries Fighting for Power
During the time between WWI and WWII multiple individuals throughout the world worked their way into positions of power. There were leaders in Russia, Italy, and Japan that sought power with new and radical beliefs. Hitler was not alone in his radical quest for power. Many new radical leaders were doing aweful things to people much like Hitler did. They believed that what they were doing was the right thing to do. Their skewed perceptions and actions were in many cases overlooked. Why was this when so many bad things were happpening? And why were these horrific actions not remembered like Hitler's actions?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I agree here. No one, Stalin or otherwise, seems to have as much notoriety as Hitler. However, that is not to say that I think that any negative perception of Hitler should be lessened in favor of making him seem any less heinous than any other at the time.
In Russia's case, from a western perspective on history, it makes sense that we gloss over Stalin's murderous purges. It makes you look bad when your allies are depicted as brutal tyrannical regimes. Its less messy to instead focus on our enemies the Germans.
The other issue is that Hitler based his murders on race, religion, and sexual lifestyle primarily. That strikes a chord with our nation's stance on equality. (granted we aren't perfect in those regards)
I think, as mentioned in class, it has a lot to do with getting our history and background from the Europeans. We identify more closely with what was happening in Europe at the time than we do with the problems of Japan, or Russia.
It is strange how history decides which terrible occurances in the world become known and remembered as the "worst" of events. With World Ward 2, the most infamous attrociaty is the conduct of the Nazi Regime in regards to the Holocaust in which millions of people were murdered because the Third Riech said that had to be removed from the world. I really do not have an answer to why the other attrocities that you speak of such as those carried out by the Japanese were not known by history to be as bad.
Post a Comment