March 24-26: Fortress Europe

Class Cancelled Monday March 24

Dear Students,

Class is cancelled for Monday March 24. You have an extension of your break to work on your critical reviews and your research papers.

Our schedule will be pushed back a day, including all the presentations. Those presentations scheduled for Monday will go on Wednesday. Those scheduled for Wednesday will be pushed to the following Monday, repeat until the end of the semester.

We will have class on Monday April 28 which was previously scheduled as a day off.

Best,
Lon Strauss

Maria Gonzalez - Presentations on 3/10/08

I really thought it was interesting how the specific medications had benefits and side effects as influential as they were.  Medical problems were as much of a problem or more of a problem than the opposing armies.  I had not realized that medical advances had such a large impact on the soldiers.  Before this presentation I just thought that medical problems were just something that soldiers dealt with, but I now know that it was more difficult than just dealing with the medical problems.  I also thought it was interesting in how liberally the sulfa drugs and penicillin was used.  

Herman Goering was most interesting to me for his art fascination.  His huge collection distracted him from his military life.  I thought it was quite interesting that he was able to have a distraction like this and he was still able to have his political love with Hitler.  He was even close enough to become Hitler's heir.  I wonder what he might have been able to do if he had not had this art collection and distraction.  If he were more focused on his military goals he would probably caused more damage to the innocent victims.  

Presentation

The presentation over the Kasserine Pass was very informative. It was a race to control mountain passes through the Dorsalo Mountains in North Africa. It was a battle to control Africa. Arnin attacked Allied troops in January of 1943. There were 170,000 Axis troops and 150,000 Allied troops led by General Eisenhower and British Lt. General Anderson. Germans took the pass on February 20th, but the Allies retook the pass on the 25th. German forces pulled out of Africa to go to the Russian border. Allied forces now had control of the Mediterranean Sea shipping lanes and they were able to work out their ground forces issues in the battle. It was the US's first major battle with Germans.

Presentations

The presentations on medical advances was very informative and interesting. To see how far they went just during the war years was interesting. It would kinda be weird to see soldiers out on the front lines today with the packet of antibiotics rubbing it on their wounds. Also that malaria was a probably a bigger threat than an enemies bullet was astonishing. I also didn't realize how large Pfizer was in WWII in suppling goods to the military.

I never knew Hitler had chosen his heir so early on. Also to think though that Hermans godfather was a jew was intringing because of the fact that he went along with everything Hitler said and did against them. I wonder if Hitler knew he was using government money to buy art and what he would have done to Herman if he had found out? I also think that he took the cowards way out by killing himself before he was to be hung.

Presentations

The Monday presentations on medical advances of WWII and Hermann Goering were very interesting and informative.

I was somewhat surprised to learn that the Japanese were no more adept at fighting off malaria than the Americans. I guess I just assumed that since they were jungle fighters that they would not be plagued as badly with this problem. To think that on the Bataan peninsula that 500-700 people fell ill per day is a staggering thought that I cannot even imagine. And, to top that off there was an approximate 500,000 cases of malaria reported. Disease seemed to be almost as bad an enemy to all the troops as they were to each other.

I did not realize that Hitler had chosen an heir to his German government considering that Hitler was usually a one-man show. It is interesting to note that Goering surrendered to the Allies and was the highest official at the Nuremberg trials, since those that were equal in command had committed suicide to avoid the inevitable.

Medicine presentation

I thought the presentation on medical advances was very well done. Its hard to imagine just how far we've come in such a short time. Penicillin is such a ubiquitous part of the medical landscape now, it's amazing how we ever did without it.