My Parents' Connections to WWII

Dialogue with my mom:

Me: Did Poppi enlist to fight in WWII?

Mom: After graduating from college at age 17, dad decided to sign up for the navy. He was quickly recognized as a potential officer for the navy.

Me: What does being an officer mean?

Mom: I don’t know exactly, but it meant that he wasn’t going to fight. He was further tested and determined to have a very high IQ. He was brought into a special ‘think tank’ where he was involved in breaking codes and breaking strategy.

Me: Did he ever tell you about it?

Mom: Throughout his life, he was most reluctant to discuss the details of his experience, which he said was because his involvement was ‘classified.’ I also know that dad met mom immediately after he enlisted and they were married two weeks later, only days before he went into service.

Me: Do you know any of the codes he helped break?

Mom: Not really. I know he was involved with breaking the Japanese code. He was also involved with interpreting encrypted correspondence between Nazi allies. He never learned to operate a gun, he was a navy brain.

Dialogue with my Dad:

Dad: My dad was a doctor. His name was Milton. He was an eye surgeon. He was an officer in WWII, he was called a flight surgeon. He was stationed in Massachusetts, I’m not sure of the town but somewhere in Massachusetts. So he enlisted as a doctor.

Me: Did he tell you any stories about it?

Dad: He never spoke about it with me. Also my uncle, your great aunts husband, Arthur Roth, was a pediatrician in the army. But they were all based in the US, they were not in the European theater of operations.

Me: What is the European theater?

Dad: It referred to the battlegrounds in Europe.

Me: Anyone else?

Dad: I think my uncle— your great, great uncle— was an attorney for the US army in New York City, His name was Hyman Chipkin.

Me: Do you think it was especially important for your family to be involved in WWII because they were Jewish?

Dad: Oh yes. They were Americans fighting for freedom. This was a war against oppression. This was a righteous war. This was not like any other war that we have ever had. WWII was fighting against a force that wanted to dominate the entire world. The Fascist government of Germany was trying to subdue every country including our own. Because my family were American Jews they felt doubly responsible to help the war effort.

Me: Because they could?

Dad: Yes because here, in America they could. I know so many people whose grandparents were in concentration camps. Nazis were snuffing out the innocent just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s just unbelievable.

Me: Do you know anyone in our direct family that perished in the holocaust?

Dad: No one in my direct family was lost. They immigrated from Austria before the war. They were smart. I never talked to my grand parents about what happened with their parents.

I think that this was a great form of propaganda because it appealed to people's competitive sides. It encouraged people to work in factories because it implied that if they did so, the opposition would be easily trampled. It also made people feel like they were directly contributing to the destruction of the enemy because the text was directed at the people. It didn't say "Help the soldiers bowl them over," which would have made the citizens feel more distant. So, overall, this was good propaganda because it got people in a frame of mind that was conducive to helping the war cause in the form of making weapons.

Strength Through Manipulation

I mistakingly chose to watch "The Wave" part 1 video. Yes the dialogue was cheesy (a common theme among 80's movies) and yes the way he got the message across was cheesy as well, however this movie brings up a good point. The point is that Hitler did not brainwash his people, which is the common misconception in my point of view with students studying Hitler's rise to power. Instead, he successfully manipulated the people he ruled over, using his under ranks as tools for popularity, and his speeches for political momentum. I guess, and I wont stand too strong with this claim, that the teacher is similar to Hitler in the way that he used phrases to gain the people's approval. This experiment was a good one in the way that it encapsulated a small part of Hitler's rise to power. However, I do not feel that this video is the best representation of Hitler's beginning of the third reich. It over simplifies an event too complicated for a class experiment. 

Quick Question

After watching the documentary on the Stanford Prison experiment, I was left wondering a couple of things.  First, why didn't the people have the students talk again after so many years?  You would think that the people would have some pretty interesting things to say so many years after it occurred.  Plus, some of the actual reaction might have "worn off," which might mean that they could have a more meaningful conversation.  

Also, why didn't the documentary have any interviews of any of the other participants?  We can probably assume why the other guards didn't stop the main one, but what do the guards have to say for themselves?  

Another question that I have, among the many, is was there ever going to be a prison break or what did the prisoners do right after they were released?  Did they take a day or two to recover, or did they tell anyone about what was going on?  You would have to think that they did something after all that they went through.  Maybe they suffered from almost a Post Traumatic  Stress Syndrome and thought that if they told anyone, they would be taken back to the prison.  This might make sense because at least one person had to be told directly that it wasn't a prison before he would agree to be let go.

Finally, did the experiments have any longerish term affects on any of the participants, guard or prisoner, because you couldn't just think that they could go through all that and then just let it go.  

Boring but somewhat Effective

My initial reaction to the Wave experiment was that the acting was probably the worst showcase of talent that has ever been recorded. Because of this it was hard to concentrate and it was difficult to truly understand the point of the experiment. However, when the entire class is chanting the phrases, "Strength through community, strength through discipline, strength through action" it is hard not to be chilled by seeing such disturbing classroom behavior. Another point that I think is important to recognize is the fact that this group began to grow so quickly and the fact that people outside of the class did not ridicule it, yet they joined it. Truthfully, I believe that this scenario would be a likely failure at Menlo. Menlo parents, teachers, and administrators encourage my classmates and I to create our own thoughts and this idea of a class with a symbol and a salute would soon crumble. I do understand how if the entire class began to join into the experiment and if a respected teacher told us to partake in this group many people would likely join. The main difference I would expect with Menlo students is that they would be able to draw the line unlike these mid 1980s kids could not. The thing that is the scariest to me is that the Wave was a way out for insecure students such as Robert. We can truly see their commitment to the Wave when Robert says, "For the first time in my life I feel like I am a part of something great!" Then one of his fellow female classmates said, "This is like being born again." Both of those statements are deep from within and are very meaningful. To conclude, I will create an obvious connection between Adolf Hitler and Mr. Ross. They both are great public speakers and sometimes a good speech can convince anyone. Both Hitler and Mr. Ross often used the words change and hope to stir up the general public to gather more followers. I hope that our society has moved far enough along to avoid something like this from happening again.

Homework, Tuesday March 10th

Once you've read pages 702 through 707 in the text book, take a look at one (or more) of these videos. The first is footage from a TV special on the "Third Wave," an experiment carried out at Cubberley High School (in Palo Alto) in 1967. The teleplay, aired in 1981, reenacted the experiment. Recently, the story was remade in the German film Die Welle, which won two German film wards in 2008. The second, in the same vein (and the same grainy '80s PSA film) is The Children's Story, a short TV film based off of a story written by James Clavell in 1963. The story wasn't published until 1981; the TV adaptation was made the following year. The premise in a nutshell: life after the Soviet takeover (very much a document of the Cold War, this story). The final two vary in length, but both deal with the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. The first is a documentary, that includes interviews with participants and Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford psych prof who ran the study. The second, a bit longer, is the official documentary recapitulation of the experiment (available for sale at the experiment website, run by Zimbardo himself).

Emboldened, not Appeased

Check it out:

Christopher Hitchens' recent piece on Slate.com is little more than a synthesis of what many of you were saying about the Taliban presence in Pakistan's Swat Valley and the principle of appeasement as international policy. You can respond to the piece in the forum set up by Slate. I encourage you all to get in there, see what others are saying, and offer up your two cents.