2008
- Mark R. Stoneman, "Die deutschen Greueltaten im Krieg 1870/71 am Beispiel der Bayern"; in Sönke Neitzel and Daniel Hohrath, eds., Kriegsgreuel: Die Entgrenzung der Gewalt in kriegerischen Konflikten vom Mittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2008), 223–39. ↩
Is College Worth It?
A Christmas Short Film from 1898
The British Film Institute has a YouTube channel that offers a lot of historic films. Here is “Santa Claus' by G. A. Smith in 1898. Apparently the special effects were quite a feat 110 years ago.
Update: I've removed my YouTube embeds because I don't want to set up consent notices for their trackers. Clicking the above screenshots will take you to the videos on their site. (June 2, 2024)
And a slightly longer film from 1941
For something longer and more in tune with this blog’s recurring theme of war and society, see “Christmas Under Fire” (1941), which looks at Britain at war on Christmas Eve. This film from the Ministry of Information has an American narrator for an American audience. It was made before Pearl Harbor, when the American public had no stomach for going to war in Europe.
Atrocities in the Franco-Prussian War, 1870–71
Illustration of peasants in the Vosges shooting at German soldiers, titled “Paysans des Vosges faisant le coup de feu.” Source: L’Illustration Européenne 1870, p. xvii, via Wikimedia Commons.
An essay on the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) that I wrote last year appeared in print this fall in a book about war atrocities from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century.1 The essay focuses on German soldiers and French civilians using the example of the Bavarians. It examines why soldiers sometimes departed from generally accepted standards in Europe about sparing civilians the effects of war as much as possible.
The war began as a "cabinet war" that the German leadership hoped to win quickly through a series of decisive battles of annihilation. In this way the state, led by the king and his cabinet, would maintain control over the war effort and not face any undue influence from civilians, whether its own or those of the enemy. After destroying the Second Empire's army at Sedan, however, France refused to capitulate. Its people toppled the empire and vowed to fight on. The German leadership had a "people's war" on its hands that it took five more months to win. While the French and Germans fought most of this war with conventional means between armed forces organized by the state, the war also saw substantial civilian involvement that had the potential to lead to an ever deepening spiral of violence.
The most extensive contact between soldiers and civilians occurred as a result of the German military policy of living off the land, which made German forces more mobile. To maintain discipline, officers were supposed to take small details of soldiers to requisition what animals, fodder, and food their units required. Requisitioning resembled theft in that those whose property the German officers took had no choice in the matter, but it differed insofar as the German officers issued receipts for what they took. These would be paid off by whichever side lost. German forces were also quartered on civilian households. These circumstances enabled soldiers to pursue their own private initiatives. If their "hosts" would not give them what they needed, the soldiers often took it.
More famous, however, were reports of armed French civilians called francs-tireurs. While their number was not great enough to present a strategic threat, the German forces did have to devote some 120,000 soldiers to their lines of communication. Armed incidents led the invading soldiers to shoot suspected partisans summarily, burn down houses and even villages where such incidents occurred, and use hostages, most famously on locomotives. While some reactions had an ad hoc quality to them, the common thread was the notion of "military necessity." The German forces found the actions regrettable but necessary, in order to prevent the war from lasting longer than necessary. The idea was to counter French "terror" with measures so harsh that the French would see the error of their ways and refrain from any further resistance.
References for these incidents and the historiography of the Franco-Prussian War are available in this new essay as well as the following related one, in which I devote a lot of space to the events in Bazailles, which the Bavarians infamously burned down during the Battle of Sedan: "The Bavarian Army and French Civilians in the War of 1870–1871: A Cultural Interpretation," War in History 8.3 (2001): 271–93.
My source base for this research was published personal narratives, that is, letters, diaries, and memoirs. Most of them came from Bavarian soldiers and officers, though I drew on other German narratives by way of comparison. It is in some ways surprising how freely the fighting men wrote about these events, but what they were describing was either acceptable in their minds or told in relation to what lines they believed the French had crossed.
One phenomenon I found little mention of was the hostage-taking. This might be because the Bavarian veterans felt they had crossed a line, although it is also worth noting that their units were not as heavily involved in maintaining lines of communication in the rear, which is where the hostage-taking occurred. Recently I learned more about this subject from Heidi Mehrkens' new book, which includes a section on the German military using hostages on locomotives. Mehrkens' book is also helpful, because it uses archival sources that confirm the impressions I gained about relations between soldiers and civilians from the published primary sources.
A New Personal Record in Plagiarism Cases
I had a new personal record in plagiarism cases this semester: eight. With ninety-seven students total on my rolls at the end of the semester, that makes a little over 8%. To be absolutely clear, I am talking about open-and-shut cases. The burden of proof is on the professor, as it should be, so I never report any honor system violations based merely on my suspicions, no matter how strong they might be.
Some of the cases stem from this semester's new bibliography project. In the past I had tried to craft integrative essay assignments that made plagiarism impossible or very difficult, but I had wanted to move beyond text analysis and writing to also cover research skills, which have proven to be a major deficit among many of my students. I had thought a bibliography project would invite less plagiarism than a straight research paper, since I have not seen bibliography essays for sale on the internet. I was right about buying a finished product, but not about preventing plagiarism. Feeling overwhelmed, a few students panicked and opted to copy and paste material they found on the internet. These examples were the clumsiest. I also saw some examples where students worked harder to integrate internet material than they would have had to work, had they simply opened some books and summarized their contents. I saw both types of behavior on the other essay assignments too.
What happens to these students depends on whether it is their first or second offense. The first offenses that I have seen have led to a zero for the assignment in question. Since these are often worth 25% of the course grade, students found guilty of their first honor system violation have to work hard just to earn a "D" in the course. Second offenses have led to failure of the course. Perhaps there were also other sanctions for second-time offenders that I do not know about.
The high number of plagiarism cases has made me wonder what I could change about assignments and assessment in future. Since I am not slated to teach this spring, I have some time to mull this over. Meanwhile, what are your thoughts and experiences?
Vegetable Goodness
I just cooked some bok choy and something similar whose name I don’t know. I won’t be eating these greens tonight, but they were getting old and needed cooking. I used more water than was probably necessary, which left me with some good stock for a soup. Tonight, however, was one of those nights when the stock didn’t get saved. Instead I just drank it. It is amazing how much flavor goes into the water. Presumably some nutrients are in there too, though I was just in it for the flavor and warmth.
I’m pretty simple when it comes to things like this. Maybe sometime I’ll look for recipes, but usually the food from my farm share tastes good without doing more than cooking up vegetables and potatoes or rice, or maybe making a soup out of what is on hand. This afternoon I did that with some white turnips, carrots, Brussels sprouts, an onion, a potato, and some homemade noodles from my CSA. I used some vegetarian bouillon from Rapunzel too, since I am not methodical enough with saving vegetable stock. I have found, however, that the vegetables from my CSA have so much flavor that I need much less bouillon than usual, one half to a third of what the directions call for.
Waiting by the Oven
It’s the end of a long day, or rather the beginning of a new one, if the passing of midnight means anything. Two squash pies are doing their thing in the oven. These were long in the making. I washed a bunch of dishes and cooked the squash this morning. Usually I make the pies for Thanksgiving with canned pumpkin, but we had the biodynamic squash from our farm share, so I did it the old-fashioned way. This included washing and laying out the seeds to dry. (They’ll make a good snack.) Afterwards, I did my weekly food run to Bethesda, where my CSA is. This evening I filled in for someone at LADO, where I’m teaching English to non-native speakers. Then I came back home, took a break, and began converting the cooked squash into two pies. I have leftover pie mixture too, so I’ll make more tomorrow or Friday.
In case you’re wondering, I used a recipe called Dolly’s Pumpkin Pie in Uprisings: The Whole Grain Bakers’ Book (p. 199). This is the same book that taught me how to bake whole grain bread.
At the Bus Stop
People who ride busses have to spend time waiting. I often use the time to think or read, but sometimes I observe the world around me while allowing myself simply to be. And sometimes I pull out a notepad and write down my thoughts.
The sun has started shining differently in the morning and evening. It’s lower in the sky, and it lends a different light to the objects it touches. The colors change, as if they were in pictures printed from slides. (What was the name of that process, when we made pictures from slides, which were basically the opposite of negatives?)
When the sunlight is like this, it becomes a pleasure to let it shine into my eyes as I almost—but not quite—look into it. It carries something that my being craves, the stuff of good moods and a friendly disposition, which can too easily go into hiding when days grow shorter and the nights longer. (How do people survive without the sun in the far north?) During much of the year I go out of my way to be in the shade, but this sun is different. It will disappear soon, giving way to the cold wind and darkness, but not before it has given me the strength I need for a journey in the cold tonight, after the warm feeling and my memory of it have passed.
Language Study Tip: Daily Practice
The following post originally appeared on Language for You (now closed) on on this date under a slightly different title.
When learning a foreign language, it is important to practice daily or even more frequently than that. Many readers will say, "But I don't have time for that!" Sure you do! Really. You just have to let go of the habit of doing a lot of homework and studying all in one long weekly session. Do many short sessions instead. If you only have two hours a week to devote to learning a new language, you could break part of that time up into shorter chunks. You could, for example, take one hour for a long study session. And then you could divide the other hour into four 15-minute sessions. That would give you a total of five sessions in a week. Add to that the class you are probably taking, and you are up to six sessions per week. That will give you the repetition you need to make new words, grammar, and habits of thought sink in. This little amount of time is not ideal. More studying is desirable, but it will bring you a better return on your investment than one long session per week.
Of course, once you get into the habit of these short study sessions, you will find that you can schedule more. What about the five or ten minutes you spend waiting for a bus or train? What about the time you spend on the train? What about when you're walking? You can't look at your books then, but you could look at flash cards with idioms, confusing words, or irregular verbs. You could also simply try thinking in the language you are learning. In this way, the two hours you spend learning the language will grow substantially without actually costing you extra time. And because you are studying frequently and regularly, your brain and mouth and ears will grow accustomed to the language more quickly.
And you know what? It can be fun. It takes your mind off your daily troubles and lets you accomplish something in a short period of time. Pretty soon you will notice that you can feel good about this activity, which gives you one more reason to feel good about yourself. These positive feelings will spark you to keep up and even expand this new study habit.
Online Forums: Blackboard and Wikispaces
Thursday
I had high hopes for today. I had no grading to do or lecture to prepare. I could take off my teaching hat and devote the day to a lot of pressing personal business, especially job applications. But I was nearly immobile for much of the day. Why? It’s not like I haven’t taught long evening classes before, I thought. But then I did the math. This is the first semester I have taught a daytime class and a long evening class. That in itself might be unremarkable, but then there’s the commute too. So maybe I should not feel guilty about Thursdays and just accept that at the moment it is my weekend. After all, I spent last weekend grading, and that will happen next weekend too. And I am teaching English as a Foreign Language on Saturdays to a group of au pairs at a school in my neighborhood called LADO.
But back to that math. Yesterday I got up at 7:00 and left the house a little after 9:00. The commute by bus and train and bus is 90 minutes on a good day, though usually a little longer. I lectured from 11:30 to 12:20. I advised students on an upcoming project for the next hour. I had lunch and caught up on the news via the web. Then I updated Blackboard, the online learning system that George Mason University uses. I returned to the office at 5:00, an hour earlier than usual, because I figured I’d have more visitors than usual, which I did, right down to 7:10. At that point I had to quit advising students and deliver a lecture beginning at 7:20. I managed to end that early, that is, at 9:50, and then I answered student questions until 10:15. I caught a bus at 10:30. Waited 15 minutes for a train. Got into DC about 11:30 and waited for a bus. I got home about midnight. That’s 15 hours on the move. And it really is on the move, because adjunct professors at Mason only have access to office space for office hours. There is not enough room to give us a work space too.
So maybe it’s okay to be exhausted on Thursday, which really is my weekend this semester. One good thing: I’ve been able to ride the train during non-peak hours. Another: I’ve started doing yoga again, and I intend to keep that up, regardless of whatever crazy work schedule I might have in future.
Ninety Years Ago
Today is Veterans Day in the United States. Today also marks the ninetieth anniversary of the end of the Great War, in which 9 to 10 million soldiers died. To make that more comprehensible, try 1,303 German soldiers per day on average. By way of comparison, Americans lost 123 soldiers daily on average during the Second World War.1 The numbers are even more startling when all casualties—killed and wounded—are considered for the First World War: 12.4% of the prewar male population in the United Kingdom, 16.1% for France, 19.3% for Germany, 25.2% for Austria-Hungary, and 6.9% for Russia. 2 If it sounds like Russia got off easy by comparison, remember that this war touched off the Bolshevik Revolution, which brought civil war, famine, and Stalin.
Is the rheotorical war over for now?
Quoth Jim Rutenberg in Harsh Words About Obama? Never Mind Now:
There is a great tradition of paint-peeling political hyperbole during presidential campaign years. And there is an equally great tradition of backing off from it all afterward, though with varying degrees of deftness.
But given the intensity of some of the charges that have been made in the past few months, and the historic nature of Mr. Obama’s election, the exercise this year has been particularly whiplash-inducing, with its extreme before-and-after contrasts.
Whiplash or not, this is congnitive dissonance I can live with.
A Couple Election Night Thoughts
After election night, a few hours’ sleep, and a fourteen-hour Wednesday (not including the late-night trip home from work I’m now on), I’m too tired to write a fresh blog post. Nonetheless, I’d like to share some of my impressions from election night shortly after McCain’s and Obama’s speeches. Here are two comments I wrote at one online forum. The first was on a thread from a guy convinced that Obama is really a socialist. The other was on an upbeat thread asking what Obama’s election meant for America. I share them here, because maybe at some point I will want to remember what I was thinking on that first night.
McCain gave an excellent speech tonight. I hope all his supporters listen to it closely. I hope they listen to Obama’s too. New chapter, folks. Time to roll up the sleeves and get to work.
Obama gave a good speech yesterday that pointed to the tough challenges ahead of us. Instead of triumphalism he talked about the long road ahead. This attitude was clear from his voice and body language too. This is the kind of leadership I have been hoping for. No promises of fast and easy solutions. Just hard work for all of us.
Yes, the campaign is over, and I can start thinking about other things again, like making a living.
Professor Wikipedia
Here’s a satirical video about Wikipedia as a person by CollegeHumor on YouTube.
Update: I've removed my YouTube embeds because I don't want to set up consent notices for their trackers, over which I have no control. Clicking the above screenshot will take you to the video on their site. (June 2, 2024)
My 9/11
A lot of people get angry or sad or both on 9/11. Of course, the loss of life in this country was horrible, but for me that date always brings up the manner in which Bush used Americans' sentiments to go to war against a country that had nothing to do with the attack, Iraq. And in this political season, it brings to mind how McCain was ahead of the curve in calling for that war.
Call these sentiments mean-spirited, if you will. How dare I politick on this day of remembrance? Fair enough, but these sentiments have been with me for many years now. They are part of my 9/11, just as are the worries about friends in New York, the story of a colleague’s husband who missed work that day and whose general was killed in the Pentagon office my colleague’s husband usually also occupied, the tales told by people in my building streaming in from downtown reporting alleged bombs in cars around the city, the military helicopters and jets over the skies of DC and the absence of the usual noisy commercial airliners, a child sick at home and a wife working downtown, the activation of a friend in the DC National Guard for years of active duty in this city and Afghanistan, the quiet evening streets for weeks after the attack, the sudden departure of Arab students from my building because their parents back home feared for their safety, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the color-coded warnings, and the never-ending rhetoric and politics of fear.
Or talk about hindsight being twenty-twenty. Thing is, Bush didn’t need hindsight. All he and his advisors needed was a sense of how countries have reacted to attacks in the past. As a historian, I claim no special insights into the future, but I frequently have a fair idea of what we should be paying attention to in the present. I’m good at asking questions, even if my answers aren’t always right. Here’s what I told my shaken students in Washington, DC seven years ago. And still we don’t teach war and society as a fundamental aspect of the human experience in required undergraduate history courses. What a shame.
The Case against Sarah Palin
This post synthesizes a lot of different reporting and is correspondingly link heavy. Read it on the Internet Archive. I also posted "Poking fun at Sarah Palin: It's all good." on the same day. – MRS, 10/27/2024
Of Bellicosity and Patriotism
I can take the Republican crowd in Dayton on Friday chanting the name of their candidate enthusiastically (00:00 of C-SPAN video).
JOHN MC CAIN
JOHN MC CAIN
JOHN MC CAIN
But I find it uncanny when the same crowd slips into a chant about the United States, eliding one three-syllable chant into another, the candidate into the country (23:00).
U S A
U S A
U S A
The aggressive tone is no different than the one many Americans use at the Olympics, a tone they consider harmless, because they don’t suffer from any concerns about the public image of the Loud American overseas. Only this wasn’t abroad, so there was no need to assert the supposed physical superiority of Americans in such a confrontational way, unless I were to interpret the chanting as support for John McCain’s bellicose foreign policy rhetoric, which it was (21:48).
I couldn’t also help but feel that it was aimed at Democrats, who these people don’t see as real Americans.
U S A
U S A
U S A
John McCain stood there and beamed, as if acknowledging his and his supporters' open secret: only Republicans love their country. Of course, that statement is only true if patriotism equals bellicosity. But it doesn’t. McCain would be a better man if he would acknowledge the following statement by Barack Obama. But he won’t.
. . . Let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America – they have served the United States of America.
So I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.
It takes a true patriot to acknowledge the humanity in and ideals of one’s political opponent
Labor Day
It is Labor Day in these United States of America. Observing this holiday became a bittersweet experience this morning, when Latin American workers showed up to take care of the garden outside my building, as if Labor Day was not for them too. On the other hand, allowing or forcing workers to observe this holiday would hurt them financially, because they would not be paid, just as millions of unorganized American workers are not being paid today. This circumstance is due in part to the weakness of organized labor in this country. Today I am also reminded of how most American media outlets treat news of Wall Street’s welfare as a story about the general interest but news of organized labor as a special interest. Even worse, far too many American workers have internalized this way of thinking.
By the way, did you know that most of the world celebrates this day on May 1st? I guess the internationalist and socialist connotations of that day were too much for this country.
Lessons from the Classroom
What Russia should have learned from Iraq
At the beginning of the week I suggested that Russia might have learned a lesson from the American invasion of Iraq.[^1] One lesson that Russia clearly did not learn was the importance of world opinion. The Bush administration paid a high price for thumbing its nose at allies and friends who opposed the invasion. It did not believe in soft power, but its significant diminution was real nonetheless. Russia’s actions will cost it dearly if it continues to allow its armored vehicles to rumble around Georgia, far away from South Ossetia. Remember that breakaway province? Wasn’t defending it Russia’s casus belli? Sometimes states have to ignore international opinion, but it is important to balance whatever one hopes thereby to gain against what one is going to lose. Russia has more to lose because of its pugnacious behavior than it thinks. It might believe that its interests lie in observing a “jail house yard” code of behavior, and following this model might net it some short-term gains; however, in the long run it will lose more than it can gain. Naked force is a poor substitute for hearts and minds. It is an even worse substitute if those hearts and minds stand behind an opposing force. Hubris is a dangerous thing, Mr. Putin. That’s the real lesson of Iraq.
[^1:] The post I reference here has gone missing. – MRS, 11/3/2024
In Brief: Georgia and Russia Again
This post is better viewed on [the Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/web/20080922205825/http://markstoneman.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/in-brief-georgia-and-russia-again/) because of all the links and some discussion.
McCain’s Ethnically Charged Scare Tactics
See this post as it was cached on the Internet Archive The low resolution images work better in that context. – MRS, 10/27/2024
“Conflict” (USSR 1983)
A stop-motion short by Garri Yakovlevich Bardin (born 1941) about the dangers of possessing, then using, a doomsday weapon.
Hosted at the Internet Archive.
The Vocabulary of Grammar
Looking back, I am surprised at how easy it was for me to get through high school and many college courses without knowing a lot of basic vocabulary related to English grammar. I knew English grammar intuitively, and I could write, but I could not talk about grammar. I am lucky I knew enough intuitively, for this weakness could have become a real handicap for me in my studies.
In fact, it did become a weakness in one subject: Russian. We had to take a foreign language at Dartmouth College, and I fulfilled the requirement with Russian. But I was horrible. I do not believe that I ever rose above a C+. Part of the problem was study habits and discipline, but much of it related to my lack of appreciation of the nature of grammar. The professors used terms like genitive case, dative case, direct object, personal pronoun, possessive pronoun, conjugate, and decline, and it seemed like I had to devote too much energy to understanding that vocabulary and the things it indicated instead of learning Russian. Or I missed points entirely because I did not recognize their significance.
I only appreciated this dilemma later, after I took a break from Dartmouth and came back. During my time away I was in the army and stationed in Germany, where I learned to get by with rudimentary German. Upon returning to Dartmouth I decided I would like to learn German properly. My experience was enhanced considerably by a practical little book by Cecile Zorach entitled English Grammar for Students of German. It explained the way English grammar worked for certain situations and then compared it to German. It was through these comparisons that I began to gain an appreciation of the mechanics of English grammar and a vocabulary with which to talk about it. This knowledge later served me well when I found myself in Munich teaching English to Germans. Of course, the learning process never ended.