Minutes on the Meeting of Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Darrah Lustig

1) We began our class with a brief reminder to set up individual meetings with Professor Mahoney in order to receive our grades and discuss them and other upcoming projects.

2) Our next order of business was to discuss the 2^nd essay from our text The History of the Idea of Europe which we have already begun to read. We further explored the advent of political projects founded in the search for a cultural identity. We endeavored to discuss political projects spanning from Pan-Europa (“across/all” Europe) to Nazi “Neuropa” (“New Europe,” a clever German combination). We compared the monarchical governments of Old Europe (Hapsburgs, Romanovs, etc.) to Masaryk’s “New Europe,” which defines its nations by ethnicity. Masaryk is the father of Czechoslovakia and is responsible for carving that new state from previously Habsburg-controlled land. Masaryk provokes people to think about where they belong. Czechoslovakia had three sections to it:

* Bohemia is the heart of Czechoslovakia where the Czechs live,

* Moravia is the Slovak section,

* Sudetenland is the German-speaking part

3) We then discussed Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s argument for the creation of a Pan-European Union. In response to his perception of Europe in the aftermath of World War I, the Count made the statement in 1923 that:

"The cause of Europe’s decline is political, not biological. Europe is not dying of old age, but because its inhabitants are killing and destroying one another with the instruments of modern science…The peoples of Europe are not senile-it is only their political system that is senile. As soon as the latter has been radically changed, the complete recovery of the ailing Continent can and must ensue" (Coudenhove-Kalergi, 96).

World War I is a prime example of mechanized warfare in which ways were discovered to use technology to kill people in incredible numbers and brutality. The Count diagnosed Europe as suffering from an outdated political system and believed that a Federation was the cure. Switzerland was, and is, a model of pluralism and the successful integration of many political, religious and social beliefs into one prosperous Federation.

4) The idea of a European Federation would mean that countries would have to give up certain freedoms in order to exist together; however, it is important to understand that they could still retain their individual cultural identities. The Federation became an ideal which hoped to escape the power politics of Old Europe: "Culturally, Europe had spread to all continents, which allowed for several new ‘global power fields’ with roots in the same culture, but in sharp contrast to this apparent cultural success, Europe as a political identity did not exist" (Bugge, 97).

The map on page 100 details the proposed Pan-European model, Europe and its colonial territories, which is not at all what it is today. It is interesting to note which countries appear to be within the region of Europe (i.e. Turkey is not included though its accordance with the European Union of today is pending). Cherise also pointed areas with question marks inside their outlines which appear to be “up for grabs” as to where they belong in the continental scheme of things (i.e. the area of modern-day Iraq, Ethiopia, Thailand and Greenland).

5) We were reminded that in our next class we would be joined by the advanced German class from Burlington High School. Together we will watch a segment from the Nazi propaganda film Deutsches Land in Afrika (German Land in Africa). Our homework was to continue reading about the perception of Europe through page 127, “Europe and the Nazi Myths.” But our discussion about Nazism today raised the following points: Nazism diffused into Germany’s former African territory and spread to youth groups where political films were used as educational tools to fulfill their party’s agenda; they used these films in order to educate their citizens so that they would follow suit and support Hitler and the Nazi party.

6) Nazi is the shortened term for the political party of National Socialism whose full name is the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany. We discussed the Nazi idea of ethnicity, which was the pure race (Aryan) which originally came from Northern India. Nazi Germany demonstrates the ultimate consequence of aggressively nationalistic ethnic pride.

Third Reich: empire, ultimately has to do with land and bringing identifiable German people into the land (Volksdeutsche are ethnic Germans)

1936 – the Rhineland, a demilitarized area on the borders with France, is occupied by German troops.

1938 – Nazis march into Austria and made a forced annexation which was readily accepted.

1938 – the alliance between Czechoslovakia, France and England looks like war against Germany, which claims the German-speaking Sudetenland.

On page 108 of our text “The History of The Idea of Europe,” Neville Chamberlain, a British imperialist, makes the comment in reference to Czechoslovakia as “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” This cements the idea of separate countries within Europe and also highlights the haziness of the European community.

7) France, England, Germany and Italy were all a part of the Munich Conference which came to the conclusion, as Patrick provided, that the Nazis were allowed to control the Sudetenland. We then discussed Neville Chamberlain’s (ironic) comment which was made one year before the advent of World War II which was, “We have achieved peace in our time.” In 1939 Germany occupied Moravia and attacked Poland which prompted a discussion led by Rose about the initial “Sitzkrieg” in the West, where each country stayed within its borders while the “Blitzkrieg” invaded Poland.