Middle East

During all of the persecutions in Germany, many of the Jews left Germany and went to different countries like the U.S., Britain, and Palestine.  By 1933 about 5000 Jews escaped to the safety of Palestine.  As Jewish persecution continued, more and more Jews moved out of Germany and into Palestine.  When Arabs began to get worried about Palestine becoming a Jewish State and confronted the British government about the amount of Jewish immigrants.  However by this time there were already lots of Jews in Palestine and there were hard feelings between Arabs and the Jews, leading to conflicts in the "Holy Land" that still exist today.  My question is that if Britain hadn't been in control of Middle Eastern countries like Palestine and Jordan, would there be the conflicts over this area today? Because if Arabs were in control of who immigrated in the first place, they wouldn't have let the Jews immigrate in the first place therefore there would not be conflict over whether or not it is a Jewish state or not. 

11-29

We all know that the 1920's were good times.  There were parties and jazz and it was fairly layed back and relaxed.  There was lots of spending and buying on credit and it ulitmatly led to the depression.  My question is... Did all of the develops in arts, media and technology lead to massive spending and ultimatly the depression?  The development of jazz and new kinds of music made people very relaxed and not worried about their financial situations.  Also new forms of entertainment such as color movies and Broadway Musicals could have taken some cash out of peoples pocketts.  New procucts such as eastman film give people new things to buy.  Could all of this new spending have been "gateway spending" and help people to want to buy on credit leading to the crash and the depression.

While reading several questions came to my mind about the league of nations.  First of all why didn't the powers join? what were the factors that made nations such as the U.S. think that it was a bad idea to join? All of the ideas behind the formation of the league of nations seem like they are positive i don't understand what negatives there are about the league of nations.  It could possibly be due to nationalism and desire to become more self sufficient.  Because Americans in general did not want to become involved in another war like that did they think that staying out of the league of Nations would keep them out of international affairs in Europe and European conflict? Also i wanted to know why it only worked for the smaller nations.  Why didn't the smaller nations successes work as a precedent and show the larger nations.  even if the larger nations were sceptical of diplomacy, why didn't they see that diplomacy actually worked. 

I read Night by Elie Wiesel.  I found that while i knew a lot about the general facts of the Holocaust i didn't know many of the details of what really happened.  I knew it was bad but Night helped me realize how bad it really was.  It made me think of the full extent of the war and how evil and sadistic people can be.  I don't understand how there can be so many people out there that were willing to sacrifice human life.  Its like an army of psychopaths.  while i can understand how several people would follow Hitlers plans i don't see how thousands of people would be able to murder people and children without feeling guilt and regret.  One passage in the book that made me feel this way was when Eliezer and his father saw babies being burnt by the truckload.  Who would do that? its sick and twisted.  I don't see how Hitler was able to find an army full of people who would follow through with this.  its like all the Nazis were brainwashed into committing these atrocities.  All together night made me think of how large scale this war was and gave me insight into the more defined details. 

pg 86-98 q's

Yo peeps what up? So I wanted to bring up the point that the peoples opinions don't always matter.  One example of this is  the people in Russia.  Through out the course of the war there were many anti-war strikes.  On March 10 1917 there was a riot. Tsarist troops were ordered to open fire.  40 civilians were killed.  The Tsar had hoped to end all strikes with this act, but in reality it only encouraged more people to join the demonstrations.  I feel like continuing with the war while the people were striking only added more problems to the war efforts because while the soldiers were fighting on the fronts they also needed to control the civilians.  In addition to the people striking there was also 300,000 factory workers that went on strikes.  With out the factory workers it would make it hard to gather needed supplies.  I believe that continuing with the war without the support of the people caused more problems for Russia than they needed. 

World War I war tactics lead to the development of stalemates on both eastern and western fronts.  Although countries such as Germany were able to push forward and gain land through the use of infantry tanking, this allowed them to push through enemy lines and drove the allies back. The use of infantry tanking lead to the loss of many lives and Germans soon became tired and their exhaustion gave the allies time to regroup and Britain was able to push Germany back to their original fronts using their tanks.  This lead to a stalemate because although Germans were able to break through lines they could not hold their position leading to a counter that pushed them back to their original lines.  Stalemates on the Russian front developed because the Russians spread their armies thin on the frontier but were heavily fortified at bases along the way, while Germany could take the frontier they could not take the fortified points leaving them at a draw.  I think that with different war tactics were used there would have been a decisive winner of the war and the war could have ended much sooner than it did.