About the experience of being a Fulbright Senior scholar in Germany from September 2007 through February 2008.
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Richard A Reiman Podcasts
Dr. Reiman's World History Since 1650
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Audio and video lectures from Hist 2112, US History Since 1865.
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The optimistic title above, if truth be told, gives little sense of the reality that I remain largely ignorant of the German language today. That does not mean that I have not acquired a great deal of vocabulary. I learned much German during my five months, but little grammar. Still I have acquired a foundation of knowledge, however thin, and upon …
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How does the Fulbright program work? What was (and is) its purpose? Founded in 1946, the program has provided 200,000 scholars over more than 60 years the opportunity to serve as cultural ambassadors building bridges of understanding around the world. In this video podcast I speak for a couple of minutes on the reasons for the program and the vital…
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In this first video podcast I share my musings regarding German students and the university system in Germany, based on my experiences at the Martin-Luther-Universitat in Halle (Saale). Click here for the podcast (iPod video format)By Richard Reiman
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Today we looked at the decades between the World Wars (1919-1941) and we evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the foreign policy pursued (primarily by FDR) in an age of isolationism. Although Roosevelt at first largely continued the isolationist course of his Republican predecessors (whose policies also receive some attention here), his strugg…
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In this vodcast we compare the two New Deals, from the first 100 days through the reforms of 1935. We examine what the New Deal changed and preserved about America, and we analyze whether FDR could have achieved more given the obstacles to reform confronting him and the New Dealers. Click here for vodcast in the Ipod format…
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In today's lecture, our final one of the course, we looked at the specific steps by which Europeans turned their backs on the history of virulent nationalism that had wracked Europe for so long. Beginning with the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950, they constructed an ever-expanding union which ultimately surpassed the original goals of wea…
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Today we concluded our overview of the Cold War and saw how and why it ended not with a bang but with a whimper (or, rather, a celebration). But, above all, it ended peacefully. We first looked at the intensification of the Cold War, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the aftermath when both sides began the long road to detente. Finally, we l…
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In today's lecture we looked at the Cold War's early, very dangerous years (1943-1962). As these dates suggest, the Cold War began in World War II, when suspicions between the Soviet Union and the U.S. were ignited by wartime strategy of the Big Three. Other sources of the Cold War are discussed, as well as its domestic impact upon the United State…
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Today I took the class on a tour of my web site for World War II (after a brief PowerPoint overview of how the war actually began). Students will need to study at least the front page of this web site because it contains all of the lecture information that I would normally deliver in class on the subject of World War II, and for which you are respo…
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The geopolitics of the 1920s and 1930s cannot be understood without an appreciation for the momentous changes that occurred in the Soviet Union and Germany. To comprehend these, we had to look as much at personality as ideology. Although we defined and analyzed the ideology of Fascism and saw its takeover of Italy and Germany, we also examined the …
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Because we finished watching The White Rose (1982) today, we has very little time for a lecture. But we did spare nearly nine minutes for a discussion of the obstacles that the Western democracies faced in the 1930s in confronting a resurgent Germany. These numerous obstacles rewarded Hitler's expansionist foreign policies, which were reckless in t…
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Also today I introduced your assignment for the essay on the White Rose. Remember that you can always find the Learning Module for the assignment on the WebCT home page. The vodcast below provides you more description of what you need to do in the essay. In sum, you need to describe how each document tells the story of the White Rose differently, A…
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Today we looked at the conclusion of the Great War, including the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Europe emerged from the war battered, broken, in the grips of revolution, and rendered hopeless by the slaughter of the preceeding years. The Treaty of Versailles made the situation even worse, paralyzing the democracies and emboldening the parti…
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In today's lecture we looked at the final causes of the Great War, including the reactions to the new ideas of relativity, the Alliance System and the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The main focus of the lecture, however, was THE BIG PICTURE of the war's impact on the mind, map and political structure of Europe between t…
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During the fin de siecle period before World War I, an intellectual revolution took place that may have had something to do with the causation of that war. Isaac Newton's optimistic worldview was de-throned, and a far darker Darwinian vision of inherently irrational impulses gained ascendance. Nietzsche, Freud and Einstein were among the luminaries…
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Today we examined the factors that propelled Europe toward political suicide in the form of the Great War of 1914-1918. The roster of factors that are candidates for this list is a long one: unfulfilled nationalism, irrational ideas, alliances, an arms race, and the New Imperialism among them. We examine here the nature of multinationalism and irre…
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Today's lecture is reproduced here in an audio podcast only (mp3). We surveyed the process by which Germany because a unified nation-state and its implications for the future. Although Otto von Bismarck cobbled together the factors and supplied his own crucial motive force (statecraft and war), many things happened before he became Prussian Prime M…
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In this lecture we conclude our discussion of Marxism by analyzing Marx's predictions and the stages of history that he envisioned. The flaws and internal contradictions of the theory are also discussed. Then we turn to the story of the unification of Italy and how it reflects the evolution of nationalism post-1848 and post-Darwin. Vodcast of Lectu…
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This lecture surveys Europe and the European mind in the watershed year of 1848. Starting with the significance of the revolutions of that year and how they changed the perspective of the middle-classes on the very idea of revolution, we survey the ideas of Darwin and Marx. How the ideas of the nineteenth century reflected the spirit of that centur…
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In this lecture, which is part two of our survey of the Industrial Revolution, we look at how Industrialism impacted the spirit of Romanticism and the political revolutions of 1830 and 1848. During the first century of the Industrial Revolution, government completely neglected the harsh effects of industrialism, partly as a result of the ideology o…
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When we look at the early nineteenth century (1815-1848), we are often dazzled by the storms and stresses of its outward appearances: its political revolutions (of 1830 and 1848), diplomatic machinations (of the Congress of Vienna) and romantic trappings (the art and literature of the period). We often lose sight of its underlying influences. Chief…
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Your Review of the Bauer book, Rethinking the Holocaust is due next week. In this vodcast, I make some remarks on where you should be in your preparation for this book review at this point in the calendar. I also present some suggestions on what difficulties you may be having and how you might be able to overcome these difficulties. Remember that t…
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