Faculty of Letters and Languages

Outnumbered, out armed and unprepared, Washington and his troops took a brutal beating. The sea swelling of British ships arriving throughout the month of August 1776, proved to be carrying a greater amount of men than the American independence seekers ever anticipated. General Washington had hoped to engage the British head-on, to develop strategies that keep the rebels on the offensive rather than the defensive side. This is how Washington eventually won in Boston. However, in New York the British manpower overwhelmed the Continental troops

Villages Divided -- Life Along the Line of Demarcation in WWII, Vichy France

In 1940 German troops erected a line of demarcation through the already divided country of France. The line was set up to the west side of villages in occupied territory, such as Montapon, and "la Jemaye. To cross the line at any given time, a person had to have what was called a pasisser- passer.

It was very difficult to o$tain. Those caught trying to cross the line who did not possess the correct documentation were arrested and imprisoned.The sentence for such an offense was fifteen days, for men. It was slightly lighter for women who were only imprisoned for ten days.

Villages Divided - vie le long de la ligne de démarcation dans la Seconde Guerremondiale, la France de Vichy --- J. Lamb


En 1940, les troupes allemandes érigé une ligne de démarcation à travers le pays déjà divisé la France. La ligne a été mis en place sur le côté ouest de villages en territoire occupé, comme Montapon, Echourgnac, et La Jemaye. Pour franchir la ligne à un moment donné, une personne devait avoir ce qu'on appelle un pasisser-passer. Il était très difficile à obtenir. Ceux qui sont pris en tentant de traverser la ligne qui ne possédaient pas la documentation correcte ont été arrêtés et emprisonnés. La peine pour une telle infraction était de quinze jours, pour les hommes. Il était un peu plus léger pour les femmes qui ont été emprisonnés uniquement pour dix jours.

The name fits their actions. On the surface, the Black Hand were official military personnel. In the shadow of that identity, the Black Hand were a secret Serbian Nationalist military group. For years, the secret society wielded an impressive amount of unofficial influence. They were well networked throughout the Balkans; dangerous, organized and powerful.

From their conception, the radical gang comprised of officers served in the Military Kingdom of Serbia. When they officially established themselves in 1911, many of their members were already part of another secret nationalist society led by a talented, fearless, well educated Dragutin Dimitrijević, also known as, Apis — and, “Holy Bull.”  Apis would eventually use the Black Hand to commit their most infamous crime.

Historical peasant revolts occurred for a number or reasons. New laws, including banning churches, raising taxes, imposing conscription, and abolishing hunting privileges, were some of those reasons. During times of revolution, peasant uprisings were more common than during times when the wheel of history was quietly at peace.

The Peasants’ War and the Vendée Rebellion happened one after the other during the Fench Revolution; the Pitchfork Uprising was evoked by the Russian Civil War that followed its revolution; the Saxon Peasant Revolt is the only example that happened outside the fever of an upheaval or major pitched battles. Behind all the revolts were angry, hungry, discontent citizens who preferred to fight for something worth dying for, rather than accept conditions not worthy of living in.

The idea of a globalized economy is not unique. Overlapping money and territorial interests have been exploited for centuries. The intricate path of interconnectivity between countries is perhaps most evident after the Great Depression. Then, Russia was one of the few countries around the world not crippled by the tsunami of ruin that crushed the world from a storm that began in America after stock markets plummeted in 1929.

The connectivity of economies during the Second World War is less obvious, businesses were not vanishing. Instead, businesses were thriving. Coca-Cola, General Motors, Standard Old, and other U.S. businesses had reciprocal agreements in place that allowed Nazi Germany to flourish and American entrepreneurs to make landfall profits.

The use of the word propaganda first surfaced when Europe was engaged in one of its bloodiest conflicts. In 1622 during the Thirty Years War, the Catholic Church created an official group called, Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, or Congregation for Propagating Faith. Its purpose was to form missions that would venture into foreign regions and spread the Catholic religion. 

The “Big Lie” propaganda technique surfaced after Adolf Hitler wrote about it in his autobiographical book Mein Kampf (my struggle).  A succinct definition of Big Lie reads like present-day political strategy: make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually the people will believe it.

During the 1930s and 1940s the Big Lie paradigm began to fuse with, and become fueled by, new technologies. Radio, in particular, was a choice weapon of war. It was easily used to spread black propaganda over vast distances. ‘Black propaganda’ is utterly and completely baseless information that emerges from a “trusted” source, but is actually being produced to mislead.

Joseph Stalin’s rise to prominence began soon after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Although it was under the leadership of Lenin that the Soviet Union experienced its first wave of cultural, social, and political changes brought on by the revolution’s aftermath, Stalin was continuously working behind the scenes (and sometimes in front of them) casting his influence where he could. He was at the forefront of changes happening in Russia and worked alongside Lenin and Trotsky as one of the seven members of the first Politburo, established in 1917 with the purpose of managing the Bolshevik Revolution.

Emma Goldman wrote that “every society has the criminals it deserves.” The 1890s saw a major uprise anarchist activity. Things were especially explosive in France; Paris seemed to have a knack for producing thunderously radical political outlaws. Auguste Vaillant, Ravachol, and Emile Henry were all in their early twenties when they acted out their convictions against French society by lighting the fuses of their self-made bombs.

The CBS show See It Now fell somewhere between a news show and documentary and was hosted by Edward R. Murrow. It was an ideal platform for pushing back at the direction the government was allowing the nation to head in concerning Communist witch hunts. On March 9, 1954, the show featured McCarthy’s interrogation of witnesses in concert with his anti-communist speeches. The episode ultimately demonstrated to audiences why communists were not the number one threat to American society, but Joseph McCarthy and his tactics were.

Holodomor has a grizzly translation; it literally means “death by hunger “(specifically through being worked to death). It was the term used to define the aftermath of Stalin’s Five Year Plan after an estimated 2.4-7.5 million people in the Soviet Ukraine died from starvation. The estimated death toll is higher, particularly when the scope is widened to include other affected areas, such as Kazakhstan, which was also struck particularly hard.

Following the D-Day landing on June 6, 1944, German SS troops unleashed a flurry of grizzly massacres across Europe. The German troops took aim at French civilians, many of whom lived in peasant farm villages with a population of fewer than 1,000. The scenes make up a ghastly collection of extraordinary and sometimes extreme violence. Gruesome details imply the acts were intended for public display more than pragmatic purposes. On some occasions, the soldiers arrived early in the morning. They would round-up villagers, and then decide whether to execute them or burn them alive, sometimes in the local church.

The French anarchist Émile Henry was just twenty-one years old when he rocked the streets of Paris for the last time before being captured and finally executed – guillotine style. On a wintry February day in 1894, before leaving his tiny apartment, he accessorized his attire with a revolver, a poison-tipped blade, and a homemade bomb that he slipped comfortably into the pocket of his overcoat.
He wandered around the most upscale streets of Paris, going from cafe to cafe until he settled on waiting for an hour in the Gare Saint-Lazare area for enough people to arrive before setting light to the bomb inside Café Terminus.

Gavrilo Princip was a 19 years old when he assassinated the Archduke of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. Princip was born a Serb but grew up in Bosnia. There, he became a Bosnian nationalist through his membership with Mlada Bosna — Young Bosnia. The group’s purpose was to unify Bosnia. This was not an easy task.