Don't Know Much About History?

The Texas State Board of Education has been in the news a lot since March when they held hearings on revising the social studies curriculum standards. Now that the standards are up for final adoption, I was curious to see what was really in them. After wading through 87 pages of standards, they are a curious mix of micro-managing, bad grammar and anti-political correctedness. While the influence of the conservatives on the board is apparent, it strikes me that the liberals and conservatives have reduced history to a long list of names that must be taught. Teachers are also placed in the unique position of being required to teach history which is still occurring.

Names, Names and More Names

Students frequently complain that history is nothing more than a list of dates and places. Under the State Board of Education standards, there are endless lists of names to be taught. Included in the proposed standards for American History since 1877 (formerly known as American History Since Reconstruction) are:

Benjamin Rush, John Hancock, John Jay, John Witherspoon, John Peter Muhlenberg, Charles Carroll, and Jonathan Trumbull (examples of Founding Fathers), Henry Cabot Lodge, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt and Samuel Dole (persons involved in American expansionism, formerly known as Imperialism), General John J. Pershing, Woodrow Wilson, Upton Sinclair, Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, and W. E. B. DuBois (reformers and muckrakers), Clarence Darrow, William Jennings Bryan, Henry Ford,
Glenn Curtiss, Marcus Garvey,and Charles A. Lindbergh (significant individuals from the 1920s), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Chester A. Nimitz, George Marshall, and George Patton (military leaders during World War II), John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., César Chavez, Rosa Parks, and Betty Friedan (civil rights leaders), George Wallace, Orval Faubus, and Lester Maddox (advocates for the status quo), Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Schlafly, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Estée Lauder, Robert Johnson and Lionel Sosa (examples of American entrepeneurs, but Mary Kay Ash didn't make the final cut), Andrew Carnegie, Hector P. Garcia, Thurgood Marshall, Billy Graham, Barry Goldwater, Phyllis Schlafly, and Hillary Clinton (examples of social leaders), Frances Willard, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dolores Huerta, and Oprah Winfrey (women who made contributions to society), Vernon J. Baker, Alvin York, and Roy Benavides (Congressional Medal of Honor winners).

These are just the names contained in the standards for one course. There is a curious parity here. Conservatives get Phyllis Schlafly (who is mentioned twice) and Barry Goldwater, while liberals get Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey. African Americans get Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King and Marcus Garvey, while Hispanics get Lionel Sosa, Cesear Chavez and Roy Benavides. It looks like the State Board tried to be evenhanded by letting every group get someone in the standards. Some of the lists seem pretty random.

History or Current Events?

I once had a history professor who said that anything after the Seventeenth Century wasn't history, it was current events. Under that definition, the standards contain a lot of VERY current events. For example, a section on dates as turning points includes "2001 (terrorist attacks on World Trade Center and the Pentagon) and 2008 (election of first black president)."

In another standard, students are required to:

describe the causes, key organizations, and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.

Students are also required to learn about the presidential election of 2000, the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Do we really know the significance of these events well enough to mandate that textbook publishers include them in history books? Since when does last year qualify as history?

Anti-Political Correctness

The attempt to re-write history in a more conservative manner has already received plenty of attention, so I won't dwell on it. However, here are a few points that I haven't seen emphasized elsewhere:

In the standards for World History Studies, all of the references to "BCE" as a dating measure have gone back to "B.C.," so that history is measured in relation to Christ.

American imperialism is changed to American expansionism, while Soviet expansion is changed to Soviet aggression.

The Standard dealing with McCarthyism as a factor which heated up the Cold War has received an addenda about "how the later release of the Venona Papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government."

The standards now refer to the "leadership" of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan as opposed to their "role."

More Randomness

Some of the other interesting things that students will be asked to do are:

* analyze the function of the U.S. Office of War Information (during World War II).

* understand the effects of governmental actions on individuals, industries, and communities, including the impact of Fifth Amendment property rights.

* describe the emergence of monetary policy in the United States, including the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the shifting trend from a gold standard to fiat money.

* analyze causes of economic growth and prosperity in the 1920s Economics, including Warren Harding’s Return to Normalcy, reduced taxes, and increased production efficiencies

* analyze the effects of 20th-century landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Brown v. Board of Education and other U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as Hernandez v. Texas, Delgado v. Bastrop I. S. D.and Tinker v. Des Moines.

* evaluate constitutional change in terms of strict construction versus judicial interpretation.

* describe how American values are different and unique from those of other nations.

Final Thoughts

Inevitably, the telling of history is a process of sorting through what is worth mentioning and what can be left out. However, in reading the standards, it is easy to get the impression that the State Board of Education went tripping casually through history grabbing items to include without regard to their big picture importance. While some of these items are clearly influenced by a conservative philosophy, others are just random. The result is an incoherent mass of detail that will be difficult to put into a textbook and harder still to teach. I have one daughter who is already taking American History under the current standards. I can't wait till it is time to help daughter #2 with her homework under the new ones.

A Lawyer's Voice From Nazi Germany: October 1941 to June 1942

my last installment of this series, I wrote about the increasing frustration of Helmuth James von Moltke, a German lawyer with the OKW, as he watched helplessly as Germany entered into war with the West. There is so much that I could have written about in the intervening months. However, I am going to skip ahead to October 1941. The letter of October 21 1941 is very significant because von Moltke recognizes the atrocieties being committed on the German side and is witness to the first stages of the Final Solution. Although Germany is at the height of its power, he believes that German defeat is imminent. This impels him to convene a series of meetings at his country estate to plan for governance of post-defeat Germany.

21 October 1941

The day is so full of gruesome news that I cannot write in peace, although I retired at 5 and have just had some tea. But my head aches all the same. What affects me most at the moment is the inadequacy of the reactions of the military. Falkenhausen and Stupnagel have returned to their posts instead of resigning after the latest incidents, dreadful new orders are being issued, and nobody seems to see anything wrong in it all? How is one to bear the burden of complicity?

In one area in Serbia, two villages hve been reduced to ashes. 1,700 men and 240 women among the inhabitants have been executed. That is the "punishment" for an attack on three German soldiers. In Greece, 220 men of one village have been shot. The village was burnt down, women and children were left there to weep for their husbands and fathers and homes. In France there are extensive shootings while I write. Certainly more than a thousand people are murdered this way every day and another thousand German men are habituated to murder. And all this is child's play compared to what is happening in Poland and Russia. May I know this and yet sit at my table in my heated flat and have tea? Don't I thereby become guilty too? What shall I say when I am asked: And what did you do during that time?

Since Saturday, the Berlin Jews are being rounded up. They are picked up at 9.15 in the evening and locked into the synagogue overnight. Then they are sent off with what they can carry, to Litzmannstadt (Lodz) and Smolensk. We are to be spared the sight of them being simply left to perish in hunger and cold, and that is why it is done in Litzmannstadt and Smolensk. A women Kiep knows saw a Jew collapse in the street; when she wanted to help him up, a policeman stepped in, stopped her, and kicked the body to the ground so that it rolled into the gutter; then he turned to the lady with a vestige of shame and said: "These are our orders?"

How can anyone know these things and still walk around free? With what right? Is it not inevitable that his turn will come too one day, and that he too will be rolled into the gutter?--If only I could get rid of the terrible feeling that I have let myself be corrupted, that I do not react keenly enough to such things, that they torment me without producing a spontaneous reaction. I have mistrained myself, for in such thing, too, I react with my head. I think about a possible reaction instead of acting.

From here, I am going to change up the narrative. Instead of going strictly by date, I am going to break it down by topic, since there are some interesting threads here.

Jewish Persecution

5 November 1941

Later we held our group meeting with some poppyseed cake, which was received with universal applause; it really was especially good. I packed up what was left over and shall give it to Unger today. I asked Steinke yesterday whether I might give Unger some food because he has so visibly lost weight, and he thought U. would not refuse it. He is, after all, the last Jew I know, and I somehow regard this as the purchase of indulgences and am convinced that you approve. I shall take him what is left of the cake today and some bacon, and in a few days 3 or 5 eggs and apples.

9 November 1941

I spent the day with some Jewish people whose affairs had to be settled before their deportation. During the last 3 days another 10,000 have been notified to hold themselves in readiness. The bearing of these people was good to see, and I can only hope that ours will be no worse when our time comes.

11 November 1941

The day was strenuous. In fighting the latest decree against Jews I have, however, succeeded in getting the 3 most important generals of the OKW to write to the 4th that he must immediately withdraw the approval he gave on behalf of the chief of the OKW. The next stage is therefore to see whether he does so. Only after that will the real battle be joined. Wouldn't it be splendid to be thrown out of this club on such an issue?

13 November 1941

Well, what actually happened? I find it hard to remember these two days. Russian prisoners, evacuated Jews, evacuated Jews, Russian prisoners, hostages shot, gradual encroachment in the Reich itself of measures "tried and proved" in occupied territories, again evacuated Jews, Russian prisoners, a Mental Home for SS men who broke down "executing" women and children. That was the world of these two days. Yesterday I said goodbye to a once famous Jewish lawyer who has the Iron Cross First Class and Second Class, the Order of the House of Hohenzollern, the Golden Badge for the Wounded, and who will kill himself with his wife today because he is to be picked up tonight. He has a nice daughter of about 19 who wants to live and is determined to endure what is ahead. I gave her my "permanent" address, in case we and she survive the deluge and our address is still the same. It does not seem likely to any of us.

And yet I was actually able to throw a spanner in the works, obstructing a bit, at least, of the persecution of the Jews. My self-appointed representation of the interests of the Wehrmacht has been endorsed by Canaris and by Thomas. I dictated letters and both were visibly pleased when they signed them. Which proves the general rule that as soon as one man takes a stand, a surprising number of others will stand too. But there always has to be one to go first; otherwise it does not work. And apart from the unpleasantness and strain of going first; how rarely do I have the opportunity to do it. I am pleased, of course, if I succeed. Thus it was nice to see an old colonel suddenly get red in the face, a visible sign of his joy that something was being done for once.

17 November 1941

Meanwhile, hunger, disease and fear are spreading under our rule. Nobody knows what the consequences will be or how soon they will set in. But one thing is quite certain: the Apocalyptic Horsemen are beginners compared with what is ahead of us: certus an, incertus quando. Every day brings new insights into the depths to which human beings can sink. But in many respects the bottom has been reached: the lunatic asylums are slowly filling with men who broke down during or after the executions they were told to carry out.

18 November 1941

I would like to give Unger something, and I'd much rather take it with me next time, for he certainly will not live to Christmas, and there is no knowing how much longer he's got. But a chicken would be very nice for him too, though a duck would be nicer.

1 June 1942

The problems began in Derfflingerstrasse because I had no house key--we'd stupidly forgotten about that. I woke up Frau Cohn, who came looking pale as death because she thought her husband was being taken to be shot--500 Jews are said to have been shot yesterday and the day before--and was very relieved when she saw me.

Accomplices to Evil

6 November 1941

On Carl Viggo's attitude I have to say the following: it is characterized by fear of responsibility for anything beyond the vision of his own two eyes. The whole question of physical courage, which seems to be connected with it, is nothing but camouflage. No doubt it is more comfortable to feel responsible only for a few people only and deliberately wear blinkers that prevent one from seeing the evil done in the discharge of this responsibility--to be unwilling to see that one is defending murder and robbery. In reality it is these people who are the crux of this evil, not the criminals. There are and have been criminals everywhere; but it is the inescapable duty of all the righteous to keep crime within bounds, and whoever evades this task is more guilty than the criminal himself.

This is the first of several letters expressing frustration with his uncle, Carl Viggo von Moltke, for going along blindly with the regime. This letter provides an important insight into how something as monstrous as the Holocaust could have taken place. If good men look only to their own actions, they become accomplices to evil.

8 November 1941

Let me return to the subject of C.V. once more. I am so bitter, not to say ready to explode about this type, because nobody causes me so many difficulties as do these lazy men. It is this kind of man who gets us the reputation in the world of not being able even to govern ourselves, let alone others. These people have a restricted horizon, they do not see that every action takes its place in the universe, that all things are interrelated, that a murder in Warsaw has repercussions in Calcutta and Sydney, at the North Pole, and in Kurdistan, not political but moral repercussions. I only accept the argument of self-surrender to a very limited extent. It is a form of self-gratification, a cloak put on after the event. Fredchen's saying is nonsense, because one does not fight for but against something. Hatred, not love, is the dominant element of war. War breeds cowardice, servility and mass-psychosis. Take this example: yesterday I was at a meeting in the Foreign Ministry about the persecution of the Jews. It was my first official contact with this question. Against 24 men and quite inflexibly I attacked a decree which already had the approval of all ministers and the Chief of the OKW, and for the moment have halted its course. And when I returned, the OKW official in whose competence it really fell asked me: Why did you do it? You can't change a thing, although of course these measures are catastrophic. He was a typical C.V. H.A. is another. I quite appreciate the charm and the qualities of these men, but their actions are dictated by expediency and have no moral basis. They are like chameleons: in a healthy society, they look healthy, in a sick one, like ours, they look sick. And really they are neither one nor the other. They are mere filler. There has to be filler too. Bit it is intolerable for the filler that extends the diseased part to pretend to a moral raison d'etre. I know I am being dreadfully severe. But it is necessary because otherwise, without being aware of it, one falls into dubious company.

It is interesting that von Moltke now refers to collaborators with the Nazis as "C.V."s in reference to his uncle Carl Viggo von Moltke. Hans Adolph von Moltke, who is referred to here is his father's cousin. Hans Adolph later changed his attitude and came to agree with Helmuth James.

13 November 1941

To return to C.V. once more. My patience with these people is totally at an end and yet I must not show it; it is hardly bearable. For instance Hans Adolph yesterday; he is a C.V. in a somewhat more advanced stage. He was quite broken. But do you think he now feels any obligation to do something to clean up the mess that has been accumulated with his help? Far from it! I only had to say that one must write off a lot in good time for him to reply with obvious indignation: Never can this be written off. And in 12 months he will give his blessing once more to a Free Corps operation against the enemy occupation forces trying to maintain order. And if I were by any chance to remind him that what he now sees is precisely what I predicted in the first months of the war and before the outbreak of the war, and that he retorted: "Then you must stimulate a more optimistic outlook in your circles," he would still regard my diagnosis as something no patriotic man might think, let alone say. I'll say nothing more. I've written off these people, don't want anything of them any more, and only want to beware of getting their backs up against me before it is necessary. But you will, I expect, understand that in my heart there is no patience left for them and no patience for their defence. Their motto is the hope to save themselves:

if together we cling
singing God save the King
and throw men overboard to the sharks.

Religion and Religious Figures

5 November 1941

The saying of grace at the Gramsches' prompts me to raise the question with you whether we should not reintroduce it via the children. It has become increasingly clear to me in these past years that the existence of each and every one of us depends on maintaining the fundamental moral laws laid down in the 10 Commandments: freedom and preservation from bodily harm, but also food and drink, housing, clothing and heating. But because one cannot think of this connection when entering one's home, firing the stove, etc., or express this awareness then, the common meal is the only remaining occasion to draw atention to it. And that seems to me to be, apart from any religious basis, the primary function of saying grace.

What a curiously German reaction! Saying grace at mealtime is important not just for any religous significance, but as a reminder of fundamental moral laws essential to survival. Von Moltke's synopsis of the 10 Commandments, as being affirmative commands to do good as opposed to merely refraining from evil, echoes Luther's Small Cathechism.

14 November 1941

The afternoon with Preysing (a Catholic bishop) was very nice. Peters had written an opus on the church question which satisfied neither of us altogether. That was the one subject of discussion, the complaint about St. Clements (a church that was confiscated)the second, the persecution of the Jews the third. In the morning he had just been confirming Jews who were to be transported to Litzmannstadt in the evening. He said it was possibly his most beautiful confirmation. Once arrived there, they get 1/4 of our food ration. The Dean of his cathedral has been indicted for malicious defamation, because he prayed for the Jews, and the news of his interrogation came through while I was there:

"What is your attitude to the racial question?" "The only distinction I make is between Christians and non-Christians, the former I include as brothers in my prayers, for the latter I pray for illumination."

"What is your attitude to the state?" "Be subject to the higher powers put over you says the Apostle Paul."

"What is your attitude to the Fuhrer?" "He is not my Fuhrer, for that he is only for Party members in his capacity as head of the Party. But I am not a member and know only one leader, Jesus Christ. My attitude to Hitler as head of state is based on my attitude to the state."

"If you don't change your attitude, we shall send you to join your dear Jews in Litzmannstadt." "That was the very thing I was going to ask: for what more beautiful task could there be for an old clergyman than to assist these Jewish Christians who are destined to die."

The clergyman being interrogated was Bernhard Lichtenberg. He was sentenced to two years for misuse of the pulpit and malicious defamation of the government. He was to be taken to Dachau after serving his sentence, but died on the way there.

4 February 1942

The funeral (for his brother Carl Bernd von Moltke who was killed in action) was quite awful. A man in a gown, at the very most a "German Christian," spoke in a little cemetary chapel. There wasn't a single word from the Bible, instead poems of all kinds and German sayings, also proverbs. The word "Christ" didn't occur, the word "God" in a subordinate clause at the end; to make up for it there was a reference to "The Horst Wessel Regiment in Valhalla"; no hymn was sung. At the graveside the Lord's prayer was said, with a few changes in wording: in the chapel a "prayer" was said, a meaningless series of fragments of thought based on the notion of "Death as a Source of New Life," i.e., nothing related to something above man, everything related back to other human beings and therefore abandoning the principle that every man is a thought of the Creator's mind. I could have been sick on the floor. . . . The "parson" saluted the coffin on all suitable and unsuitable occasions by raising his right arm. Not one sign of the cross.

von Moltke worked closely with the German Bishops in his opposition to the Nazis. His letters show the religious resistance to the Nazis, as well as the Nazis attempts to replace the Christian religion with a pagan one.

The War Effort

18 November 1941

The war looks bad. There is a joke going round here: "Eastern campaign extended by a month owing to great success." A bitter remark. . . . The unfortunate millions of troops who now freeze out there, are wet, and die! A comparison with the World War '14/'18 is impossible, for then fewer people were involved, and could be better looked after, and there were houses in which they could stay. The present situation is different in both respects. What will the army that we meet in March be like? With no leave worth mentioning, insufficient supplies, no quarters, no adequate clothing, no military success?

And the domestic situation is far worse than I had imagined. The persecution of the Jews and the attack on the churches have caused intense disquiet. The promises of military successes, of leave for soliders or their return are not being kept and cannot be kept. Everyone can see hunger approaching, and there is nothing else to buy either, there is nobody for the most necessary work.

10 December 1941

Then Tuesday's main theme began, namely, whether and how one could prevent a German declaration of war on the U.S.A. In my opinion this offered a quite unique opportunity to achieve a compromise with the Anglo-Saxons with a change of crew, and to leave the Japanese to their fate, and thereby extend our hand to the Anglo-Saxons. Unfortunately all the people who ought to have gone into action quite automatically on this question failed to function, and when I got into the affair it was already too late. Today the declaration of war will be proclaimed.

6 January 1942

The coming months will be unimaginably terrible. I think the military situation can only be restored by a miracle. A.H. has issued an order forbidding all withdrawals and so we enable the Russians to smash our front by degrees without incurring the supply difficulties they would have if we retreated. The result will be that the Russians, without making any real territorial gains, will simply annihilate our Eastern army where it stands. And the soldiers still fail to see that. That's because they aren't commanders, but technicians, military technicians, and the whole thing is a gigantic crime.

11 January 1942

I cannot shake off the question: how can the German people be told what is happening now and what will be happening in the coming weeks, and how will people react to it? Failing a miracle, even the Cassandra cries that I have uttered since the beginning of the war will be far surpassed by reality. Will there be anyone then who can master the chaos? Will each individual recognize his own guilt? Will Eastern Germany, that is to say Prussia, then suddenly be missionized and Christianized? Or will everything sink in the maelstrom of pagan materialism? For better or for worse, the battle that began at Christmas has opened a new epoch, an epoch that means a bigger change than the Cannonade of Valmy. Perhaps this is the final end of the Holy Roman Empire, perhaps it is its resurrection.