The U Boats Threat

The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest battle of the Second World War and it was also the most important battle during these times because the success of any other campaign in during this war depended of its success. Many experts agree that defeat of the German U-Boats and control of the shipping sea routes that linked the allied nations of Great Britain, United States and Canada was essential if what the Allied nations wanted was to invade occupied Europe and the German territory. This battle was for commerce and it was waged by the German U-Boats that fought against Britain’s merchant marine. For almost six years, Germany launched over 1,000 U-Boats into combat, in an attempt to isolate and blockade the British Isles, forcing the British to withdraw from war. It was a fight which nearly obstructed the shipping sea routes of Great Britain, cutting off required supplies of food, fuel and raw materials needed to continue fighting. 

By the end of the war, U-Boats of the Kriegsmarine, in the Battle of the Atlantic had sent over 2,900 ships and 14 million tons of Allied shipping to the bottom of the sea. In exchange, the Allies sank almost 800 U-Boats and over 30,000 of the 39,000 German sailors who put to sea, never returned, this was the highest casualty rate of any armed service in the history of modern war. 

During the early year of war, German U-Boat successes against British and American shipping were so remarkable, that on January 1943, the Allies issued a decree in Casablanca which made the defeat of German U-Boats a number one priority. 

The Prime Minister of Britain, Winston Churchill once wrote: “the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril”. In this phrase, he remarked the importance of the threat that set during World War Two by the Germans to the British. If Germany would had prevented merchant ships from carrying food, raw materials, troops and their equipment from North America to Britain, the aftermath of World War Two could have been completely different. People in Great Britain might have been starved, and its armies would not have been equipped with American-built tanks and vehicles needed in the combat. 

Also, if the Allies wouldn’t have been capable of moving ships over the North Atlantic, it would have been impossible to launch British and American land forces into the Mediterranean territories or in the D-Day. Germany’s best hope to be able to finally defeat Great Britain was to win the “Battle of the Atlantic”, named like this by the British prime minister of the time Winston Churchill. In World War One, Germany waged a very similar campaign, and in 1917 Germans were pretty close of defeating the British. But when this Battle of the Atlantic happened in 1939 neither side was well prepared for what was going to implicate this big war. 

Germany underestimated the impact U-boats caused in the British, and was fighting with only 46 operational ships, using majorly surface ships than submarines to fight the Atlantic. On September 3 of 1939, the day that Britain declared war on Germany, the British craft, “Athenia”, was torpedoed by a U-boat. This marked the beginning of the second Battle of the Atlantic.

                                                                               

                                                                                     Lucia Valdivia

“Little boy”

At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was an important city due to their industrial and military. Even some military camps were located there, such as the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Shunroku Hata's 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defence of all of southern Japan. Hiroshima was a logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a storage point centre, and a communication centre.

It was one of several Japanese cities that have never been touched during the WW2, allowing to measure the damage caused by the atomic bomb, thats why Washington decided to assign it highest priority.



The centre of the city contained a number of reinforced concrete buildings and lighter structures. Outside the centre, the area had many small wooden workshops set among Japanese houses. A few larger industrial plants lay near the outskirts of the city. The houses were of wooden construction with tile roofs, and many of the industrial buildings also were of wood frame construction. The city as a whole was highly susceptible to fire damage.



On August 6, 1945 at the time of launch, the weather was good, and the crew and equipment functioned properly. The Japanese early warning radar net detected the approach of some American aircraft headed for the southern part of Japan. The alert had been given and radio broadcasting stopped in many cities, among them Hiroshima. At 08:15, the Enola Gay dropped the nuclear bomb called "Little Boy" over the centre of Hiroshima. It exploded about 600 meters above the city with a blast equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT, killing an estimated 70–80,000 people.

Radiation poisoning and necrosis caused illness and death after the bombing in about 1% of those who survived the initial explosion. By the end of 1945, thousands more people died due to radiation poisoning, bringing the total killed in Hiroshima to about 90,000. Since then about a thousand more people have died of radiation-related causes.

The survivors of the bombings are called hibakusha a Japanese word that means "people exposed to the bomb". The suffering of the bombing is the root of Japan's postwar pacifism, and the nation has sought the abolition of nuclear weapons from the world ever since.
 

                                                                                                         Arianne Velez

Blitzkrieg: The Lightning War against Poland

Blitzkrieg operations were very effective during the campaigns of 1939–1941. These operations were dependent on surprise penetrations, general enemy unpreparedness and an inability to react swiftly enough to the attacker's offensive operations. It included surprise attacks, rapid advances into enemy territory, with coordinated massive air attacks, which struck and shocked the enemy as if it was struck by lightning.

The classic characteristic of what is commonly known as "blitzkrieg" is a highly mobile form of infantry and armor working in combined arms teams. (German armed forces, June 1943)

These forces would drive a breach in enemy defenses, permitting armored tank divisions to penetrate rapidly and roam freely behind enemy lines, causing shock and disorganization among the enemy defenses. German air power prevented the enemy from adequately resupplying or redeploying forces and thereby from sending reinforcements to seal breaches in the front. German forces could in turn encircle opposing troops and force surrender.

This tactic attempts to keep its enemy off-balance, making it difficult to respond effectively at any given point before the front has already moved on.

German operational theories began to evolve immediately after Germany's defeat in the First World War. The Treaty of Versailles limited any German Army to a maximum of 100,000 men, making impossible the deployment of massed troops which had characterized German strategy before the War. Although the German General Staff was also abolished by the treaty, it nevertheless continued to exist as the Truppenamt or "Troop Office", supposedly only an administrative body.

Committees of veteran staff officers were formed within the Truppenamt to evaluate 57 issues of the war. Their reports led to doctrinal and training publications, which became the standard procedures by the time of the Second World War. The Reichswehr was influenced by its analysis of pre-war German military thought, in particular the infiltration tactics which at the end of the war had seen some breakthroughs in the Western Front's trench war, and the maneuver warfare which dominated the Eastern Front.

Germany had a substantial numeric advantage over Poland and had developed a significant military prior to the conflict. The Luftwaffe (air force) provided both tactical and strategic air power, particularly dive bombers that disrupted lines of supply and communications. Historian Basil Liddell Hart claimed "Poland was a full demonstration of the Blitzkrieg theory."

Dispositions of the opposing forces on 31 August 1939 with the German plan of attack overlayed.

Polish military planners failed to foresee the speed of the German advance and predicted that Armia Prusy would need to be fully mobilized by 16 September, by which time it was too late. In late 1939, Polish analysts prepared a report, examining the faults of the Polish defensive strategy against German Blitzkrieg tactics, and proposing a solution. This report was presented to the Allies, of whom the French refused to read it. The French Army ended up fighting in 1940, not even on the "Polish schedule," but on the World War One schedule (even slower).

It was an extremely effective tactic when employed against the armies of the Allies, who were initially largely expecting a re-run of the Trenches in the First World War. The Third Reich had extensive military success in the first years of the Second World War with this strategy and conquered France, Poland and many other countries (almost) with ease.

Valeria Otarola

A new beggining for Spain: The II Republic

In this article I will talk about the II Republic, this political instability that really marked Spain and that, although it was started not only with good intentions because some of them wanted only the power but although all of them wanted a change for good, and finally this led Spain to a terrible civil war.

Background
Spain after the First World War was in a political crisis. The King, Alfonso XIII, was forced to abdicate because people wasn´t happy with his government anymore. So the II Republic appeared for the happiness of the majority of Spanish people, with a promise of modernization and democracy. After the elections for a provisional government, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora was named the first prime minister. But Spain at that time was still a subdesarrollated country with unemployment and poorness. The provisional government was also having a problem with the education and analphabetism was really common at that moment. There was a strong anti-clerical feeling and the Catholic Church and the government didn’t have a good relationship because the socialist group have a strong power and influence in people and some integrants of the church start supporting the monarchy, population gets angry , people burn churches and other religious buildings. People wanted a fast change, they aspire for a better life and in my opinion they were very confused because at that time many groups of different parties appear and the real reason why they wanted a republic is that they didn’t want a monarchy anymore but neither a republic, they only wanted to impose their point of view and that people could know it was “the best” for them.

Elections of 1931

In this year the government decided to make elections and much different party all around Spain got reunited from constitutionals to communists, all spreading their ideas. But the Socialist party, the one that was in the power in the provisional government, had the victory. The second most popular was the Radical one, led by Alejandro Lerroux and the right wing was reduced in the minority. Manuel Azaña was now the president and the new constitution proclaimed, among other things, the equal right for women, the determinate separation of the state with the church and also rights for the worker class.

The relationship between the church and the government tightened more because of the separation of powers of the church-state. In this moment the church loses all their privileges. Government permitted the divorce, banned the church to teach or show some catholic symbols and send Jesuits to the exile.


1931-1933 first Biennium

Government started making military reforms looking for the extreme fidelity of the army. The Socialist group entered in the government with three ministers and started making reforms, helping the working class. They started to provide upper wages, gave them pay vacations, health insurance, eight-hour workday, establishment of a minimum salary. The Republican government didn’t finish consolidating because people wanted fast reforms and in my opinion it was difficult to solve problems that have many years without a solution, it was a weak government. People were angry with this and Azaña was forced to abdicate and enters Martinez Blanco.

1933-1936 second Biennium

This period was also known as the Black Biennium because there was a big opposition against the government and it couldn’t continue with the reforms that they were doing to improves the stability and happiness of the people. This stopped the education and military reforms and that’s why they permitted the Catholic Church to teach again and help them doing the reforms. In an ideological way, because Mussolini and Hitler´s ideas advanced in Italy and Germany, the right wing started to gain more power and popularity in the right parties of Spain. And this is what brings the end of the Republic and a catastrophic event that takes place in the worst moment for Spain. They were tired and have been just emerging from another war, but without even thinking about it, a civil war started.

Mariana Flores

Treaty of Versailles

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was born in 1856, before the invention of telephones, radios, automobiles, airplanes, and many of the other material and cultural changes. Freud lived when the Great War unleashed, a war that destroyed the empire whose capital city was his home for most of his life and he also lived the beginning of the Second World War. He began his career as an ambitious but isolated neurologist; by the end of it, he described himself as someone who had had as great an impact on humanity's conception of itself as had Copernicus and Darwin, big science contributors. 

Freud displayed his brilliance at a young age and gained the favoritism of his parents. As a result, his poor parents sacrificed a lot of money to provide him with a proper education. Despite the family's economic struggles, Freud graduated from high school with honors. He then attended the University of Vienna where he studied medicine and was first introduced to psychodynamics, a theory used to determine the psychological forces of human behavior. Medical school ensured the way for the beginning of his career and he also worked in the fields of neurology, philosophy, psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, and literature. His most famous work, “The Interpretation of Dreams”, describes some of his most famous theories about the mind and the unconscious such as dream symbolism and interpretation, wish-fulfillment. It also mentions his famous theories of the Id, Ego, and Superego also called Chiriac. 

In the years of war, Freud had a few number of patients. He continued to treat those that he did have, but spent much of his time writing. In the winters of 1915 to 1916 and 1916 to 1917, he gave lectures on psychoanalysis at the University of Vienna which were later published as the “General Introduction to Psychoanalysis”. One of Freud's most important patients during the war years was a Hungarian named Anton von Freund. Freund was a wealthy Hungarian who was treated by Freud for a minor neurosis. Very enthusiastic about his treatment and excited by the congress in Budapest in 1918, Freund donated a large sum of money to the Association in order to found a psychoanalytic publishing house. The house was founded in January of 1919 and run by Otto Rank until 1924. For bad luck, Freund's generosity turned insignificant by postwar economic conditions in Austria. After this inauspicious beginning, the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, as the publishing house was called, was almost never solvent: it depended mostly on donations from supporters of psychoanalysis, dues from members of the Association, contributions from authors published by the Verlag, and sales of Freud's books. The Verlag was finally done by the annexation of Austria by Hitler in 1938. 

For concluding Sigmund Freud created a whole new outlook on the idea of psychology by considering the idea that personality is determined by childhood experiences and he was one of the first to consider the internal workings of the human brain. 

Lucia Valdivia

Birth of Modernism during the Interwar Period

As an aftermath of the Great War, a growing tension and depression in society with social order, manifested in artistic works in every source which strictly rejected the old practice. Young painters like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were causing a shock with their rejection of traditional perspective as the means of structuring paintings something that any of impressionists before had taken. In 1907, as Picasso was painting “Demoiselles d'Avignon”, Oskar Kokoschka was writing “Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen”, the first Expressionist play made in 1909, and Arnold Schoenberg was composing his “String Quartet No.2”, his first composition "without a tonal center". In 1911, Kandinsky painted “Bild mit Kreis" which he later called the first abstract painting. In 1913, a Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, working in Paris for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, composed “The Rite of Spring” for a ballet, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky that depicted human sacrifice. 

These developments, during the interwar years of 1914 to 1939, began to give a new meaning to what was termed "modernism": It embraced discontinuity, rejecting smooth change in everything from biology to fictional character development and filmmaking. It allowed disruption, rejecting or moving beyond simple realism in literature and art, and rejecting or dramatically altering tonality in music. 

It is considered to be the most significant architectural development in the interwar period. The designed world in which we live was largely created by Modernism, which is best identified as a loose collection of ideas that developed suddenly in different countries rather than as a single movement. The unadorned, geometric forms, abstracted shapes, and bold colors of Modernist art and design are notable, seen in everything that surround us and behind all this looks and forms of Modernism are set some radical ideas and conditions. 

Writers like Dickens and Tolstoy, painters like Turner, and musicians like Brahms were not radicals or "Bohemians", but were instead valued members of society who produced art that gave to society, even when critiquing its less desirable aspects. As a reaction for the unprecedented violence and destruction of World War I, these artists searched for ways to create a better world through art and design. 

The interwar period it’s not considered technologically as a great innovative period because the big inventions as the electric light bulb, the automobile, the airplane, the skyscraper, the radio, and the telephone appeared formerly World War I. It is greatly considered a time of development and dispersal giving rise to widespread use of modern technologies. Modernism includes remarkable art movements of the interwar period like Dadaism (1916 – 1924), Bauhaus (1919 – 1933), Art Deco (1920 – 1935) and Surrealism (1920 - 1935). The most paradigmatic movement during this time was Dada or Dadaism Dada, an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. The movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests, which many Dadaists believed were the main cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity in art and in society that corresponded to the war. 

Many Dadaists believed that the reason' and logic of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and supports chaos and irrationality. George Grosz, a artist, recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest against this world of mutual destruction.

Lucia Valdivia