Abstract
History textbooks are uniquely placed to influence the way a nation views itself and others, particularly in nations where the past has been difficult and does not lend itself to uplifting narratives. The 1990s saw a series of events which dissolved many of the political creations of the Second World War, including the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR. This chapter analyzes the treatment of the three major wartime conferences that did much to shape this world, held in Tehran, Yalta (Crimea), and Potsdam, in three textbooks: the German text Unsere Geschichte (Our History) (1991), the Russian text Noveishaie Istoriia (Newest or Modern History) (1994), and The American Pageant (1991).
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Notes
- 1.
Hanna Schissler and Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, eds. The Nation, Europe and the World: Textbooks and Curricula in Transition (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005); Stuart Foster and Jason Nicholls, “America in World War II: An Analysis of History Textbooks from England, Japan, Sweden, and the United States,” Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 20, no. 3 (Spring, 2005): 214–233; JoAnn Phillion, Ming Fang He, Michael F. Connelly, SAGE Handbooks of Curriculum and Instruction (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2008); Eckhardt Fuchs and Steffen Stammler, Textbooks between Tradition and Innovation: A Journey through the History of the Georg Eckert Institute (Braunschweig: Georg Eckert Institute-Leibniz Institute for International Research, 2016).
- 2.
Keith Crawford and Stuart J. Foster, War, Nation, Memory: International Perspectives on World War II in School History Textbook (Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2008), xiv.
- 3.
Suzanne De Castell, “Teaching the Textbook: Teacher/Text Authority and the Problem of Interpretation,” Linguistics and Education 2, no. 1 (1990): 80.
- 4.
Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward, History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray US History (New York: The New Press, 2006), xviii.
- 5.
Lindaman and Ward, History Lessons; Crawford and Foster, War, Nation, Memory; Susan Santoli, “Analysis of the Treatment Given to Selected Aspects of World War II in Secondary School History Textbooks Published in France, Germany, Great UK, Japan, Russia and the United States.” PhD thesis, Auburn University, 1997.
- 6.
Crawford and Foster, War, Nation, Memory, 9.
- 7.
Todd H. Nelson, History as ideology: the portrayal of Stalinism and the Great Patriotic War in contemporary Russian high school textbooks, Post-Soviet Affairs 31, no. 1 (2015): 37–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2014.942542.
- 8.
Lindaman and Ward, History Lessons, xviii.
- 9.
Schissler and Soysal, “Teaching beyond,” 2.
- 10.
Crawford and Foster, War, Nation, Memory, 4.
- 11.
Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, History, para. 1, 3. Accessed January 11, 2017. http://www.gei.de/en/the-institute/history.html.
- 12.
Eckhardt Fuchs and Steffen Sammler, eds. “Reconciliation and Understanding: International Textbook Work,” in Textbooks between Tradition and Innovation: A Journey through the History of the Georg Eckert Institute (Braunschweig: Leibniz Institute for International Textbook Research, 2016), 6.
- 13.
Tony Judt, “The Past is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” in Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, ed. Istaván Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 293.
- 14.
Santoli, “Analysis of the Treatment.”
- 15.
“World War 2 Statistics,” Second World War History. Accessed November 12, 2017. http://www.secondworldwarhistory.com/world_war_2_statistics-asp.
- 16.
Lily Rothman and Liz Ronk, “This is What Europe’s Last Major Refugee Crisis Looked Like (September 11, 2015), par 3. time.com/4029800/world-war-ii-refugee-photos-migrant-crisis/.
- 17.
Ronald A. Francisco, “Theories of Protest and the Revolutions of 1989,” American Journal of Political Science 37, no. 3 (August 1993): 663.
- 18.
Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford Press, 1993), 168.
- 19.
R.J.B. Bosworth, “Nations Examine their Past: A Comparative Analysis of the Historiography of the ‘Long’ Second World War,” The History Teacher 39 (1996): 500.
- 20.
Sonni Efron, “New Texts Reshape Past for Russians,” Los Angeles Times (September 25, 1994): 2. http://articles.latimes.com/1994-09-25/news/mn-42980_1_soviet-past.
- 21.
Todd H. Nelson, “History as Ideology: The Portrayal of Stalinism and the Great Patriotic War in Contemporary Russian High School Textbooks,” Post-Soviet Affairs 31, no. 1 (2015): 37–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2014.942542.
- 22.
Oksana Karpenko, “‘Prison of the Peoples’ and ‘Friendship of the Peoples’ in Soviet and Post-Soviet History Textbooks of the USSR/Russia,” Myths and Conflict in the South Caucasus 1, Okasana Karpenko, Jana Javakhishvili, eds. (London: International Alert, 2014), 135–136.
- 23.
Ibid., 136.
- 24.
Nelson, “History as Ideology,” 40.
- 25.
Efron, “New Texts Reshape Past for Russians,” par. 10.
- 26.
Peter Parish, ed. Reader’s Guide to American History (London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997), 693.
- 27.
National Geographic Learning. The American Pageant. http://ngl.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do.
- 28.
Thomas A. Bailey, The American Pageant (Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1956); David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen, The American Pageant, 16th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2016).
- 29.
Tony Waters, “The Sacred and the Profane in American History Curriculum,” The Social Studies 98, no. 6 (Nov/Dec 2007): 246.
- 30.
Tony Waters, “Why Students Think There are Two Kinds of American History,” The History Teacher 39, no. 1 (November 2005). http://wwwhistorycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/html.
- 31.
Bailey, The American Pageant, 880; Kennedy and Cohen, The American Pageant, 16th ed., 827.
- 32.
Bodo von Borries, “The Third Reich in German History Textbooks since 1945,” Journal of Contemporary History 38, no 1.
- 33.
Von Borrie, The Third Reich, 49.
- 34.
John Rodden “The Uses and Abuses of History, or the Lessons of Progressive Pedagogy: An Analysis of East German History Textbooks, The Midwest Quarterly 43, no. 2 (December 2002): 207–223.
- 35.
Von Borrie, The Third Reich, 52.
- 36.
Brian M. Puaca, Teaching Trauma and Responsibility: World War II in West German History Textbooks, New German Critique, No. 112, Ambivalent Sites of Memory in Postwar Germany (Winter, 2011): 135–153.
- 37.
Von Borrie, The Third Reich, 55.
- 38.
Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
- 39.
Vojtech Mastny, “Soviet War Aims at the Moscow and Teheran Conferences of 1943,” The Journal of Modern History 47, no. 3 (September 1975): 493–494.
- 40.
Mastny, “Soviet War Aims.”
- 41.
Antony Beever, The Second World War (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2012), 514.
- 42.
Thomas A Bailey and David M. Kennedy, The American Pageant, 9th ed. (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991), 855.
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Ibid., 859.
- 46.
Martin Alm, “Europe in American World History Textbooks,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies 12, no. 3 (2014): 239. https://doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2014.928024.
- 47.
Bailey and Kennedy, The American Pageant, 856.
- 48.
Alm, Europe.
- 49.
A.A. Kreder, Noveishaia istoriia (Mockva: Interpraks, 1994), 154.
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
“The Yalta Conference (1945),” par. 10. Accessed December 13, 2017. http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/yalta.html.
- 52.
Beever, The Second World War, 514.
- 53.
Kreder, Noveishaia istoriia, 154.
- 54.
Ibid., 159.
- 55.
Robin Edmonds. “Yalta and Potsdam: Forty Years Afterwards,” International Affairs 62, no. 2 (Spring, 1986): 197–216.
- 56.
Gail Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Collapse and Rebirth in Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford Press, 2012), 245.
- 57.
Serhii Plokhy, “Remembering Yalta: The Politics of International History.” The Harriman Review 17, no.1 (2009): 34–47.
- 58.
Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin at the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conferences, Journal of Cold War Studies 9, no. 4 (2007): 6.
- 59.
Michael Beschloss, The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941–1945 (New York; London: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 269.
- 60.
Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, German-Polish Joint History Textbook ‘Europa – unsere Geschichte’ (Europe – Our History), para. 3. Accessed March 11, 2018. http://www.gei.de/en/departments/europe-narratives-images-spaces/europe-and-the-national-factor/german-polish-joint-history-textbook-europa-unsere-geschichte-europe-our-history.html.
- 61.
William Dray, Philosophy of History (New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc., 1964), 22.
- 62.
Gail Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Collapse and Rebirth in Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford Press, 2012), 245.
- 63.
Serhii Plokhy, Remembering Yalta: The politics of international history, The Harriman Review 17, no. 1 (2009): 34–47.
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Santoli, S. (2019). (Re)Writing the Second World War: United States, Russian and German National History Textbooks in the Immediate Aftermath of 1989. In: Kerby, M., Baguley, M., McDonald, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_15
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