Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Italian Society During World War Ii, Shira Klein

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter showcases what life was like for ordinary Italians during the Second World War. Up to the 1980s, a typical textbook on Italian history told a narrative of victimhood and heroism, promoting the idea that most Italians had never wanted to join the war in the first place, and resisted both the Fascists and the Germans. It was Mussolini and his henchmen, according to this narrative, who led unwilling Italians into war. The Italian rank-and-file were anti-Fascist heroes and victims of the leadership’s repressive tactics, whereas the Fascist leaders were villainous perpetrators.[i] Since the 1990s, historians have shown that …

Reframing The Sacred: Valkyrie And The Basis Of Resistance, William S. Skiles

Journal of Religion & Film

The film Valkyrie (2008) is a thriller that explores the religious basis of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the last year of the Second World War. While the political motivations are clearly stated in exposition and dialogue, the religious motivations are shown through a series of images, symbols, and dramatic uses of the word “sacred” (heilig and its derivatives). The filmmakers focus on Colonel von Stauffenberg’s struggle against the Nazi conception of the sacred, revealing his Christian sense of the sacred as a basis for his resistance. The religious elements in the film provide …

The Allies And The Holocaust, Mark Granicke

Undergraduate Research Symposium

During World War II, Nazi Germany carried out one of the most atrocious crimes in human history, the Holocaust. This systematic extermination of approximately 6 million Jews, along with other groups between 1941-1945, has become a focal point of modern human history. It is difficult to grasp the sheer magnitude of the undertaking by the Nazis. One question often asked is why the Allies did not do more to prevent this massacre. Were they simply ignorant of the entire event during the war? Knowing today the sheer magnitude of the Holocaust, it is difficult to believe knowledge of it would …

Life Is Beautiful, Or Not: The Myth Of The Good Italian, Shira Klein

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Life is Beautiful illustrates a popular misconception about Italy's role in the Holocaust. The film features the good Italian and the warped view that Italy treated Jews kindly in the late 1930s and during World War II. Historians have proven this claim to be grossly exaggerated, arguing that Italians persecuted Jews vigorously. Yet popular representations of the past-films, novels, museum exhibits, and websites-continue to give credence to the notion that Italians were overwhelmingly good to Jews. Although France and Germany cultivated similar self-acquitting myths in the decades immediately after the war, they eventually moved on to accept the more …

Review Of Bear And Fred: A World War Ii Story By Iris Argaman, Katie E. Gosman

Library Intern Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Donde Las Nubes Se Unen Al Mar = Where The Clouds Meet The Water, Kimberly E. Contag

MSU Authors Collection

Donde las nubes se unen al mar (2021) es la traducción de la narrativa histórica Where the Clouds Meet the Water (2004), un libro que explica la saga de Ernesto Contag Ziehe y su familia durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Ernesto y su familia fueron deportados de su patria ecuatoriana a la Alemania de los Nazis en 1942. La narrativa histórica que se lee casi como novela se basa en la investigación en bibliotecas, hemerotecas y archivos en tres continentes y en los documentos originales de los sobrevivientes de este canje político internacional de inocentes.

Donde las nubes se unen …