Course Readings – HS 2321 World History to 1500 – Dr. Whitener

World War and the Peace1920s-1930sWorld War IICold War & DecolonizationEnd of Cold War Europe




For a moment there was peace: The Christmas Day Truce of 1914

Edgar Ramon
04/08/2018

The chilling cold was inescapable and constant along the trenches. This was only worsened by the rain-water flooding the muddy walls and floors. Some months had passed since the beginning of World War I, and it was now December of the year 1914. Being “home




Triumph and Tragedy: The Loss of the Lusitania

Christopher Hohman
09/21/2018

The 1890s was a remarkable time for transatlantic travel. For the better part of a century, the British had ruled the waves both militarily and commercially. All this, however, changed in the blink of an eye. In September of 1897, the German vessel Kaiser Wilhelm




The Silent Killer: Chemical Weapons in WWI

Regina De La Parra
05/07/2018

It was April 22, 1915. It was World War I and thousands of soldiers from Germany and France were fighting each other to win what many believed would be an easy war. It had been a long day, but the fight was barely beginning. Suddenly,




Manfred von Richthofen: Der Roten Baron

Seth Roen
05/06/2020

Imagine the western front during the spring of 1917. The sound of the whistleblowing indicated the start of an assault. Masses of soldiers crawled out of their trenches and into No Man’s Land. They rushed across the field full of mud, craters, and remnants of




The Failed “Beer Hall Putsch” of 1923 in Bavaria

Dayna Valdez
10/19/2017

On November 8, 1923, at around 8:30 pm, Adolf Hitler and his armed bodyguards of the SA surrounded the Bürgerbräukeller Beer Hall in Munich, Germany. Along with his bodyguards, when Hitler barged into the Beer Hall, he immediately fired his gun into the ceiling and




Fighting Soviet Socialism With Music: Shostakovich

Amanda Uribe
11/02/2019

What really happened on December 11, 1936 will forever be a mystery to the music world. At the height of Soviet oppression of the arts, Dmitri Shostakovich, a very influential composer in the early twentieth century, took a strong stance against the Soviet Union and




Cold. Red. Fear. Death: Holodomor

Madeline Chandler
04/18/2021

Crunch: the sound of cracking frozen ground underneath one’s foot walking in subzero temperatures. Burning wood: the smell escaping chimneys in the distance where people struggle to keep warm. White clouds around anyone who dares to step outside when their breath freezes in the air




Guernica 1937

Daniel Gimena
11/04/2020

It was 4pm in the Spanish city of Guernica. It was another day in that Spanish civil war that seemed to not have an end. Suddenly, the noise of airplanes approaching from the north, hopefully only war planes crossing the city on their way to




A Dreaded Nightmare: Reinhard Heydrich and the Start of the Holocaust

Amelia Hew
11/12/2019

Winner of the Fall 2019 StMU History Media Award for Best Article in the Category of “World History” In the evening of November 9, 1938, the state-sponsored pogrom on the German-Jewish community occurred throughout Germany that would subsequently be called Kristallnacht. It occurred under the




The Drive to Survive: Eva and Miriam Mozes

Rylie Kieny
10/10/2018

At ten years of age, most children are running outside playing with dolls and with the neighborhood kids, while their parents are supporting their imagination and naïve dreams. Such a normal world changed overnight for ten-year-old twins, Eva and Miriam Mozes, when the Hungarian Army




“I’m No Hero”: The Life Saving Acts of Irena Sendler

Auroara-Juhl Nikkels
02/06/2018

Winner of the Spring 2018 StMU History Media Award for Best Article in the Category of “Political History” Best Article in the Category of “World History” At the age of twenty-nine, Irena Sendler was a social worker with the Polish welfare department when Hitler invaded




Eisenhower’s Yes: Operation Overlord

Antonio Coffee
04/06/2019

General Dwight D. Eisenhower knew he was fast approaching a crucial moment in the Western theater of the Second World War. In the early morning hours of June 5, 1944, Eisenhower was faced with one of the hardest decisions of his life, and one of




A Company of Heroes: The Story of the Band of Brothers

Amanda Gutierrez
11/30/2020

World War II began in September of 1939 when Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany after its invasion of Poland. Although other allied nations, such as Canada and Australia, joined Britain and France in their battle against Germany, the United States remained uninvolved.




Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech

Victoria Sanchez
05/01/2017

“…From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent…”1   Winston Churchill, Britain’s fearless Prime Minister during World War II, was an influential and inspiring leader who was reluctant to let any sort of obstacle prevent




The Candy Bombers of the Berlin Airlift

Tyler Sleeter
04/21/2017

“Remember us children and we will remember you our whole life”                                                                         -ten year old Helma Lurch 1 Near the end of World War II, the Allied Powers had to decide what to do with Germany and its largest city, Berlin. At the Potsdam Conference in




The Olympic Rivalry between the Dassler Brothers

Pedro Lugo Borges
11/22/2020

“Never be satisfied with your accomplishments; always continue to learn”—Adolf Dassler1 If you were a wandering traveler taking a stroll down the misty cobblestone streets of a relatively small German town in 1965, you wouldn’t know it, but you would be walking into the middle




“Ab Sofort”: The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Eduardo Foster
10/19/2017

The evening of November 9, 1989 quickly became a historical one as Günter Schabowski, an official of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany, announced in a press conference that the inhabitants of East Germany could now travel to the West German side of the