Unit 8 DBQ AMSCO AP European History - Withrow

Document 1
[This policy was criticized, belittled, and distorted from its true meaning, At first it was not welcomed in Western Europe. We quietly went on, and later events have proved that we were acting on the right lines. One section of the Opposition at home said that the Little Entente was imperialistic and militaristic; another section saw in it a weapon for European reaction against Soviet Russia; some considered it to be hostile to Italy, others said that it meant discord with France, declaring nevertheless, when it was convenient to say so, that the Little Entente was in vassalage to France; finally, others thought that it was merely out for self-advertisement and was no more than a piece of bluff. This is what was said to me here (in Bucharest) on one occasion even in the Czechoslovak Commission for Foreign Affairs. Today after three years the group of these three States has shown great vitality; it has shown an example of close cooperation, loyalty and genuine friendship and has achieved considerable results in its policy; it has preserved the peace of Central Europe in the most critical moments, acted as a moderating influence in a series of conflicts, and brought about such a degree of consolidation in its neighborhood and within its own States that there is no important international statesman today who would not openly recognize its value.

Document 2
The fact that intelligent sections of the community regard the German collapse primarily as an economic catastrophe, and consequently think that a cure for it may be found in an economic solution, seems to me to be the reason why hitherto no improvement has been brought about.

No improvement can be brought about until it be understood that economics play only a second or third role, while the main part is played by political, moral and racial factors. Only when this is understood will it be possible to understand the causes of the present evil and consequently to find the ways and means of remedying them....

The most facile [simplistic], and therefore the most generally accepted, way of accounting for the present misfortune is to say that it is the result of a lost war, and that this is the real cause of the present misfortune.

The apostles of world conciliation habitually asserted the resurgence of the German people-once "militarism" had been crushed. Did not these self-same circles sing the praises of the Entente and did they not also lay the whole blame for the sanguinary [bloody] struggle on the shoulders of Germany? Without this explanation, would they have been able to put forward the theory that a military defeat would have no political consequences for the German people? Is not that so, you miserable, lying rascals? That kind of impudence which is typical of the Jews was necessary in order to proclaim the defeat of the army as the cause of the German collapse.

Document 3
Nothing, nothing had the least importance and I knew quite well why. "The priest), too, knew why. From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my life long, from the years that were to come. And on its way that breeze had leveled out all the ideas that people tried to foist on me in the equally unreal years I then was living through. What difference could they make to me, the deaths of others, or a mother's love, or his [the priests) God; or the way a man decides to live, the fate he thinks he chooses, since one and the same fate was bound to "choose" not only me but thousands of millions of privileged people who, like him, called themselves my brothers. Surely, surely he must see that? Every man alive was privileged; there was only one class of men, the privileged class. All alike would be condemned to die one day; his turn, too, would come like the others. And what difference could it make if, after being charged with murder, he were executed because he didn't weep at his mother's funeral, since it all came to the same thing in the end?

Document 4
We are a very unfortunate generation, whose lot has been to see the moment of our passage through life coincide with the arrival of great and terrifying events, the echo of which will resound through all our lives.

One can say that all the fundamentals of the world have been affected by the war, or more exactly, by the circumstances of the war; something deeper has been worn away than the renewable parts of the machine. You know how greatly the general economic situation has been disturbed, and the polity of states, and the very life of the individual; you are familiar with the universal discomfort, hesitation, apprehension. But among all these injured things is the Mind. The Mind has indeed been cruelly wounded; its complaint is heard in the hearts of intellectual man; it passes a mournful judgment on itself. It doubts itself profoundly.

Document 5
It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life. And yet, in making any general judgment of this sort, we are in danger of forgetting how variegated the human world and its mental life are. There are a few men from whom their contemporaries do not withhold admiration, although their greatness rests on attributes and achievements which are completely foreign to the aims and ideals of the multitude. One might easily be inclined to suppose that it is after all only a minority which appreciates these great men, while the large majority cares nothing for them. But things are probably not as simple as that, thanks to the discrepancies between peoples thoughts and their actions, and to the diversity of their wishful impulses....

This brings us to the more general problem of preservation. The subject has hardly been studied as yet; but it is so attractive and important that we may be allowed to turn our attention to...a destruction of the memory-trace-that is, its annihilation-that everything is somehow preserved and that in suitable circumstances it can once more be brought to light.

Let us try to grasp what this assumption involves by taking an analogy from another field. We will choose as an example the history of the Eternal City. Historians tell us that the oldest Rome was the Roma Quadrata, a fenced settlement on the Palatine....

Of the buildings which once occupied this ancient area he will find nothing, or only scanty remains, for they exist no longer. The best information about Rome in the republican era would only enable him at the most to point out the sites where the temples and public buildings of that period stood. Their place is now taken by ruins, but not by ruins of themselves but of later restorations made after fires or destruction.

Document 7

It's farewell to the drawing room's civilised cry The professor's sensible where-to and why

The frock-coated diplomat's social aplomb Now matters are settled with gas and bomb.

5

The works for two pianos, the brilliant stories Of reasonable giants and remarkable fairies The pictures, the ointments, the frangible wares And the branches of olive are stored upstairs. For the Devil has broken parole and arisen

He has dynamited his way out of prison Out of the well where his Papa throws The rebel range, the outcast rose. ...

10

The fishes are silent deep in the sea: The skies are lit up like a Christmas tree

The star in the west shoots its warning cry "Mankind is alive but mankind must die."

So good-bye to the house with its wallpaper red, Good-bye to the sheets on the warm double bed Good-bye to the beautiful birds on the wall, It's good-bye, dear heart, good-bye to you all.