The only thing worse than being assimilated to the Borg
New Deal
Methods
Madness
The Atlantic ran an article or two about the…
What did U.S. Voters Want from the New Deal in 1932?
New Deal
Election of 1932
Public opinion
I published an article in 2019 arguing that “the New Deal was on the ballot in 1932”—that is…
Oppenheimer omnibus
Oppenheimer
Movies
Atomic bombs
Pacific strategy
US strategy
Unconditional surrender
We went to see Oppenheimer in 70mm IMAX yesterday. It was a fantastic experience, but I’m not a movie critic so I’ll leave to others to explain why Nolan is especially good at pointing cameras at…
Mistakes and counterfactuals
Nazi strategy
Methods
In the latest episode of the Unclear and Present Danger podcast, Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz discuss the movie Fatherland with Sam Goldman. Ganz spends some time explaining his general distaste for alternative histories asking “what if the Nazis had won,” both because it is historically…
Quantifying German Jewish refugees, 1933–1938
Holocaust
Historiography
Methods
So far as I can tell the best source of data on the number…
Time and rate of the Holocaust
Holocaust
Historiography
Methods
Of the effort to arrive at a number of Jews murdered in the Nazi death camps, Yitzhak Arad writes,
Travel by map
Geography
Historiography
Movies
Muppets
In The Muppets (2011) the almost fully reunited gang, together with Jason Segel and Amy…
Ray Moley as a source
New Deal
Raymond Moley
Historiography
Methods
Historians often rely on Raymond Moley’s memoirs for accounts of the early New Deal.1 I have been skeptical of leaning too hard on these sources: memoirs written after the fact are fallible because memory is fallible; moreover, Moley left the administration…
Geolexigraph
US strategy
Neutrality
Today’s fun source is the “Geolexigraph of the Neutrality Act of 1939,” in the Department of Commerce’s own journal, Comparative Law Series, of May 1940.1 The journal provided information to US businesses on how to navigate US laws and policy; this particular article included all manner of information from the Department of…
A red herring in the fog of war
Greer
Destroyers-for-bases
Hasselwander noted that historians will sometimes say or suggest that Lt. Fraatz, commander of U 652, might have mistaken Greer for one of the Wickes-class destroyers the US traded to Britain in exchange for Western-hemisphere bases in the deal of September 1940, and thus a legitimate target;…
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