The New York Times ran an article, “China, Shy Giant, Shows Signs of Shedding Its False Modesy” about the way that China is embracing a larger global role. What’s most interesting for European / British history is the way that the Chinese government is studying other past and present “great powers” in order to chart their nation’s course. A 12 part documentary recently aired on Chinese television about great powers:

In the past several weeks China Central Television has broadcast a 12-part series describing the reasons nine nations rose to become great powers. The series was based on research by a team of elite Chinese historians, who also briefed the ruling Politburo about their findings.

The original article included a screen shot from this documentary that would be interesting to show in a History 5 slideshow. It is an image of Queen Elizabeth I with the Armada in the background, covered with Chinese characters (e.g. caption). Unfortunately there was no high resolution version available on the web so far.

Carly Berwick writes in Slate Magazine about the contested nature of the memory of the Allied firebombing of Dresden during the Second World War. Memories of Dresden have become the focal point of a contemporary political debate in Germany about the memory of the war dead. It is not entirely clear how a nation like Germany should mourn its war dead because of the ideology they fought for, or even whether they should be mourned at all. There is no doubt that the war dead retain important cultural meaning.

Dresden is a particularly lovely German city, even when 4,200 neo-Nazis are marching through it like orderly black ants. Since it was bombed to rubble by British and American pilots in World War II on Feb. 13, 1945, its center has been rebuilt to a digestible, weekender version of its 18th-century Baroque grandeur. The neo-Nazis marched last Saturday to observe the 61st anniversary of the bombing.

They are at the far-right extreme of a vigorous debate that’s taken hold in the past five years or so about whether Germans have a right to mourn their war dead. Moderate politicians and antifascist protesters alike are queasy at the prospect of a united Germany talking about its deprivation and suffering, exactly the sort of terms Hitler invoked in the 1930s. The debate over Dresden is, in the end, over who has the authority to assert loss, victimization, and the perceived attendant political capital.

Dresden has become a particularly charged symbol of suffering, in part because the former East Germany encouraged commemoration of the bombing, and questioning of the Western powers and reunification has brought the discussion of the Dresden fire-bombing to the entire country. But there has also been prodigious recent literary attention focused on it. The destruction of Dresden has been taken up by historians and literary humanists, including W.G. Sebald in On the Natural History of Destruction (who spreads his ruminations across many bombed cities), Jonathan Safran Foer in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, German historian Jörg Friedrich in Der Brand (The Fire), and British historian Frederick Taylor in Dresden, as well as in a new film melodrama, Dresden, which just premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.

The full article from Slate: “Do Germans have a right to mourn their war dead?

The BBC points out the fact that fairly soon there will be no one left living who fought in the First World War. There is a discussion of some of the issues surrounding oral history and the war, including the attempt by historians to record individuals’ experiences while it is still possible.

World War One will soon to cease to be an event in living memory. Of the millions of men who fought for Britain, just 10 survive. Their average age is 106, and this year is seen as the last chance to make a record of what happened to them almost a century ago.

The complete article from the BBC website: “The Race to Remember”

According to The Guardian, an archive of Second World War aerial photographs are now available online.

The entire archive of more than five million aerial reconnaissance photographs, shot by the RAF over Western Europe during the conflict, is going online from Monday.

The complete archive is accessible at: http://www.evidenceincamera.co.uk.

They include American troops landing on the Normandy beaches on D-Day, the seizure of the Pegasus bridge by British paratroops, the aftermath of the first 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne, and the German battleship Bismarck as the Royal Navy hunted her down.

There is also a photograph showing thick clouds of smoke pouring from Auschwitz concentration camp during the final months of the war.

It was taken at a time when the number of prisoners being killed was so high, the crematoria were unable to cope and the bodies had to be burned in mass pits. The images are so detailed that the prisoners in the camp can be seen standing for the roll-call.

Also noteworthy is the technique that was used to create the photos in the first place:

The multiple photographs taken by the high resolution cameras meant they were able to create 3-D images through an instrument called a “stereoscope”.

The complete article from The Guardian: “WW2 Aerial Pictures Go Online”