Building Upon, Not Moving On: A Reflection on Berlin and Home

Rendering judgment is typically easier for individuals who are able to remove themselves from the equation. People are often more able to come to an opinion about the actions and responsibilities of others than to appropriately evaluate their own — it’s a theme I’ve seen quite frequently in this trip, and it’s one I’ve found applies in my personal life as well. Here, I’m going to attempt to look at a bit of both.

This idea crept into my head on our ride out to Sachsenhausen. I’ll start with the backstory. We had visited Wannsee the day before, and I was really shaken by it. Racism really strikes me at the core — the crude differentiation between human and sub-human that the Nazis called “science” makes me feel physically ill. But as we talked with the tour guide, she unabashedly made the obvious explicit: none of this started or ended with the Nazis. Racial discrimination began far earlier and still continues today in so many ways. With this on my mind, my biggest takeaway was especially troubling. We entered the room where the Wannsee Conference was held, and a flowchart on the wall showed pictures and biographies of the men involved, as well as their rank within the NSDAP. One man on the chart was beneath all the rest, and he bore one of the few names I recognized: Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann, the head of Nazi deportation efforts, was the lowest ranked officer in attendance.

I could not stop staring at Eichmann. Of all that I saw on this trip, his face haunts me more than anything else, and it’s because he’s so human. In the grand scheme of things, he was just doing grunt work — this is the guy Heydrich has rewriting all the documents about the Final Solution six times until he thought they looked good enough. It kills me that these words about providing “suitable treatment” to the Jewish people who survived labor camps was written in about an hour and a half during a brunch among colleagues at a pretty little lake house. Eichmann later said that, to these men, this was just business as usual over a nice cognac.

The way the Nazis were able to bureaucratize and normalize genocide is what scares me most. Before the war, Eichmann was nothing more than a bookkeeper’s son — a salesman and travel agent in Vienna. Many of the men at the same table with him had just finished law school. These people are just. like. us. That’s what makes how far they went so terrifying. No matter how much I study the Holocaust, it’s still hard for me to fathom that it was something that humans did to other humans in such recent history: that these monsters really were men.

On our way to Sachsenhausen, a few of us were discussing this idea of humanity and its darker side, but we did so on a different topic that’s also of personal importance to me. You see, I’m from Steubenville, Ohio. When I graduated from high school back in June of 2012, that might not have meant anything to most people, and in 2015, it might have faded from popular memory again. But in the years between, you’ve probably heard of it. Steubenville was the site of the infamous rape case that happened in August of 2012: two student athletes from my alma mater were convicted of raping an unconscious teenage girl from a neighboring school, and it hit national news. The case was emblematic of the problem of high school drinking and sex in today’s society, and Steubenville became synonymous with rape culture. Cameron, one of the guys on my trip, is doing some research on the case now for a play that’s been commissioned by the Big Ten Conference, and we delved into the topic of remembrance in Steubenville on the train. This play is tentatively titled Good Kids based on several residents’ quips in major news stories — from what I could gather, it centers on the inability of some to accept the serious wrongs that were done and their willingness to excuse rape with a “boys will be boys” attitude. These boys, they say, were generally good students, good athletes, and good friends, and they made a terrible mistake, but at the end of the day, they’re still good kids. And while I don’t know that that reflects the majority viewpoint in Steubenville, I would not dispute that it’s certainly a belief I’ve heard voiced.

As we discussed the play, Peter (another friend from the trip) mentioned how striking the comparison was when you considered our destination. It stopped me dead in my tracks, because I’d never had that thought before… and then the gears started to turn. I’d like to pause here to say that what follows will not be an attempt to make a direct comparison between these two events. But I will say that this comparison completely altered the way that I thought about remembrance, not only in Germany, but in every place we’ve been, because it made everything so much more real. The undeniable similarities between the two horrors are the questions they make you ask about humanity. Why would anyone do such a thing? How could they go this far? And finally, what I’ll be examining here: who is responsible?

The first analogous characters, and the most obvious at the time for me, were Eichmann and Heydrich. Because, much like my observations about Eichmann, the two boys in Steubenville didn’t seem so different from the rest of us to start. And just as Eichmann had a superior in Heydrich, my understanding is that of the two boys who perpetrated the rape, one was a ringleader, and the other was more of a follower, and both were responsible for terrible, terrible consequences. Neither was absolved legally, nor should they have been. And, as you may have guessed, this was the easiest portion of my reflection, because it’s still the type that allows me to remove myself from the equation. If I stopped here, the answer would still be true (albeit incomplete): these two were responsible for what happened.

But if you dig a bit deeper, the next level gets trickier. Another perspective we noticed in Berlin’s remembrance was that of German national responsibility. The notion of bystander culpability and of National Socialist actions as an extension of German culture was one that Berlin owned, which was impressive. It’s something Steubenville has struggled with a bit, because it’s easier to point at the individual perpetrators as if they’re the exception and not the rule. It’s easy to pick a scapegoat — especially ones who largely deserve it — and to hide in the shadows as if they’re an anomaly. The problem is that it just isn’t true. And just like the Nazis played on the antisemitism and other forms of racism that already existed in Germany to enact their Final Solution, the boys from my hometown who raped a young woman would not have been able to do so had it not been for the culture that surrounded them. There were only two boys who committed rape, and there were only two boys convicted for that night in August, but it would be a disservice to say that their actions were entirely independent. Most directly, there were older boys with them throughout the night, videotaping their actions and laughing at the cruel words they spoke in jest. There were people at various points in the night who could have intervened and did nothing, just as many neighbors of the deported Jews turned a blind eye because it was more comfortable. And on the more indirect end of the scale, there were plenty of us who laughed with friends who had blacked out over the weekend after too many cheap beers, and there were plenty more who inflated the egos of young student-athlete stars. I’ve come to believe that the small things like that add up to the actions they committed — while the line is hard to draw, it’s important to understand that even seemingly harmless acts can contribute to a much larger problem. Even men like Eichmann, whom we view as monsters today, were often relegated to inundated tasks such as drafting documents without physically massacring the millions whose death he commissioned. His mundane office behavior and the millions who stood silent while his schemes were being implemented helped to normalize the barbarities that happened. And just as Germany has accepted a national responsibility for its role, I believe the people of Steubenville must do the same.

I understand the shame that comes with that. At Sachsenhausen, Megan van Almsick mentioned that the memorials that span Berlin seem to spark a constant guilt in people who, in 2015, had nothing to do with the Holocaust. I was immediately reminded of two things. The first was one common reaction in Steubenville during the initial media storm: people wished it would all just go away — that what happened had happened, and that they felt terrible about it, but that they had no control over it and wanted the spotlight to shift from our small town so normalcy could return. The second, which applies in both scenarios, is Audre Lorde’s view on guilt as a response to anger — namely, that it is insufficient. We must be forced to think through difficult issues and confront them if we hope to avoid falling into the same traps in the future, but resorting to feelings of guilt often keeps individuals from critically engaging with the problem at hand. Whether in Berlin or at home, it is most important to meet these topics face-to-face, uncomfortable as they may be, and rise above guilt to genuine reflection on how to improve upon our past behaviors and attitudes if we aim to move beyond them. This shameful responsibility is not something we can ever truly “move on” from — it is an onus that we earned, that we deserve, and that we must build upon in order to shape a better future.

This is what I appreciated most about Berlin. Everywhere you look, their history is built right into the city. Bricked paths and remaining fragments allow the Wall to still run right through busy roadways; stumbling stones on neighborhood sidewalks bear the names of Jews who were deported from the same streets we walk; somber memorials spring up in the midst of parks, buildings, and riverbends. Berlin has not forgotten, and yet it still lives so fully in the here and now. The same barrier that once served to divide people now unites them at Mauerpark, where I ate lunch with people from all over the world while sitting on the wall itself. This city has managed a feat that no other city I’ve seen has even attempted: even with a darker history than most, Berlin has allowed itself to thrive not in spite of but in conjunction with its past.

The Alley Less Traveled

Paris is a remarkable city. I broke away from the group here more than I did in London, and I think I had an entirely different experience than everyone else because I strayed from the touristy areas for the most part. Instead, I found myself in some really unique neighborhoods at the recommendation of my friend Jake Bogart, a Buckeye alum who’s one of the smartest humans I’ve ever met. I am so, so glad that I asked for his advice. After I hit the top of the Arc de Triomphe with Peter, Keith, and Tommy on Saturday, we parted ways and I took off to Oberkampf, an artsy district with plenty of dive bars and other incredible, crazy little shops. When I exited the metro, I could hear drums down the street, so I made my way over towards the sound and walked straight into a festival called Limyè Ba Yo by the République metro stop. République seems to be a hub for cultural activists from what I can tell — in the center of the square where the festival was set up, there was a huge statue that said “a la gloire de la République Francaise” with other words like “equality” and “universal suffrage” inscribed in the stone in French, but stickers and graffiti (a great deal of which surrounded the Charlie Hebdo incident) covered the monument.

(Insert République picture)

Limyè Ba Yo turned out to be the 17th annual commemoration for victims of colonial slavery. This festival was amazing. There was excellent live music, little tables with clothing and other small trinkets for sale, street food you could smell a block away (yum), and, at the heart of the exhibit, a wall of names that stretched down the whole square. Its purpose wasn’t just remembrance — it also served a genealogical function. A nearby sign explained that when colonial slavery ended in Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1848, the Emancipation Committee assigned last names to the freed persons. Because the enslaved were only identified by a first name and a number during French rule, the officials picked words at random and just inverted the letters to ascribe a different identity to each person. These individuals, eager to enter society and hide their status as former slaves, never spoke about their past or how these names were given to them — which ultimately meant that a lot of people lost their ancestry and a defining part of their heritage. CM98, the organization that put on the festival, went through a ton of archives to put the names of these people on display so that their descendants could find the founders of their families. The 50,000 randomized names on this wall served as a reminder of the massive dehumanization of the people in the colonial French Caribbean, and it was really impactful.

(Insert Limyè picture)

I happened upon another place with a similar theme while I was by Canal Saint-Martin. As I waked down the canal, I made two lefts into an alley to find Le Comptoir Général… I think “the coolest place I’ve ever been” changed every hour in Paris. This place was a café-bar-museum-performance hall with a focus on art, history, music, and politics of Françafrique, and it was definitely a hole in the wall: super discreet from the outside, with a plain, plaster and brick façade marked only by a small sign with the name and a red, lighted arrow pointing toward the door. But when I walked in, I found myself in a hallway with these grand chandeliers hanging from the roof, and there were so many colors and signs. It was a sensory overload in the best possible way.

(Insert Comptoir Général picture)

I checked out the politics exhibit, which was marked by a cluster of portraits — the top row displayed French leaders from de Gaulle to François Mitterand, and beneath them was a line of African leaders from the corresponding time periods. There was a small historical exhibition about the disaster that the French have been in Africa, including several assassinations ordered by government officials in Cameroon, Togo, and Burkina Faso and comments like Mitterand’s “in Africa, genocide isn’t really big news.” I headed upstairs to the fashion exhibit called the Marché Noir, and I met the man who supplied it — his name is Amah, and he’s originally from Togo, but he’s lived in Paris for the last thirty years. What a great guy. He bought me an espresso and we talked for a while, and then he gave me a couple of café recommendations (and drew me a map on a napkin to help find them). I’m not sure where the snobby Parisians are, but I certainly didn’t find them. The people I met were wonderful, and I have no idea how I got this lucky. Looks like taking the road (or, in my case, the alley) less traveled really can pay off.

On Remembrance in Bayeux…

(Bear with me, but the WiFi in Paris won’t load pictures just yet. Edits to come.)

Bayeux has definitely been the most impactful town we’ve visited in relation to World War II for a number of reasons, and in this post I’ll focus on three: museums, perspective, and sites.

I was fascinated by the memorials here. They often seemed more text/information-heavy than the artifact-after-artifact style of the the Imperial War Museum in London, but I learn more that way, and the film and images definitely made up for the lack of 8,000 tanks. The Imperial War Museum was so technology-heavy that it lacked a human aspect to me. That was never the case here. At the Utah Beach museum, there were several detailed personal accounts, like the one of American pilot David Dewhurst. Testimonials about him recounted, “A wing could come off, and he’d say, ‘We’ll worry about it when we’ve landed,'” and “He was good in every respect. He was one of the very best this country ever produced, as a man… and as an officer.” This kind of thing makes me tear up. I also really liked the perspective provided in “Letter to an American,” written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of The Little Prince:

(Insert Antoine photo)

This human theme ran through to the museum preceding the American cemetery at Omaha as well.

(Insert cemetery pano)

I found an exhibit with a voiceover from PFC John R. McDonnell, a Lakewood, Ohio veteran, and I took down as much of it as I could: “I remember saying goodbye to my best friend — we were close all throughout the war. We hugged and shook hands and talked about what we’d do after the war. When I got home, the first thing I asked my mom was ‘How’s Glenn?’ She hesitated and said he was killed by the Germans. I still think about him all the time…” Stories that emphasize the soldiers as individuals really bring home the cost of war for me. Thomas Barry, the soldier whose grave I laid a flower on, studied Journalism at Ohio State.

(Insert Barry photo)

It’s the little things like that serve as a reminder: these people are us. (As a sidenote, we met two British veterans in this museum who served in the Royal Navy at Sword and hadn’t seen each other in 71 years until today, which was unreal.)

The Caen Memorial really hooked me aesthetically. The construction of several exhibits blew the WWII part of the Imperial War Museum out of the water (which wasn’t that hard, to be fair). Near the beginning of the museum, one exhibit that focused on the Nazi rise to power was connected to the consolidation years by a pitch black cave with a single image of Hitler speaking right over the exit, and, in the very center, they sharpened the acoustics so you could hear yourself breathing really intensely… Something about it just made the pit of my stomach drop. It was incredibly well done. I felt like I was walking right into the terrors of that period. I also really appreciated the use of film for sections like the bombings and destruction of French cities, because reading about events like that doesn’t do them justice.

For a similar reason, I also loved the 360° film that we watched in the Gold Beach Museum at Arromanches. There was a really wide variety of spliced images spliced images on all nine screens — they showed the maps of the advances and setbacks by different nations from 1940 on, (staged) footage of the invasions on the beaches, the liberation of coastal cities and of Paris, and the Allied bombings and their effects on French cities. I thought it was the perfect type of presentation — with all of the bits and pieces that you have to put together, your interpretation is less simplistic. It lets you work your way through the complicated narrative instead of providing a smooth story that tells you how to perceive the events. That’s not to say there wasn’t still a French narrative of how they were trounced by both the Nazis and the Allied bombings and tried to salvage their pride after being defeated and collaborating, but I personally believe that’s entirely justified.

There were a lot of complaints from the group about the portrayal of Americans in these last two museums particularly. I disagree with the complaints. It seems as if people are seeking out information that could have a negative twist at every chance they get. Whether Americans want to believe it or not, our history with the French is not all good — war is not all good — and the French have have every right to show all side. They’d be wrong not to show the civilian casualties in the narrative of French remembrance. Sure, some of the films are dramatized with babies and kittens in the wreckage, but even that isn’t false — not to mention that America certainly dramatizes its wartime films as well. It’s just part of representation.

But it’s not as if there was nothing positive about the Americans here… I mean, for goodness sake, the buildings here actually say “Welcome to our Liberators.” They appreciate us, trust me. They talked more about American assistance at every stop than a single one of the British museums did — in London, Bletchley was the only place I even heard the words “Pearl Harbor,” and it was from a guide who’d initially forgotten the name of the base. On the whole, I was actually struck by how positive Normandy was toward the Americans. When we pulled in toward Utah Beach, there were American flags everywhere. We turned onto Rue General Eisenhower, which was clad with liberation signs. The remembrance here is different. They’re very focused on continued friendship with Americans and assuring us that there are no hard feelings over how we destroyed their cities before liberating them. It’s interesting in that the sincerity is questionable — I mean, it’s obvious that this town runs on dark tourism. If they didn’t throw on some red, white, and blue, people might stop showing up. I’m not saying they’re disingenuous, but I do wonder how they really feel about us. In the airborne museum in Sainte-Mère-Église, one applicable line from a film that stuck with me: “A little corner of America in Sainte-Mère-Église — forever.” The praise was overwhelming. Getting back to the initial point, I think we can be a bit too sensitive about our nationalist ways, and it’s important to recognize that there are perspectives other than the ones we were often taught back at home.

The French were also much better about acknowledging their darker role in the war than Britain was. There were several sections in the Caen Memorial that blatantly highlighted their collaboration with the Nazis and explained why they felt compelled to join in such horrific acts, and it outlined their antisemitic laws and mistreatment of the Jews and their role in appeasement (which the Imperial War Museum totally left out). I thought it was a great move to include the less pleasant side of their own history.

Moving on to perspective… When a town makes its living on the death that took place inside it, an interesting sort of remembrance takes place once every historical site becomes a tourist attraction (histourism… I’m coining it now). Maybe that’s what contributes to what the couple we met at dinner mentioned. The woman said that when she went to the beaches, she and her husband saw a bunker where the cannons were, and there was a group of people with a picnic blanket right next to it. She didn’t know what to think: “is it… disreverent [her word, not mine], or did they fight so we could eat there? And then there’s this crater from a bombshell, and there are these children running down one side and up the other. And they have no idea how that hole got there.”

(Insert children climbing up the crater)

I knew exactly what she meant when we stopped at Pont du Hoc. I found myself crying almost immediately upon entering the site. The craters left behind from seventy years ago are larger than I could ever have imagined, and it’s pretty terrifying when you think about what that means. Matt said it well in his site report — it was the most somber place we’d been by far. But what really got me was when I looked out on the cliffs, and a young girl behind me holding a camera screamed out, “I have a great idea! Let’s sit in one [of the craters] and all cover our heads!” Inside the bunker, a small boy peered out of the slat while making gun noises. This idea of “playing war” that is so common in today’s society is even more jarring at a site like this one. I think the touristy nature lends itself to moments like those, and I’m not sure how to feel about it all.

As for the last prong of this post, what really made Bayeux the most impactful place we’ve visited were the sites themselves, like Pont du Hoc — the ones that no museum or book could ever truly encapsulate.

(Insert Moldiv collage)

Actually setting foot on the beaches really got to me, and I found myself in tears for the majority of our visits. One thing in particular that I kept noticing was how unbelievably beautiful these places were. It almost felt wrong that the flowers still grow here. Thinking about the lives sacrificed on these hallowed grounds — like the men at Pegasus Bridge who were asked to crash the gliders into barbed wire fences and hold the bridges against shooting from snipers and bombing attempts, the 200+ lives lost at Utah Beach even though the invasion went as well as it possibly could have, men like PFC John R. McDonnell’s friend Glenn and like Thomas Barry the Journalism major — made it feel as if the sun could never shine on a place like this. And in some ways, I suppose I got what I was asking for: it sleeted at Omaha. Actual sleet in the middle of May. Sometimes, you get the feeling there really is someone up there.

On the whole, I was entranced by Bayeux, and I’m so appreciative of the experience I had in this town. I’m also a little suspicious that the alumni office is dropping people here intentionally (I’m on to you, Archie), because the couple I previously mentioned was from the great state of Ohio, and I met another man with a Block O tattoo on his arm. How firm thy friendship, I suppose.

On to Paris!
-Meg

Defining London

What makes London London? How do you encapsulate a city like this? I absolutely loved Dublin… But with London, it’s as if every time I start to really appreciate it or figure it out, I find something imperialistic that makes me cringe. (Not to mention British royal history is really not my thing. I wilt a bit every time Laura gives me a new fact about the crown — love you, Laura). The whole narrative of British domination and empire makes me a little weary. That’s certainly not to say this is a new concept to me or that it’s entirely London-specific, because I wouldn’t exempt the States from this kind of critique, but I do think that it defines London in a unique way because the imperialist history is so much longer and it really rings through everything here. To me, London is a living embodiment of the empire that influenced it. And something about London’s feel as über privileged in its prestige and antiquity gives off a strange, constant condescension.

I noticed this most vividly for the first time at the Imperial War Museum. There was so, so much to take in, as the World War I exhibit had just been redone, but what I noticed most of everything in the exhibit was the centrality of India to England. In the first room of the exhibit, one quote amongst the other foundational information at the start of World War I really sent up a flag for me:

"As long as we rule India, we are the greatest power in the world…"

I was pretty surprised at the bluntness here, but the importance of the Indian subcontinent ran throughout the exhibit, including the fact that India provided the largest volunteer army in the entire war with 1.5 million men. The theme of empire wasn’t solely focused on India — the Ireland section was almost funny in the way that they spun it after having visited Kilmainham Gaol last week. During the Easter Uprising, the British secretly arrested and executed many of the top Irish leaders within a day on the grounds of the prison (the one I visited in Dublin, Kilmainham Gaol) where they mistreated many of the Irish men, women, and children who opposed British rule. But in the Imperial War Museum, there was a quick mention of the “Rebels” in the Easter Uprising and how “the brutal execution of the rebel leaders would fan the flames of Irish nationalism” (note that by whom wasn’t explicitly mentioned) after being tried by court martial, and then it moved straight into the Irish capitulation. That’s it. Nothing about the secrecy or Kilmainham conditions or… basically anything to make them look oppressive. They did have several handwritten notes from Pearse, one right after declaring Ireland a free state, which I’m sure Dublin would love to have in their own museum. That was independently offputting — there were a lot of crazy artifacts, which was neat, but why on Earth does London have the burned Torah scrolls?

On top of that, the responsibility aspect of the Holocaust exhibit was so odd. (This isn’t exactly imperialism, except when you add the Palestine equation and the possibility of increased asylum for Jewish refugees, but it’s a precursor to the issue of guilt that I find crucial). Throughout, the Imperial War Museum posted newspaper articles that outright listed the death tolls and atrocities. They appear to be exhibited as signs of how bad the conditions were, but they’re unintentionally a huge red flag of why they didn’t act sooner. These articles about the mass murders aren’t even making the front page (I checked. They’re on page eight.) — it isn’t even big news. But when you get to the part of the exhibit about liberations, they say that no one could have known the full extent before they saw the camps. In some ways, that’s certainly true — I don’t believe anyone could understand the full extent unless they lived it themselves — but at the same time, more than enough was known to do more than they did. I mean, opening borders for asylum should have been a no-brainer when it was all right in front of them no later than ’42. However, what threw me the most was the quote at the exit: something like “Evil will triumph whenever good men do nothing” (they wouldn’t let us take pictures, and I didn’t pen it exactly). I just drew a big question mark because the rest of the site had a total lack of responsibility. It wasn’t a blameless exhibit — there was plenty of information about the Nazis and even the Jewish Councils — so I couldn’t tell if it was a last-ditch effort to own it without giving any more detail, if they were continuing to pile on the Nazis, or if it was a strange burden shift that demeaned the resistance. I was baffled.

Once you see it, this presumed guiltlessness can be seen everywhere. It’s in other sections of the museum, too. In the WWII exhibit (which was largely underwhelming), ’33-’39 is just a brushstroke of Triumph of the Will and a couple of quilts made in Britain at the time. They skipped right over England’s role in appeasement. You can also see it in how they preserve memory elsewhere — for example, I ran past this fantastic, ornate, gold-laden statue of Albert (Victoria’s husband, for those like me who hadn’t the slightest idea) over at Hyde Park, which made me stop cold at the sight of this simple, drab pillar on a street corner near Wellington that mentioned the Indian subcontinent (as well as Africa and the Caribbean) and the five million men who lost their lives in the world wars. I tried to put together a side by side of the two, but they aren’t to size because the Albert one was on a pedestal and farther away, and I wanted to zoom as closely as possible to get the text on the pillar.

Albert/Memorial Gate

Seeing these back-to-back on my run really made the contrast hit home. I looked it up afterwards, and it turns out these pillars were the first permanent recognition of their sacrifice at all (as well as the sacrifice in the Caribbean and Africa), and it wasn’t created until 2002. This “voluntary” sacrifice seemed so underappreciated, and the lack of remorse for sending millions to their deaths for a crown that was forced upon them was screaming at me in the comparison in such a memorial-heavy city. The fact that this memorial in particular was so late veers toward the other theme of racial superiority that often goes hand-in-hand with imperialism, but in fear of this turning into a ten-page blog, I’ll limit this development to a couple of shots from the Churchill War Rooms (apologies for the quality between the two electronic screens):

Churchill War Rooms, pt. 1

Churchill War Rooms, pt. 2

Even without the racial connotation, the theme of empire that runs rampant throughout the city is unnerving in its unapologetic nature — as if they still don’t recognize that their actions were so problematic and damaged so many lives. Their pride in their empire is still their guiding force over the humanity that the pride so disparately impacted.

Since the rail to Bletchley Park was a bit of a trip, I pulled Professor Steigerwald aside to talk about India. I mentioned what I’d been seeing and asked about the history behind it — he said the drive for resources and manpower was especially prevalent in British India, which was the crown jewel of their empire at that time. The imperial powers were paradoxically dependent upon the colonies while trying to maintain dominance above all else, and India was central to keeping the balance. What he told me to look out for most going forward was the comparative perspective, because he said it was somewhat different in France. Because it’s a republic, there’s something less racist about it and more egalitarian, or at least pseudo-egalitarian. It’s less of the straight superiority complex and overt condescension than you see with the Brits. Here, Professor Davidson joined in — like we discussed in class, Germany didn’t have much colonialism, but what they did have was extremely racist and brutal, especially in Africa with several massacres of indigenous peoples. Those contrasts make sense in conjunction with the jus soli and jus sanguine distinction from Professor Robinson’s Nationalism and Ethnicity course as well. The French at least act like you can be culturally French — they’re extending their civilization so you can be part of it. Britain just thought they’d done so much for the colonies that they deserved loyalty at this point. As the Churchill War Rooms exhibit mentioned, Churchill and the British thought they were the only ones who could provide civilization to India (or at least that’s the justification he gave out loud…).

But when I mentioned that I’ve felt this total lack of remorse for the number of lives they’ve trampled, Professor Steigerwald kind of just agreed. All are fairly unapologetic (and he wants to reconvene to discuss more after the Vel’ d’Hiv museum). Professor Davidson had a fair point that I started to acknowledge near the beginning of this post — I mean, look at the United States. What do we see about the Native Americans at home? Nothing. To be honest, the theme isn’t all that surprising. But because the antiquated sense of royalty is so prevalent in London — be it the centuries-old architecture, fervor about the crown, or the regal palaces and towers at what seems like every street corner — I believe that the concept of empire and the imperialism that enabled it both make London what it is, for better or worse.

On to Bayeux!

Meg

I will add a brief postscript: when I wasn’t busy driving myself insane over this stuff, I did have a blast on this stretch of the trip. I saw Memphis last night and I’m still entranced by the absolutely magnetic Beverley Knight, and the British history from the Magna Carta to Bletchley was truly incredible. I had the best crêpe of my life in Camden Market (although I admittedly may be reevaluating very quickly in France), and exploring the Jamaican district of Brixton with Becca was one of the best times I’ve had in a while.

I ran to some beautiful places:

Kensington Gardens

I wandered aimlessly:

Camden/Covent/Hyde Park

And, naturally, I was touristy:

Tourist hard, tourist often.

Long story short, I’m not always as much of a curmudgeon as this post makes me sound, I promise!