The Expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe

Book Review: Orderly and Humane by R.M. Douglas

            Full disclosure, Ray Douglas was one of my history professors at Colgate University.  

            That said, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War delves into a history many people have forgotten, even those who lived it.  After World War II ended, millions of German-speakers remained in Eastern Europe.  Some of them were settlers sent East by the Nazis, to Germanize the conquered territories, but most of them came from families that had been there since the Middle Ages.  The governments of the newly liberated countries, especially Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia, considered the “ethnic Germans,” called Volksdeutsche in the book, as guilty as the Nazis for the war and all the suffering visited upon the peoples of Europe.  Furthermore, the continued presence of Volksdeutsche outside of Germany would be a threat to Europe’s future peace.  Eastern Europe, with support from the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, began forcing the Volksdeutsche to leave for Germany in mass expulsions that lasted from the end of the war to the early fifties.

Making Sense of North Korea: How We Know Anything

North Korean is in the news again.  Lately, the stories about the impossible state have been relatively normal, even by the DPRK’s standards: the secretive leader Kim Jong-un may have health problems, he may be purging the country’s leadership.  National rulers develop health problems, same as the rest of us, and dictators conduct purges to protect themselves.  With all things North Korean, some skepticism is warranted.  The first question we need to ask: how do we know about this?  How do we know anything about North Korea in general?  Most of the outside world’s knowledge about North Korea comes from defectors.  Another important source of information on the DPRK were the negotiations conducted under the auspices of the Six Party Talks, or the Agreed Framework talks of the 1990s. 

Asahi Shimbun and Comfort Women

            In August, the Asahi Shimbun retracted thirty years worth of stories about comfort women when they realized their source, Yoshida Seiji, was not reliable after a review of his testimony.  Yoshida Seiji approached the Asahi in 1982 when he claimed that as an army officer in the 1940s he was personally responsible for taking Korean women from Jeju Island to serve the Japanese Army.  After citing Yoshida’s testimony sixteen times over thirty years, Asahi editorial re-examined Yoshida’s accounts, determined they are not verifiable and issued retractions.

Narendra Modi, Japan and the United States

On May 12 India completed national elections that saw the ruling party in national government change.  The Bharatiya Janata Party won enough seats in Parliament to make one of their own, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister.  According to the Financial Times, the BJP did not gain enough seats to form a majority government, and had to form a coalition, but Modi gets to be Prime Minister.  Modi himself is a colorful figure.  A former candy-maker turned politician, he campaigned on the promise of “toilets, not temples,” meaning he intends to focus policy on economic and infrastructure development rather than the Hindu identity that has long defined his party.  A politician like Modi does need to make that distinction.  Bharatiya Janata was founded in 1949 in response to the secular National Congress Party.  BJP is Hindu Nationalist in ideology, and now they have the advantage of having been out of national power long enough to avoid associations with problems of corruption and inefficiency, like their archrivals the Congress Party.  

Large and At Large: We're Just Here for Godzilla

           In a lot of ways Godzilla is a perfect topic for me to write about.  “Godzilla” is a common English expression referring to something huge.  We append “zilla” to another word to suggest a giant-sized version, often with comedic intent.  The character has appeared in ad campaigns (outside of Japan), comic books, and American Saturday morning cartoons, but the Japanese have never bothered with an ongoing Godzilla cartoon.  Gareth Edwards’ new film Godzilla, hereafter called Godzilla (2014) demonstrates that plenty of Americans get Godzilla, because this is certainly a Godzilla movie.  It is not as layered and meaningful as 1954’s Gojira, but Edwards’ film follows the formula used by the majority of Godzilla movies.  The plot unfolds in the same manner as older Toho-produced Godzilla movies, and preserves the most enduring weakness of the franchise: uninteresting humans.  If you fear this will be a repeat of 1998’s Matthew Broderick vehicle, fear no more.  This one is a real Godzilla movie.  But I am not writing a review of the movie.  I am here to examine why Hollywood made this movie, and not Toho Studios itself. 

Casino Gambling in Japan?

There has been quite a bit of chatter over the last few months about the possibility of Japan legalizing gambling.  The big international gaming companies have been lobbying Japanese politicians to change the laws, and presented plans for prospective resorts in casinos in some of Japan’s major cities.  Abe Shinzo himself made an appearance at a gaming industry event in Tokyo last fall, and pundits read his appearance as support of the inevitability of changes that will legalize new types of gambling in Japan.  Japan’s present gaming laws prohibit casino gambling, but allow bets on horse, bicycle and boat races, and non-cash reward games.  There are a number of reasons Japan would consider legalizing casino gambling and reason to prevent it.  Legalization would raise tax revenue, keep more money in Japan, and possibly create more job opportunities in the casinos themselves and in the regulatory apparatus.  But the wealthy pachinko business can afford to fight back, alongside anti-gambling elements in the Japanese polity.

Next Verse, Same as the First

              There is a noticeable tendency for tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul to flare up in the spring.  Last year North Korea sealed the border, closed factories in the Kaesong Industrial Zone and denounced US-ROKA exercises as a provocation.  Said military exercises occur every year.  Two years ago, North Korea announced it would resume nuclear tests, and the US Navy dispatched Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington to South Korea in response.  Well, last week, on Sunday March 30, North Korea fired artillery into the ocean, over the armistice line, and the Southern Navy responded in kind.  Then on Monday March 31 the South Korean Defense Ministry announced they had recovered a crashed North Korean drone.  These events are nothing new, but later in the week Prime Minister of Japan Abe Shinzo ordered the Marine Self-Defense Force to patrol the Sea of Japan with an AEGIS-equipped destroyer and shoot down any North Korean missiles bringing a new factor into the mix: the Japanese might actually do something.  Previously, Japan was the least powerful party interested in the tension on the Korean peninsula.  However, if the Japanese were to actually shoot down a North Korean device the rest of the region would have to take them more seriously.