India from Colony to Major World Actor

 Rockport History Book Club

India from British Colony

To Major World Actor

History Book Club

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Gandhi led 1947 fight for Indian independence

 

Wednesday, November 30, 2022:  India from British Colony to Major World Actor.

Read about how, after World War II ended Mahatma Gandhi led the fight for India’s independence; then came separation of Hindu India and Muslim East and West Pakistan; then East Pakistan became Bangladesh and India and Pakistan went to war. Read about how America’s presidents looked down their noses at India as it became an ally of the USSR; development of nuclear power; now read about relations with China, and India’s growing influence in the world, including the U.S. [Suggested by Craig Corvo]

 

 

Roberts, Elizabeth Mauchline, Gandhi, Nehru and Modern India, Methuen Educational Ltd. 1974. 96 pp.

            Ms. Roberts focuses her story on a wisp of a little man with big ears and wearing a white cloth wrap who turned out to be the hero for modern India.

            Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in Porbandar, Gujarat on Oct. 2, 1869 to a Hindu family that was not wealthy, but never suffered from the terrible poverty of most Indians. His father and grandfather had been prime ministers of various little states on the Kathiawar peninsula on the Arabian sea, north of Mumbai.

            Mohan started school at age five. He was an average student.  At age 13 he married Kasturbai, a girl chosen by his parents. It was a marriage that lasted 61 years. When he graduated from high school, his family decided he needed to go to England to become a lawyer.  After three years he returned to India, then was sent to practice in South Africa. He suffered racial prejudice terribly there, but he soon learned to practice satyagraha (truth force) that he would teach all his life. In 1896 he took a quick trip home and brought Kasturbai and his two sons back to South Africa.  He practiced there until 1915.

            Gandhi was shy, but he developed a mystical ability to lead people, no matter what their caste, color or wealth. He grew the Natal Indian Congress to an effective minority party. The South African government declared all Indian marriages invalid, and Gandhi organized Indian women to protest, which led to beatings, prison and even death.  Gandhi was briefly imprisoned, but all the while he was developing his satyagraha, and becoming a force to be reckoned with.

In 1885 an Englishman recently retired from the Indian Civil Service created the Indian National Congress, a non-political group of mostly journalists or lawyers, intended to praise the contributions made to India by the English. In 1905 the congress got involved with a national movement to preserve the Bengal from partitioning. When Gandhi and his family, (now with four boys) returned to India in 1915, he still had a great deal of respect for Britain as a colonial ruler of India. The year 1917, as thousands of Indians and other British colonials fought for the King against Germany, was the high point for colonialism in India.  From there on to swaraj (home rule) in 1947, it was all downhill.

Gandhi created a sort of satyagraha ashram, or community near Admedabad, near his old birthplace in Gujarat, and Indians came from far and near to enlist his help in righting the wrongs of millions of desperately poor Indians.

During WWI there were terrorist bombings in Punjab as some objected to British recruitment practices, and in  1918 the worldwide flu epidemic killed 13 million Indians. The British were giving some measures to placate the Indian population with a suggested goal of eventual home rule.

Trouble in Punjab was just starting. On April 13. 1919 the British General in charge had his troops fire on a crowd of Indians crowded into Jallianwala Bagh and killed 379 and wounded 1200. This became known as the massacre at Amritsar, and it became the beginning of the end for British rule in India.

Amritsar marked the beginning of Gandhi’s leadership in the Congress party, which he kept for the next 28 years, until independence in 1947.

Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic on Jan. 30, 1948 in Delhi.

-end-

2022-2023

                                        THERE WILL BE NO MEETING IN DECEMBER.

 

 Wednesday, January 25, 2023: What will it take to have peace between Palestinians and Israelis?  It started as “The Land of Milk and Honey” 6000 years ago. Then there were the crusades. Centuries of mistreatment and exclusion of the Jews; the pogroms; the Holocaust which killed six million Jews in World War II; There was the United Nations General Assembly partitioning of November 1947; The creation of Israel, in 1948; The Six-day War of 1967 which resulted in huge loss of territory by the Arabs; And there were the meetings at Camp David hosted by President Carter with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin; The Palestinians have steadfastly opposed any plan that gives them land, including part of Jerusalem, most of the West Bank, etc., as long as the Jews are still around.  What will it take?  Read any book on this subject. [Suggested by Craig Corvo and William Tobin.]

Mussolini

Wednesday, February 22, 2023: Are We Facing Fascism in America?  The term "Fascism" was first used in 1915 by members of Benito Mussolini's movement, “The Fasces of Revolutionary Action.” Mussolini declared that it was necessary for Europe to resolve its national problems—including national borders—of Italy and elsewhere “for the ideals of justice and liberty.” It molded itself to appeal to Italian conservatives, accepting the Catholic Church and the monarchy as institutions in Italy. Fascism adopted policies such as promoting family values, including policies designed to reduce the number of women in the workforce—limiting the woman's role to that of a mother. They banned literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both crimes against the state. It aimed to appeal to people upset with the new trends in sexuality and women's rights. The Fascists supported revolutionary action and committed to secure law and order, with aspirations of totalitarianism. [Proposed by Ellen Canavan and Sam Coulbourn]

 

Bread and Roses Strike, Lawrence, 1912

 

Wednesday, March 29, 2023:  Insurrections, Strikes and Riots that Shaped American History.  Our history is peppered with uprisings, large and small. Read about some and show how they affected life and our laws. For instance:   Shay’s Rebellion, 1786– 1787), uprising in western Massachusetts in opposition to high taxes and stringent economic conditions. The Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection) was a violent tax protest in the United States (1791-1794) during the presidency of George Washington. The most violent and widespread insurrection was the Civil War.  The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike, was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).   In Boston we had the 1919 Boston Police Strike. Also, scores of riots like the 1885 anti-Chinese riot in Wyoming, the anti-Greek riot in Omaha, 1909; the 1921 Anti-Black riot and destruction in Tulsa, and the 1968 riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated.  [Proposed by Mary Beth Smith and Bill Tobin].

 

 

Wednesday, April 26, 2023:  Japan from Meiji to WWII: What were they thinking? 

The beginning of the Meiji Era in 1868 marked the introduction of a secretive, closed world to the world. Soon Japan joined the industrial era, modernized government and society and became a modern nation, building an armed force that fought China and won  in 1894, defeated the Russian fleet in 1905, joined the allies against Germany in World War I, had the third largest navy in the world by 1920, and attacked the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands and joined the Axis in World War II. Read about the dazzling rise of Japan up to its defeat. Read any book about this history.

What led to it?  Examine all or part of the rapid change of a country closed off from the world, then the Black Ships of Commodore Perry and the rapid entry of Japan to the world and the world to Japan. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]

 

 

Wednesday, May 31, 2023:  Presidents who redefined the presidency and shaped the United States. Here is your chance, based upon your reading about American presidents, to tell us your choice for a president who made a difference in growing the country:

 E.g.: Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, Polk with acquisition of Texas, California, etc.; OR  took us to war and fought: E.g.: Madison, 1812; Lincoln, Civil War; McKinley

Game-changing Maritime Inventions

 

Rockport History Book Club

Game-changing Maritime Inventions

History Book Club

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

 

                                                Admiral Hyman Rickover inspecting USS Nautilus

Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Game changing maritime inventions. Read about the days of ships propelled by sail, oars, coal or oil, paddle wheelers, steam engines, or warships like dreadnought, submarines, aircraft carriers, or torpedoes, propellers, chronometers, sextants, etc. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]

James E. Bradford, Editor, America, Sea Power and the World, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.; 2016.

Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960.

            I’ve been involved with maritime inventions ever since I arrived at the Naval Academy as a 19-year-old in an ill-fitting light blue suit. I arrived in 1953, and at that time the U.S. Navy was starting to build a massive nuclear submarine force.

            Captain Hyman Rickover was an irritable, ornery engineering duty officer who was behind the creation of our nuclear navy.  He single-handedly pushed and shoved and agitated the admirals of the Navy and members of Congress to develop nuclear power plants for submarines. He had loads of opposition—the very idea of squeezing fissionable material into a core that would heat water used to drive turbines to propel a submarine scared the daylights out of most senior officers in the Navy.

            However, senior officers had looked askance at ships substituting steam power for sails. They doubted the effectiveness of heavily armored battleships. Except for naval aviators, they looked at aircraft carriers as sitting ducks for enemy guns. The senior leadership of the Navy most often was too “dug in” to status quo, so they rejected new ideas.

            The Navy experimented with submarine power plants using liquid sodium, as well as water. Water won out.  Rickover pushed and soon USS Nautilus became a reality.  Men who had served on submarines all during World War II had great misgivings about nuclear-powered submarines, even after some of them took command of the first nuclear submarines. 

            Rickover was a perfectionist.  Not a team player. He was brilliant, and he eventually got his way.  Senior officers in the Navy disliked and distrusted him, and his ability to work the Congress to obtain the money for each step toward a nuclear Navy.

            I was serving on my first submarine, a World War II submarine in New London, CT, when I was ordered to Washington to see the “Kindly Old Gentleman” as we jokingly called Rickover.

            I got the standard treatment: sitting in a small room full of books, waiting my turn to see the Admiral. The Navy had, with pressure from his supporters in Congress, promoted Rickover. Finally, I went into his office and sat in a chair with the front legs shortened, so you felt like you would slide out of the chair.  All part of the “treatment”. 

            He noted my academy academic record and observed that math and science were not my best subjects.  He kicked me out, and ordered me to go back to my submarine and study, and if I was up to it, come back to see him in a year. I tried reading nuclear physics text books in my spare time, but for a young officer aboard a submarine, there wasn’t any spare time. 

            A year later I received orders for training to go aboard a Polaris submarine as weapons officer. This meant I would focus on handling 16 missiles with thermonuclear warheads, and other officers would worry about Rickover and the power plant.

            The idea of putting intercontinental ballistic missiles aboard a submarine was not an easy idea for the Navy, or Congress, to handle.  The idea of a missile in a nuclear submarine accidentally exploding conjured the image of a catastrophic nuclear event, with both power plant and weapon.

President Eisenhower wrestled with this first, as we faced the Soviet Union, which was rapidly building a missile force capable of demolishing many American cities. By the time John F. Kennedy relived him, the first Polaris submarines were built and about to go on patrol.

In 1962 I had spent the Cuban Missile Crisis as a submariner on a battle staff set up in Argentia, Newfoundland.  We were flying antisubmarine warfare planes from there, Iceland and the UK, and coordinating with American submarines patrolling all down the Atlantic, to oppose the Red Fleet surface warships and submarines that we expected would  burst out of Soviet far northern bases and head to Cuba.

USS Ethan Allen (SSBN608)

             A year later I was on my first patrol, in charge of the weapons department aboard USS Ethan Allen, Gold Crew.  The Blue crew brought the ship in, and then our crew spent nearly a month in port in Holy Loch, Scotland, getting ready for the next patrol. Then we went out for a couple of days of sea trials near Northern Island.  Finally, we sailed, submerged all the way, to the Mediterranean, and headed east near the coast of Lebanon and Israel.

            As we were en route to our patrol area we were busy with all the tests on our weapons, and standing watches.  In spare moments I read Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War, which was his idea of the concept of “MAD” or mutually assured destruction. Years later, serving as Naval Attaché in the USSR, I learned that Soviet naval officers had been reading Kahn’s book, as well.

            Now we were carrying missiles as close as we could get in the Mediterranean, aimed at Soviet targets.  Part of the Cuban agreement between Kennedy and Khrushchev had been to give up our Jupiter missiles in Turkey.  We were covering those targets in the USSR.

            On Thermonuclear War gave us all something serious to think about. We believed that if we had to shoot those missiles, we’d wipe out major Soviet cities.  And the Soviets would wipe out some of ours.

            I’m happy to report, as you well know, that we didn’t use those weapons. Yet.

--Sam Coulbourn

-end-

 

2022-2023

                                        

Wednesday, August 31, 2022.   How Should We Deal with China?  Let's dig into the history of China and try to learn how the United States should approach China, in terms of human rights, trade policy, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Global Warming, Nuclear Weapon Proliferation, autonomous weapons, public health, and much more.  We are tremendously interdependent: should we continue to view China as an Opponent? [Proposed by Walt Frederick]

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Wednesday, September 28, 2022. Trials of historical significance. Read about the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (1945-46), or the Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1951), Burning of the Reichstag trial (1933), or the Trial of Galileo Galilei (1633), Martin Luther and the Diet of Worms, (1521) (not what it sounds like), the Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato (399 BC), or many more. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]

Salem Witch Trials

Wednesday, October 26, 2022. Religion and Politics in America. Religious impact in American political events. E.g.: Influence of fundamentalist and Catholic churches on Supreme Court decisions, Puritan Exceptionalism, justification of slavery through the Bible, Abolition Movement, treatment of Native American Christianization movement, Justification of Imperialism’s Christianization mission, Father Coughlin vs. Franklin Roosevelt, Cotton Mather and the Salem Witch Trials. [Suggested by William Tobin]

Gandhi and Indian Independence
 

Wednesday, November 30, 2022:  India from British Colony to Major World Actor.

Read about how, after World War II ended Mahatma Gandhi led the fight for India’s independence; then came separation of Hindu India and Muslim East and West Pakistan; then East Pakistan became Bangladesh and India and Pakistan went to war. Read about how America’s presidents looked down their noses at India as it became an ally of the USSR; development of nuclear weapons; now read about relations with China, and India’s growing influence in the world, including the U.S. [Suggested by Craig Corvo]

 

THERE WILL BE NO MEETING IN DECEMBER.

 

 

Wednesday, January 25, 2023: What will it take to have peace between Palestinians and Israelis?  It started as “The Land of Milk and Honey” 6000 years ago. Then there were the crusades. Centuries of mistreatment and exclusion of the Jews; the pogroms; the Holocaust which killed six million Jews in World War II; There was the United Nations General Assembly partitioning of November 1947; The creation of Israel, in 1948; The Six-day War of 1967 which resulted in huge loss of territory by the Arabs; And there were the meetings at Camp David hosted by President Carter with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin; The Palestinians have steadfastly opposed any plan that gives them land, including part of Jerusalem, most of the West Bank, etc., as long as the Jews are still around.  What will it take?  Read any book on this subject. [Suggested by Craig Corvo and William Tobin.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Assassination and Execution of Leaders

 

Rockport History Book Club

Assassination and Execution of Leaders

History Book Club

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

 

Mohammad Anwar el-Sadat

محمد انور السادات

Wednesday, June 29, 2022. Assassinations and executions of leaders. Read the stories of how famous people were assassinated and what came after. From modern times--- Anwar Sadat, Olaf Palme, Yitzhak Rabin, Aldo Moro, Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, or Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy, or Franz Ferdinand, King of Albania, Nicholas II of Russia, or earlier-- Henry VI, James III, Henry III, Julius Caesar. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]

Charles River Editors, Anwar Sadat : The Life and Legacy of the Egyptian President, 2015, Audiobook.

            This was my first occasion to “read” a book by audiobook, and it was challenging.  I was unable to make yellow underlining of text in a Kindle book, and that meant I scribbled many notes.

            Anwar started life in 1918, born in a village to working class parents.  He found his way to join the Egyptian army and began a career that eventually made him one of the most consequential leaders in the Middle East.

            Sadat graduated from the Egyptian military academy in 1938, and early in his career he worked to get rid of the British occupation. He formed the “Free Officers’ Association” to work toward creation of a free Egypt.  Egypt had been under British occupation for years, and there was much unrest.  His first attempt at revolution was a failure and the British threw him into prison in 1941, as war was spreading across the world.   

            Another leader of Egypt under British rule, Ahmed Pasha, was assassinated in 1946, and Sadat got thrown in prison again for that.

            He made friends with a fellow officer, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and they worked together with others toward eventually driving out the British and overthrowing the puppet leader, King Farouk, on July 23, 1952. This marked the start of Egyptian sovereignty, and Gamal Abdel Nasser became leader.  

            Nasser grew more and more under Soviet influence.  The six-day war of 1967 was a stinging defeat for Egypt. Nasser was growing old before his time, and died on Sept. 28, 1971, of heart attack, with much speculation that he had been killed by the Soviets, the Americans, or the Israelis.

            Sadat was vice president, so he became acting president.  No one considered him a serious leader.  He’d long been called “Nasser’s black poodle”, alluding to his Nubian (black) ancestry.

            Nasser had encouraged the country’s alliance with the USSR, even though many thought that the Soviets treated Egyptians poorly. Sadat saw them as worse than the British, who characteristically had treated all Arabs with disdain. In 1972 Sadat had had it with the Russians and he ordered them all to leave.  This came as a surprise to the Americans, as he had not confided in them or sought their support.  The Americans under President Nixon apparently were slow to see this as an opening.

            In 1973 Sadat started the Yom Kippur War against Israel, and the Arabs lost again, but Sadat claimed he “went to war to make peace.” I had just taken command of a new ammunition ship, and just before we departed for the Middle East the war broke out and the Pentagon ordered us to load up with cluster bombs.  Our carriers in the Med had given the Israelis their cluster bombs, which are deadly in attacking troop formations.  We sailed for the Med with our decks and magazines stuffed with cluster bombs, as well as our regular ammunition. We re-supplied the American carriers.  These bombs were banned in 2008 but the Russians were known to have used them this year in Ukraine against civilians.

            In his early years it was clear that Sadat was smart, and got along well with his contemporaries, but unlike his friend Nasser, he wasn’t self-centered and eager to get to the top. Now that he was at the top in Egypt, he showed his ability.

            In November 1977 a Soviet-American plan for peace in the Middle East fell apart, and Sadat went to the Egyptian parliament and declared his willingness to go to Israel to discuss peace.  He worked with the Americans, and Israel’s Menachem Begin invited him to visit.  On November 19, 1977, Sadat landed in Jerusalem and was met by Begin. He addressed the Knesset, and the two leaders began a process which, under the auspices of President Jimmy Carter, in meetings with Begin and Carter in the U.S. resulted in the Camp David Accords on September 17, 1978.

            Sadat made a move that marked him as a prince among leaders in the Arab world when he committed to seek peace with Israel.  It was an earth-shaking event that was met with celebration in Egypt and delight in Israel, but disgust and hatred in most Arab nations. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League. Islamist factions in Egypt hated it, too.

            Sadat and Begin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but the Arab world, including Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, were furious. And so were the Soviets, who had nurtured support for the Arab world as the U.S. had lined up on the side of Israel, with the Shah of Iran and Saudi Arabia.

            The Shah was kicked out of Iran in 1979 as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini began the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Americans left Iran in droves. The Soviets began their invasion of Afghanistan. Although Sadat enjoyed support and admiration in Egypt, Islamists were on the rise, and the Soviets were right there to offer help. 

The last few months of Sadat’s presidency were plagued by internal uprisings. Sadat believed that the revolts were instigated by the USSR recruiting regional allies in Libya and Syria to incite a coup. In February 1981, Sadat learned of a plan to depose him. He responded by arresting 1,500 of his political opposition, Jihad members, Coptic clergy, intellectuals, and activists. He banned all non-government press. 

The widespread arrests missed a Jihad cell in the military, led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli.

Sadat Assassination, Oct. 6, 1981

            On October 6, 1981 Sadat attended a parade in commemoration of the eighth anniversary of    Egypt's crossing of the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War.  Men atop one armored personnel carrier saluted Sadat and he stood to return the salute, but then men jumped down and Islambouli threw grenades at Sadat and four others began shooting at him and other spectators in the stands.  Sadat was mortally wounded, ten others were killed, and 28 others were wounded, including Vice President Hosni Mubarak.       

            Islambouli and the other assassins were tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. They were executed on April 15, 1982.

Sadat was buried in Cairo. The inscription on his grave reads: "The hero of war and peace". Three former U.S. Presidents (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter) as well as Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and leaders from France, West Germany, Italy, Ireland, Spain and Belgium attended. 

            Mohammad Hosni Mubarak became president and served until the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, (1981-2011) 29 years. His presidency was marked by a continuation of the policies pursued by Sadat. This included the liberalization of Egypt's economy and a commitment to the 1979 Camp David Accords. Under Mubarak Egypt re-united with the other member states of the Arab League, and worked  with the U.S., USSR, and much of the west. However, international non-governmental organizations criticized his administration's  human rights record.

-end-

 

2022-2023

                                                                 Ironclad USS Monitor, 1862

Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Game changing maritime inventions. Read about the days of ships propelled by sail, oars, coal or oil, paddle wheelers, steam engines, or warships like dreadnought, submarines, aircraft carriers, or torpedoes, propellers, chronometers, sextants, etc. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]

                                    

Wednesday, August 31, 2022.   How Should We Deal with China?  Let's dig into the history of China and try to learn how the United States should approach China, in terms of human rights, trade policy, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Global Warming, Nuclear Weapon Proliferation, autonomous weapons, public health, and much more.  We are tremendously interdependent: should we continue to view China as an Opponent? [Proposed by Walt Frederick]

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Wednesday, September 28, 2022. Trials of historical significance. Read about the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (1945-46), or the Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1951), Burning of the Reichstag trial (1933), or the Trial of Galileo Galilei (1633), Martin Luther and the Diet of Worms, (1521) (not what it sounds like), the Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato (399 BC), or many more. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]

Cotton Mather and the Salem Witch Trials

Wednesday, October 26, 2022. Religion and Politics in America. Religious impact in American political events. E.g.: Influence of fundamentalist and Catholic churches on Supreme Court decisions, Puritan Exceptionalism, justification of slavery through the Bible, Abolition Movement, treatment of Native American Christianization movement, Justification of Imperialism’s Christianization mission, Father Coughlin vs. Franklin Roosevelt, Cotton Mather and the Salem Witch Trials. [Suggested by William Tobin]

 

 

Wednesday, November 30, 2022:  History of English/British Colonialism It started in the latter part of the 15^th Century with plantations in Ireland. Read how the United Kingdom grew to become the greatest Empire in the history of the world.  If you wish, home in on British slave trade, and how the U.K. colonized the New World, bringing slaves to grow sugar and cotton. Or Napoleonic Wars and Britain’s seizure of French Colonies. America and Canada.  Colonization of Asia in Hong Kong, Malaya, Australia, New Zealand, India, Burma. Africa, and more for you to discover. [Suggested by Craig Corvo]

 

THERE WILL NO MEETING IN DECEMBER

 

 

Wednesday, January 25, 2023: What will it take to have peace between Palestinians and Israelis?  It started as “The Land of Milk and Honey” 6000 years ago. Then there were the crusades. Centuries of mistreatment and exclusion of the Jews; the pogroms; the Holocaust which killed six million Jews in World War II; There was the United Nations General Assembly partitioning of November 1947; The creation of Israel, in 1948; The Six-day War of 1967 which resulted in huge loss of territory by the Arabs; And there were the meetings at Camp David hosted by President Carter with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin; The Palestinians have steadfastly opposed any plan that gives them land, including part of Jerusalem, most of the West Bank, etc., as long as the Jews are still around.  What will it take?  Read any book on this subject. [Suggested by Craig Corvo and William Tobin.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

Immigrants to America who made a Difference

 

Rockport History Book Club

Immigrants to America who made a Difference

History Book Club

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

 

Albert Einstein

 Wednesday, May 25, 2022. Immigrants to America who have made a difference. Read and tell us the story of an immigrant to the U.S. who has brought a wondrous addition to his/her new nation. Perhaps the newcomers started a family of creative Americans; perhaps they themselves made important advances. Look at Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, Sergey Brin, Audrey Hepburn, Chinua Achebe, Cary Grant, Irving Berlin, Nikola Tesla, more. [Proposed by Mary Beth Smith.]

Walter Isaacson: Einstein:  His Life and Universe; New York; Simon & Schuster, 2007, 681 pp.

            Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Würtemburg, Germany, March 14, 1879 and died in Princeton, NJ April 18, 1955.

            Einstein gave the world his name to describe anyone who was brilliant, and he certainly was, but it wasn’t always apparent, and for a brilliant young man he had a hell of a time getting a job.

            Author Isaacson, who has also written biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger, delved deeply into Einstein’s private correspondence and found that young Albert was good at writing love letters, and describes his early love life, as well as his method of using personal mental images to frame his thoughts about how the universe works.

            Einstein was always working on a pad of paper, discovering how molecules work, and about atoms, and why and how we live in this amazing world. 

            Einstein met Mileva Marić when both entered Zurich Polytechnic in a class of five men and Mileva. Although she was three years older than Albert, not pretty, and had a permanent limp, she was bright and spirited and the two enjoyed life together. She was a Serbian, the daughter of a well-to-do Serb military man. Albert was a Jew, Mileva a Christian.

            One thing happened to Albert and Mileva that made a terrible scar on their lives. They had just graduated from the Zurich Polytechnic, and albert was desperately trying to get a job, so he could afford to marry.  Even though in this time having a baby out of wedlock would have disqualified him for the jobs he sought, Albert and Mileva had a baby in 1902.

            Mileva went back to her parents to have the baby, a little girl named Lieserl. Albert never traveled to Serbia to see his child.  He never told his parents. He never saw the child. He and Mileva burned all letters relating to the child, who contracted scarlet fever and either died or was passed off for adoption. Author Isaacson discovered this from letters that were sealed until 1986, 31 years after Albert died.

            Then they married in 1903 and had Hans Albert in 1904 and Eduard in 1910.  Albert and Mileva separated in 1914 and divorced in 1919. Albert in the divorce papers promised to give Mileva the money from the Nobel prize whenever he won it, for care of the boys.  Einstein won the prize in 1921 and transferred the money to her.

            The same year Albert divorced Mileva he married Elsa, his first cousin.

            Albert, who always resembled the forgetful “absent-minded professor”, made brilliant discoveries, and had brilliant friends and acquaintances. He came to America in 1933 and never returned to Europe.

            Einstein is best known for developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum mechanics are together the two pillars of modern physics.

            Albert found a home in Princeton University and bought a house in Princeton at 112 Mercer St. that has since become a monument to him.  He continued a lifelong collaboration with other brilliant thinkers. He and Elsa had a good, rather quiet life, although by this time he was world famous. 

            In 1939 he learned that the Germans were working on a bomb that employed the fusion of atoms of uranium, and the U.S. should do everything to prohibit Germans from obtaining uranium from Belgian mines in Africa. Einstein visited President Franklin D. Roosevelt and urged him to take notice.  Roosevelt began a query that became the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

            Albert, however, was on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s list for organizations he had been asked to endorse and sentiments he had expressed which suggested that he was friendly with communism.  Accordingly, he was not asked to join the Army’s effort in developing the atomic bomb, but the Navy found him suitable for providing his genius to classified security projects.

            As World War II ended with the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki Einstein began to spend the last ten years of his life looking for a way to prevent more nuclear warfare and to create a supranational military force that would share nuclear bomb technology with member nations.  Before this idea could gain traction the Cold War between America, Britain and the USSR began. 

            Einstein died peacefully in Princeton in 1955.

-end-

 

2022

   

Lincoln Assassination

Wednesday, June 29, 2022. Assassinations and executions of leaders. Read the stories of how famous people were assassinated and what came after. From modern times--- Anwar Sadat, Olaf Palme, Yitzhak Rabin, Aldo Moro, Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, or Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy, or Franz Ferdinand, King of Albania, Nicholas II of Russia, or earlier-- Henry VI, James III, Henry III, Julius Caesar. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]

 

Ironclad USS Monitor, 1862

Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Game changing maritime inventions. 

Read about the days of ships propelled by sail, oars, coal or oil, paddle wheelers, steam engines, or warships like dreadnought, submarines, aircraft carriers, or torpedoes, propellers, chronometers, sextants, etc. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]

                                    

Wednesday, August 31, 2022.   How Should We Deal with China?  Let's dig into the history of China and try to learn how the United States should approach China, in terms of human rights, trade policy, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Global Warming, Nuclear Weapon Proliferation, autonomous weapons, public health, and much more.  We are tremendously interdependent: should we continue to view China as an Opponent? [Proposed by Bruce Frederick]

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Wednesday, September 28, 2022. Trials of historical significance. Read about the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (1945-46), or the Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1951), Burning of the Reichstag trial (1933), or the Trial of Galileo Galilei (1633), Martin Luther and the Diet of Worms, (1521) (not what it sounds like), the Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato (399 BC), or many more. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]