I listened to this book in audio format, and it took me a few months to finish. I don't think I remember as much50 hours of history is hard to review.
I listened to this book in audio format, and it took me a few months to finish. I don't think I remember as much as I'd like to. I can't write a coherent review for this book, I'll just throw here some things that I still remember.
* After the defeat of Hitler, Germany still had a large number of his sympathisers. Another large percentage of people thought that his ideas were right, but the implementation was lacking. These 2 groups, as far as I remember, included from about 20 to 40% of the population. I really don't know if I remember the numbers correctly though. * The Berlin wall was built in 1961. So until 1961, people were freely going from East to West. * Communism had a revolutionary feel to it until the USSR invaded Prague in 1968. After that moment, the author states that nobody took the claims recreating the human society and driving them towards some kind of "perfection" seriously. * Communist parties in Eastern Europe war sponsored by USSR. Communism in Eastern Europe was probably (?) a better alternative to USSR direct invasion ("better" at least for USSR). * Living in Romania, I thought that every other country from the Eastern block had a dictator like Ceausescu. Turns out that wasn't the case. Yugoslavia's Tito was similar, but didn't have the personality cult going for him... he just had all the power. * While all other communist countries borrowed money from the West to provide the population with consumer goods, Romania was special. Ceausescu chose to pay all of Romania's debt. As such, Romania was (possibly) one of the poorest communist countries in the final years. * The communist regimes fell because Gorbachev gave hints that he'll not invade any country, and they'll be left to determine their own fate. * The European Union admitted countries of Eastern Europe mostly out of fear of authoritarian governments popping up at the gates of Europe. The West didn't look at the East as an economic ally, but rather as a wild and dangerous animal, to be tamed. Given the Balkan genocide and Corneliu Vadim Tudor getting 33% of the votes in Romania, maybe they were right. Talking about "right", the world took a right turn recently, let's see where it goes. My guess: if the economy is ok, we'll be ok. If the economy is not ok, nations will get more extremist. Will the economy be ok though? * There was an episode in the history of Germany where the people found out a route to get out of their country. This was through Hungary, that had recently opened its borders to Austria. I found out from another source that the reason why Hungary opened its borders was that it had such a large public debt, that it was "forced" into this political movement by its creditors. Ok, so the fun part is that Germany, seeing tons of people living, offered them trains to take them to the west. These trains were greeted with applause and cheers when they went through German cities. People also tried to climb on them when they arrived at train stations in Germany, but the police beat up those who tried to climb onto them. It's funny how humiliating this had to be for the East German government. * Boy did it suck to live in the Balkans in the nineties... * Germans shouldn't be the only ones learning about the holocaust. They shouldn't feel especially bad for the atrocities that happened during world war 2. I think all countries should teach children that humans can be horrible creatures, if allowed to coordinate for horrible causes. It's not the German's fault, it's in all of our genes to be monsters. We need to avoid putting people in contexts where they can fulfil this horrible potential.
I want to read more stuff like this! Please recommend!...more
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