Would is an associate professor at the university of kansas, where he teaches and researches 19th and 20th century Eastern Europe. His publications include a coedited cluster, the 2019 modern modernity, the urban experience in three polish cities during the great war, 2010 becoming metropolitan, urban selfhood, and the making of modern crock out. He investigates early adapters, journalists, artists and the nationalizing state in towards bicycles, automobiles and airplanes. He is right on board with your planes, trains, and automobiles joke earlier. Working on a world war i sourcebook will which will include more material from the Eastern Front. Adies and gentlemen, it is true pleasure to end this portion of our lecture with our friend nathan wood. Please join me in welcoming him. [applause] good afternoon, everyone. What a pleasure it is to be here. Over the years, i have sought every opportunity to come to this jewel of a museum and memorial in kansas city. Thank you laura and camille, for your organization of this symposium, and grateful to matt , whor and Jonathan Casey every spring hosts might students in my world war i class. He shows them the archives downstairs in the museum and shows them materials cap in this awesome collection. After the bolshevik revolution of1917, there was a period calm on the Eastern Front, as the bolsheviks tried to withdraw russia from the war, and treaty negotiations sought to bring grain to citizens who were starving because of the allied blockade. But instead of peace and bread that the osha vicks promised, civil war, and stability, nationalist violence, disease and hunger tore through eastern and central europe, displacing and killing millions. Suffering continued long after the war was over, as citizens and leaders sought to come to terms with two Major Political systems to emerge from the war, revolution and nationalism, bolshevik style revolution. Historian wrote in his betweenhe vanquished, 19171920, europe experienced no fewer than 27 violent transfers bypower, many accompanied latent or open civil wars. When you think about the tremendous change that occurred during this period, you have an arc of violence from finland all the way down to greece, and as we heard recently, and the former ottoman space in turkey. Ireland as well, in many respects similar to the violence we see in Eastern Europe, where nationalism in particular fueled the kind of conflict that arose in the vacuum of power due to warfare. Romanoff Ottoman Empires all collapsed, along with governments in bulgaria, greece and italy. And an interesting point, not since the early years war since the 17th century had a period of interconnected wars as inchoate and deadly as in the years after 1918. Wars overlapped, revolutions and counter revolutions between border states, postwar europe between the end of the great war in 1918 and the treaty of less on in 1923, was the most violent place on the planet. Exclude victims of the spanish flu and those who starved as a result of the allied blockade, millions died as a result of Armed Conflicts periods armed conflict. There were also millions of refugees. Cities experienced tremendous suffering. Krakownt article on explored attitudes toward modern, technical civilization as citizens looked at the experience of warfare in their cities. Contrary to a lot of stories about world war i, where we think of the war as manying in the modern, for urbanites the war interrupted the modern. Things they were accustomed to, electric streetcars, running water, automobiles, bicycles, these were jeopardized by the war effort. A certain point in the war, people had to tear pipes out of the wall of their buildings because there was such a demand for metal from the authorities, the austrohungarian army. Cars were rendered useless as parts were disassembled for metal and rubber. Shortage ofch a horses that if you had a large dog, great dane or similar large species, it was forced to be part of the war effort as a pack animal, to carry goods through the city. Experience of the military dictatorship, control, requisitioning, meant people experienced pervasive influence of military and their lives, but also hunger and suffering. One of my colleagues has written that the war experience for catholic polish in terms of worse everyday life and sustenance in the First World War than in the second. I want you to ponder that. We think about the warsaw uprising, tremendous suffering, and when i have read memoirs of dreck ovi ins, many thought the same thing, that hunger and were more severe during the First World War than during the second. Ofthis was a period tremendous instability. I tell my students, you have to think about the Eastern Front as being more mobile than the western front, so you had troops moving back and forth across villages and cities, so the possibility for violence to spread was tremendous. I was very grateful for professor bristows comments on commemoration and memory. Theres part of the world, is not much opportunity to commemorate the kind of suffering that occurred during because ithe war, doesnt fit the narrative very well. Thethe bolsheviks, narrative was a successful revolution. For the nationalists, the narrative was creation of a new nationstate. If you consider the experience of polish soldiers in this war, polish speakers fought on both sides of the conflict. They fought against each other, because some had been in the german army, or the austrohungarian army, and others have fought on the russian side. How do you commemorate their experience . Howdy commemorate that suffering . Because the only narrative that really mattered to the state was the successful achievement of statehood. When i go to poland now and i look in bookstores, as that thes do, i find section on world war ii is three or four bookshelves long, top to bottom. It is massive. The section on the peoples republic of poland, the communist era, as well continues to grow. And you can usually fit the number of books on the First World War ii a single shelf, sometimes fewer than that. I am pleased, however, that a lot of new work is coming out, both in polish language scholarship and in english, some of it by young germans who have been very influential for my own thinking. What i would to say are my main argument. When is that the continued violence and suffering in the region was the result of the immense pressures of total war and catastrophic failure of empires in the region to deal with the strain. All the empires failed. The Ottoman Empire probably would have soldiered on peer die agree in terms of the austrohungarian empire. Nationalists created the story that it was tottering and due to fail. Nationalists created a story that it was the prison of the people. If you read a new history on the habsburg empire, the author makes an argument that is really the war that is the undoing of not the factt is that their world that there were multiple nationalities vying for greater rights and opportunities. The empire was flexible enough in many respects to deal with that sort of conflict. But the war was catastrophic. Another of professor judsons point was that it was the actual p, the wayictatorshi the army ran the warrant had control over civilians, requisitioning your car, types from your walls, setting curfews, dictating what you could and couldnt eat, confiscating things you tried to get when you went foraging in the countryside, that really soured peoples loyalty to the empire. They went to the war for the most part loyal to their respective imperial rulers. Secondly, and this is a similar point that bears stressing, that the mere existence of multilingual and multiethnic diversity did not cause the violent. Frustrated with the concept of Ethnic Violence. Conference helpful concept because it presupposes diversity is itself a source of conflict. And thats not true. Throughout human history, people have lived sidebyside with people not necessarily similar to themselves. They find ways to communicate,. O do business antagonisms or phobias about those who are different from them, but they dont spontaneously combust into violence, for the most part. Ist causes the violence entrepreneurs, what you might National Entrepreneur nationalist entrepreneurs, or revolutionary entrepreneurs, activists. So we have to be precise and be very careful not to say the polls did this, the ukrainians did that and presume it accounts for all people there. Most people, most of the time are different in these sorts of things. They prefer to do with their families and be left alone. Polish nobles in the borderland regions famously, when they were surveyed after the war, called themselves locals. We are from here. They didnt identify with polish nationalism more ukrainian nationalism more belarusian nationalism. People from the countryside said, we are from here. And they werent being ignorant, they were actually being shrewd. They did not want to be a part of this fratricidal conflict that was roiling this territory. Us to the next point, locals often experience the violence as a civil war the fratricidal conflict. In this is a point made well a new book on the Eastern European civil war. I will try to illustrate that people who, but primarily were catholic, polishspeaking peasants could primarily lithuanianspeaking more ukrainianspeaking peasants as their brothers, not as their enemies. It was the violence that escalated National Divisions that hardened in this region. Another thing that made this so messy was that two major ideologies of the 19th century, social equity and social justice, ideologies arising from the french revolution, and national selfdetermination and democracy, both had a very helpful impact in trying to deal with instability in the region afterwards. This is a point the author makes fighting noe the longer about a soldier representing his state and fighting for his emperor or his state. It was an existential conflict. So now you have fighting about andamental existence, increasingly, modes and mechanisms of identification and self identification. You are fighting for your life or your familys life, for your very existence. And the warfare that followed the great war anticipated the horrors of the second great war, which have receded in public memory. The First World War, i am glad to say in terms of scholarship, is getting more its due. We arch we are understanding that the First World War has much more in common with the second world war, including genocide and civilian violence. A lot of times we think of that really coming to the fore with the second world war, but i have been telling my students for years, on the Eastern European front and in the Ottoman Empire, people were already experiencing this kind of violence in the First World War. I know there were atrocities on the western front as well, but it is much more widespread here. I would like to give examples of things that helped me justify these arguments. From one of the most influential books i read in grad school, the memo of a polishspeaking mayor, who in english, from serfdom to selfgovernment. The book talks about his realization, he says i did not know i was a pole. So he acknowledged the fundamental dynamic in his village was between surf and lord, and surf and when he became liberated he increasingly identified with polish self identification. But its important to remember he could still be a loyal habsburg subject and a loyal polish patriot. That was not contradictory for many people at the time. And his description of the war is amazing when i first read it as a graduate student. When Russian Troops arrived, everyone in the village was terrified, as the village mayor he had to meet the lead officer and treat them with tremendous respect, ask him to quarter his horses in his barn, and as successive waves of armies moved back and forth across his village, violence and deprivation got worse and he noted the hungarians were the first to treat his village like an occupied power. His own army, the the habsburg army, treated him badly. The last russian retreat, the enemy took away all males from 15 to 50 years of age, all horses and cattle, a few men managed to run away and get back home but the rest were deported to the urals. There were shortages of everything, fuel, fat, clothing, skyrocketed, desperate people resorted to looting and burglary, disease ravaged the countryside. The austrians regained control and instituted rations but the system was unfair so farmers tried to hide their crops and wait for a better price. This often resulted in spoiled produce and grain benefiting no one. So when the austrian tied began to shift at the end of the war, and more importantly when polish patriots felt the austrians byrayed them with a treaty ceding some territory polish nationalists thought should be , he got riledine up in this up swell of polish patriotism. Remember, before he was perfectly capable of being a polish patriot and a loyal habsburg citizen, a mayor for four decades. On february 18, 1918, there mayor,ajor strike, the who had been a loyal mayor, went to a gathering in a neighboring city, and asked for a word at the end. The 75yearold mayor denounced the Central Powers, removed the cross of merit awarded to him by the habsburg regime and requested it be sent back to vienna. The village mayor faced with the brutality of his government during the war chose to side with the polish nation, whom he called his brothers and sisters, instead. So this is an example of how the war shifted toward nationalism. Example that affected me a great deal when a reddit in graduate school was these intercepted letters from the front. Letters show the appeal of bolshevism. Who weree soldiers captured and spent time in and in both cases, these are letters they tried to write back to either friends in russia or family back home, and in both spoutingy are bolshevik ideology, essentially , what did my fatherland give me, stupid ox that i am . Prison and persecution. Escapesdier bravely from being captured by the russian, shows up for regular service, and because he has been in russia, the habsburgs didnt trust him and put him back in prison. And the writer is using the language of social revolution. These ideologies are certainly arising in this area. Have benefited from lately, from reading a new this idea of war without end, or civil war that continued. Terminology to include all conflicts happening at the end of the war. There is a quotation where you can see that the war, which diedhed in autumn, has not away, but has transformed itself into permanent chaos. Regular he formally, the regular war has stopped, but the catastrophe of which the war was only the first act, goes on and on and is far from over. Who knows if it is only in its initial stage. So this is spiraling out of control. What is going on . You can see on this map that poland had a conflict and fought the polish bolshevik war against the soviet union, the farthest point of so of polish advance. Poland fought in other areas, there was conflict in chechen, with czechoslovakia over this border region in salesian in silesia, and a conflict explicitly with germany. Ask at these allstatetwostate conflict statetostate conflicts. There were paramilitary groups, and local warlords, and state forces often had difficulty mustering local troops. Experience was much messier than international conflict. The diary of a polishspeaking soldier, titled in a memoir, were in ther, they jewish part of a ukrainian village, broke into jewish homes at night, pillaged and raped. The author claimed the women observed it was not military like to conduct their inspection by night, they should have done it by day. That what hadted happened was more like an inspection. You get the sense of tremendous violence and instability, and that the fighting happening in was not traditional state twostate conflict where o states state t conflict where officers had control. Some of the soldiers had been fighting on the Eastern Front for a long time and just wanted to go to their families, were forced at gunpoint to continue fighting, and now local warlords took advantage of the responsive took advantage of the situation to try to achieve local aims. We have to remind ourselves of the way nationalism and socialism worked in the 19th century in this region. Century was remarkably peaceful. What wes a moment of might call socialist violence peasants rose up and murdered local landlords and in a few instances, gave the heads of local landlords to local austrian authorities. There were nationalist uprisings in the 1830s, inthere were stan pogroms. And there was the Russian Revolution of 1905. But as victor person writes in n, book the lands betwee despite animosities, the borderlands remained largely violence free. So, what makes the change . It is the experience of warfare, the instability of these new borders. Here are some more examples of the kinds of violence that are happening in this region. When you think about it, going back to this map, there are bolshevik style revolutions in vienna,in munich, in and in budapest. Virtually every state that collapsed had a socialist style, bolshevik style revolution. The very first polish government was led by a socialist. Everywhere, the appeals of nationalism and socialism was apparent. The case of hungary is eresting, where you have they see themselves as national patriots. In hungary, the white guards sought to crush revolutionaries in a frenzy of violence. Someone had spent time in the soviet union working with himselfk leaders who led able civic style revolution in hungary. They were in power for the spring and summer of 1919, then therushed by czechoslovak troops. Kumy predecessor at observed, there were some similarities between the hungarian revolution of october 1918 and at the Russian Revolution in march 1917. In both cases, revolution came as a result of economic breakdown at home. In both cases, the new leaders were upper class liberals who wanted to keep or restore prewar boundaries. In both cases, the new governments existed sidebyside with workers and councils. After the communists took power, many former imperial officers served in the new red armies out of patriotism to defend the homeland. There were also differences. She points out that in russia, there was a complete breakdown of the old political and social structures, and a widespread Peasant Movement to divide the greater states. This did not occur to any significant extent in hungary, although the peasants turned against the government because its waiver form was not sufficient for them. In russia, there was a well organized Bolshevik Party whose leader, lenin, proved to be not only the most ruthless, but the greatest political strategist in russia in this period. He made peace with germany and austriahungary. And with trotsky, he led the bolsheviks to victory in the civil war. In hungary, there was not really a strong communist party. On the contrary, they had to make compromises with the social democrats. The main reason for his defeat was the joint attack of czechoslovak and romanian armies. Here is a propaganda leaflet that would have been prevalent in the fall of 1919. Of the workers being shown as robbing a veteran. It is also an antisemitic poster. When you hear how the white guards in hungary, who operated much like their counterparts in germany, thought about what they were doing, you heard the language of bolshevism and nationalism. Here is a quotation from a hungarian officer. We shall see to it that the flame of nationalism leaps high. We shall punish those who for months have committed heinous crimes. Bolshevism in the eyes of counterrevolutionaries was a result of an jewish conspiracy, their attacks were focused against jews. They listed 3000 jewish victims of the white terror. We have asked ourselves, to what conflict this ethnic or civil warfare . Here is a quotation from someone in lithuania, who essentially points out in a conversation he had with a local that it used to be one, but now there is a border. There is a war on. Is that how things should be . Dont we all go to the same church . Isnt it a disaster that brothers are divided and fighting . Even though people may have spoken different native tongues, they still saw the kinds of fighting that were happening as opportunists trying to work out boundaries. The example of fighting in lundberg illustrates this point. I would like to use this as an example for the larger point. Ago yesterday, an area, troops took and jews in this city by and large remained neutral. It angered poles, who had been dominant in the city. There were clashes between polish and jewish paramilitaries. One of the things that has really interested me as i dug into this topic is to find out there were jewish paramilitaries. In example, a program karakow, polish youth and both fought each other in the street to outdraw. It had not really occurred in the city before. It was the context of the war that made this possible. Those tensions between who identified as poles and those who identified as ukrainians heated up, political leaders wanted a political solution. They did not want to endorse the violence that was beginning to happen. Really hard it was to recruit soldiers for both sides. Ukrainians wanted to get home. Many poles had to be forced at gunpoint to join the ranks. There was street fighting, there were atrocities, including rapes and violence against women and children. As you see in this painting from a few years later, an effort to takingrate the polish city, of the teenagers feature prominently. This young woman in front there as part of the fighting. But they point out that these officers on either side had been fighting together on the austriahungarian side. There were instances where they preferred to sit and smoke together rather than have their soldiers fight each other. And there were instances where city authorities or the part of the city that was not held by ukrainians, they would declare a ceasefire so the local poles who lived there could still go out and go shopping. Port city authorities, despite the fact there was a war on, who is going to run the city now . What state is it going to belong to . The city waterworks, power station, were both under by national committees. Ensureere efforts to they could still get to the city. Poles,s a city that had ukrainians, and jews before the people are fighting over who gets to run the city afterwards. Poles eventually one. Poland eventually won. Approximatelyhs, 10,000 poles and 15,000 ukrainian soldiers died in battle. In prisonish ended up camp, and about 100,000 ukrainian speakers suffered a similar fate. These are really massive numbers in this region. Academiclittle Research Done on this, but one study estimates of fifth of these prisoners of war died of infectious diseases. Indeed, typhus was tearing through the region, along with the resurgence of tuberculosis, and as we heard today, the spanish influenza. It follows a similar pattern. The only difference is there were very few lithuanians. They wanted a capital city, lithuanian nationalists did, but there were not many lithuanians who lived there. The number of casualties were much lower. Poles tosier for the seize the city. I think this is really fascinating. He says it is very striking that both in the taking of the cities, the topic of civil war between brothers resurfaces time and again. It shows the contemporaries who lived in this part of the continent characterized as they were by cultural, linguistic, diversity, did not always think in clearly defined ethnic categories. It was the course and outcome of the civil war itself, the changing tactics and coalitions, the use of diversity, did not propaganda, like we saw that poster earlier with the kolesarooking callou stealing from veterans, and violence itself was defining belonging. Previously overlapping categories of identity were forced into new channels clearly distinct from one another. I would like now to just talk about a couple other instances of these kinds of violence. One very bad one to mention is something but i think we all if therenow about, and was anything universal about these soldiers, it was violence against jews. A fantasticen in book, the jewish century, jews and armenians and greeks fulfilled particular roles in this part of the world. It did not sit well with the new scenario, where nationalists wanted to seize the reins of power. Anti, antipolish, and violencean started in the western borderlands. From 1917 on lands, the experience mass killing. In ukraine alone, some 1500 antijewish pogroms cost the lives of between 50000 and 60,000 people. The perpetrators were soldiers of the white, red, and autumn on armies ottoman armies. Antijewish violence in the region transcended as a vision between the military victors and losers, and was much more pointedly a transnational phenomenon. Respectsly was in many the most discernible form of Ethnic Violence. During the war, as the troops moved back and forth, people were increasingly, their loyalty was increasingly under doubt because, usually in this period, it was more of a religious identity. Many jews had already perished as theern Europe Russian and Central Power armies moved back and forth. This helps to explain the kind of violence that also occurred in the Ottoman Empire. Wereishingly, ukrainians hung as spies by austrian authorities because the presumption was they would be loyal to russia. There is an even better exultation for the armenian is an even there better explanation for the armenian genocide. It made this kind of violence possible. To wind down, i will show you a couple paintings that are of the russian civil war, but i think they help to illustrate the point i am talking about more in Eastern Europe. Not exclusively just in the russian civil war. Just the intimacy and proximity of the violence. You see here how there are firing coming in, directly at villagers in their homes. Here, i think it is really quite fascinating. On the one hand, it suggests refugees, people who are being forced from their home, and they are taking things of value. But speaking of taking things fo of value, i dont think this guy here with the phonograph and a very nice china plate is taking something from his family home. He has a leather jacket, a rifle, and he is casually smoking a cigarette as he walks with these plundered items. And plundered definitely was a major feature of the instability in this region. One of the diaries that i used in my recent article about krakow during the war includes man writes which a about his home just outside of krakow. If you went to the salt mines, you went there. He says nine Armed Bandits asked if the lord was home, then broke in. They engaged in a firefight with his cook before fleeing. They were informed of the attack writes, they did nothing about it. Plunder is an important feature. Of course, there is hunger and disease. In serbia in 1916 and 1917, there was a tremendous problem with hunger and disease. In the russian civil war, as many as 1q m million to 2 million died of starvation. And 6. 5. 4 million Million People per year or infected in the territory of the polish republic in 1918 and 1919 with typhus. Again, listen to how wide these numbers are. Died. To 130,000 likely ukraine,vaged russia, and poland between 1919 and 1921. Some of the records we have of this are from the very relief organizations that we learned about in that fantastic talk earlier today. Authorities would write back about the appalling conditions they witnessed. I will just note two of them. They noted the poverty due to the movement of troops through the villages and displacement of populations. That created perfect conditions for the propagation of epidemic disease. In northeastern poland, which has been recently vacated by the bolsheviks, the entire population of the village was huddled in a single building, which was itself in an advanced state of disrepair. In another case, relief organizations found a mother and her children huddling in a galvanized cistern like dogs in a kennel, because returning to their village they could not even find where their house had been. They simply could not even find it. That is how much the village had been destroyed. Majorbviously was a source of instability. In the case of the russian civil somethingsitioning, that stalin himself stalin cut his teeth being part of overseeing the requisitioning of food and livestock from the peasants was a way of starvation. We typically think of the starvation that happened in the late 1920s and early 1930s. And yet, there were already millions dying of this sort of suffering. To give aude, i want really interesting example. Vienna was also connected to this kind of instability. Not exactly in the same ways i have been talking about, but another Favorite Book that i is the diary of a viennese woman. She writes about her experience in the war, which she lost nearly all of her family members. Her husband died very early on. Physician. She had a son who died in the war. She had another son who was blinded in the war. Sufferednother son who what we might call ptsd and then became a socialist and hated his own family, tried to shoot the other brother in the house. And she lost a granddaughter to the violence. And she writes in the end of her memoir that she hoped would be published and read in multiple languages, war is a crime. It is hatched by madmen who are a serious danger to society, though they appear to be of of sound mind and are tolerated in our midst. These lunatics, by skillfully exciting and appealing to the noblest and most sacred feelings of which the human heart is capable, in fact millions with their war mania. They misuse these feelings such as patriotism, selfsacrifice, and deathdefying courage with cynical unconcern to let them sink into the earth in streams of blood. War is a crime. She goes on making this point, and she ends with an anecdote. Her grandson was playing with a friend, and they play acted war. The one boy was an austrian and his friend was a frenchman. And they were shooting at each other. She writes, i have never lost my temper with him and never struck him. But this time, each of the enemy powers got a box on the ear from me, which was none too gentle. It was the expression of my very deep and spontaneous indignation. His father and uncle were direct sacrifices to the war at the front. He was playing at more. In tears, he begged to be forgiven. Wasplained to him that war the most abominable institution in the world, yet it ought to be utterly done away with. Must promise me never to play at war again. But daddy says when someone hits me, i must hit him back, he answered rather defiantly, and the frenchman hit me. There it is. When someone hits us, we think weherein we think must hit back. Therein lies the sentiment of all wars. I am not downplaying this at all. I think her lived experience counts for something. This was the conclusion she drew from her l full experience of the war from her baleful experience of the war. It reminds me when David Kennedy was here and he talked about at the end of his talk about an experience with his uncle. He was privileged to hang out with his uncle and local leaders community. As they were driving home, he thanked his uncle. His uncle said, i was with those men in france. And they did things you would just never believe. Kennedy concluded his talk by citing another book. John dowers book, war without mercy. Atrocities follow war as a jackal follows the wounded beast. I think that is an example of what we see here, these unintended consequences, the violence, and that splitting up of this region was due to the war and its ugly ending. I urge everyone to attend the talk about the ways the paris peace treaty try to work that out. Thank you very much for your attention. [applause] lora we are open for your questions. Can i ask you to put up that major arguments like you have . I would like to understand what you are talking about. Ok. Please explain to me what an opportunist is. I dont understand that. Marx and opportunist . Is Vladimir Lenin an opportunist . Is adolf hitler and opportunist . What are we talking about . Nathan i am talking about the tendency we have in our language inspeak of violence sometimes sweeping terms, and to refer to Ethnic Violence in categories that refer to the whole group rather than paying attention to the actual actors. This word using opportunist, what i am trying to draw attention to is that particular people are making particular choices, but they are justifying what they are doing by saying it stands for a much larger group. An yes, lenin is absolutely opportunist in this regard. I am not quite sure how you are making the analogy with marx. All those years that karl marx spent in the library was just an act of an opportunist . I didnt agree with you on marx. I say that lenin is an opportunist. I think there is confusion with your question. But my fundamental point is we have to be cautious when we think about the reasons for things happening in history, that we dont ascribe them to an entire group of people. We have to Pay Attention to who has the power in these situations, who is making these sorts of things happen. It is not that there is an ancient hatred that makes violence happen. It is that they are opportunists. They are nationalists who make choices in particular situations that help to foment that. Once it starts, than ordinary people who experience personal violence, their brother was killed or their mother was raped, then they help to perpetuate that violence. That is what i was trying to get at at the end. It begets violence, perpetuates violence. But when we try to talk about the initial causes of the violence, we are looking backwards at this and saying, could ukrainians yo not get along. I think we are making a mistake. We are not paying attention to the actors who make this happen. Nathan the nice thing about being at the supposing him at this is aium is conversation that can continue over dinner. Fabulous. [laughter] our next question . Can you discuss the proposed decision to create a buffer as ad in Eastern Europe client state or a buffer state between the russians and the Central Powers . It did not sound like that was met with too much success, from your comment quoting the polish mayor. But can you shed some light on state . Tential nathan thank you very much for this question. Russiald note that both and the Central Powers proposed there would be an independent poland. They both did it for reasons that i would call opportunistic. They very much wanted to give the loyalty of polish patriots on their they wanted to get the loyalty of polish patriots on their side. The German Administration of warsaw was, as you would learn reading the professors book a minor apocalypse, exploited this. By claiming they might create a new polish state as a buffer zone, the most important thing the German Administration was doing was extracting resources and labor for the war effort. A lot oft think people necessarily believed in it. And it makes sense. The talks we had about the Ottoman Empire earlier, or about italy. People make promises. They make promises during the war. And i think many of those promises are opportunistic. Questions, are more but unfortunately we are going to need to pause those questions for now to continue at dinner, which hopefully you will be able to join us, or be outside for a good conversation that will be happening on the glass bridge. Could you shift to that reading list powerpoint slide . While he does that, ladies and [laughter] [applause] you are watching American History tv, all weekend every weekend on cspan3. Next on reel america, a 1950 film. This Lorillard Tobacco Company film profiles the sioux people of the rosebud reservation in south dakota. According to a 1952 advertising magazine, the Company Featured a native american theme to highlight their old gold cigarette brands wooden indian trademark, and to pay tribute to the native american origins of tobacco. Lorillard, founded in
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