This text belongs to the Historia y Vida newsletter, which is sent every Thursday afternoon. If you want to receive it, sign up here.
Millions of people, anonymous or not, have had to flee from wars and persecution. Even today escaping is the only valid option for many, exiles or refugees bear witness to this. In this it does not seem that humanity advances; in other things, neither.
Ethnic cleansing. Large masses of the population were forcibly displaced in Eastern Europe by the German invasion, but also after the war by Allied partitioning and reckoning. In the end, according to archaeologist Alfredo González-Ruibal, “in a certain way, Hitler won,” because his ethnic cleansing was successful. But when the Nazis fell, they were the ones who had to find escape routes, though historians doubt an Odessa-style network existed.
The return of the general. General Vicente Rojo planned ambitious Republican offensives in the Civil War, although most failed to achieve their objectives due to enemy opposition or political obstacles. After the conflict, he went into exile, although he returned in the 1950s, when he was persecuted by the Franco regime. The press of the time picked up the news of his death with discretion. Another exile, Josep Tarradellas, had a bitter fight with Jordi Pujol after his return.
Napoleon’s captivity. After Waterloo and with half of Europe on his heels, Napoleon tried to flee by sea, but the British prevented him and confined him to Saint Helena from where he could not escape as he had previously done from the island of Elba. He could not escape either, in this case from the firing squad, Maximilian of Habsburg, Emperor of Mexico. He had received the crown offered to him by Napoleon III, nephew of the hero of Austerlitz.
indigenous slaves. In the 50 years after Columbus arrived in America, some 2,500 indigenous people were enslaved and taken to the metropolis, a contingent that may seem small but that caused a whole series of political and ethical tensions, according to historian Esteban Mira. Like the thousands of slaves who made the journey between Africa and the American continent, they too could not avoid their fate.
Jubilation in the trenches. The 11th day of the 11th month at 11 am. This was the moment in 1918 when the First World War formally ended and these are the remastered and colorized images by the Vivid History YouTube channel that show the joy of the soldiers. The jubilation is proportional to the drama that was experienced in the trenches throughout Europe during the four years that the conflict lasted.
Civil war, global war. The interpretation of the Civil War from an international point of view gives another meaning to a conflict in which all the great powers played their cards to the full to preserve their interests, often ruthlessly. The RNE Documents podcast analyzes with first-rate historians a war where the internal confrontation seems the least important.
Any past tense. The contrast between an idealized past and the supposed decadence of the present has been a resource used by politics to exhaustion. The process is as follows: 1) extend and exaggerate the idea of ??the current bad situation resulting from a supposed decadence, and 2) proclaim yourself as a solution to the problem that you have previously amplified. The result is Trump’s Make America great again, or Franco’s or Mussolini’s propaganda.
This already happened in Antiquity. Historian Edward Watts has published The Decline and Fall of Rome (Galaxy Gutenberg), whose main thesis is that the idea of ??a decadent Roman world undermined by moral degradation was commonplace for almost the entire life of the Republic and Empire, even in his brightest moments. As now, the concept was used by politicians to come to power.
This mechanism takes advantage of the fact that humans have always been prone to thinking that the past was better. The psychologist Adam Mastroianni published an article a few weeks ago in Nature (here the excerpt on his blog Experimental History, in English) which explains that, according to surveys carried out around the world over the last 60 years, people believe that in society there are a clear moral decline. On the other hand, when responses of a more concrete nature are observed, this alleged decline in values ??is revealed to be false. The cross between history and psychology is fascinating.
