Every week I spend time surfing the net (hence the name “Surfin Safari”) in search of fascinating sites to share with you in my weekly World Net Daily column (find the NEWEST column every Monday night on the Diversions page).
I led this week’s collection with a site I found so interesting, so relevant to the issues and challenges facing us today, it deserves a post of its own here. Quoting myself from my column:
Thank the American Historical Association for creating the fascinating online archive of “Constructing a Postwar World, the G.I. Roundtable Series in Context”, a 42-pamphlet series prepared under the direction of the Army’s Division of Information and Education between 1943 and 1945 for the War Department for service men and women around the world.
The pamphlets give us a glimpse at the contemporary issues Americans were considering on topics ranging from economic and cultural anxieties at home – particularly around women, crime, and jobs – to foreign policy issues in a postwar world.
“These pamphlets provide an intriguing indicator that the postwar world was being seriously considered and developed fairly early in the military campaign,” the website states. “Even if historians of the present want to divide the 20th century neatly at 1945, the series reminds that at the time, many people were looking to the prewar years as a guide to build what was to come after the war.”
For example, the pamphlet on Propaganda is a MUST read for everyone:
Propaganda isn’t an easy thing to define, but most students agree that it has to do with any ideas or beliefs that are intentionally propagated.
It uses words and word substitutes in trying to reach a goal—pictures, drawings, graphs, exhibits, parades, songs, and other devices.
Democratic vs. Enemy Propaganda
What Are the Tools of Propaganda?
Some Limitations of Propaganda
A Few Suggestions for Further Reading about Propaganda
There’s much more in this GI Rountable Series in Context.
Click the link to see what’s offered.
You’ll be as amazed as I am, and you’ll want to share it with your children, to give them a view of what America is, has been, and can still be.
