Blog #7

Blog #7

            In the reading about the most recent century I found several things to catch my attention.  In the reading chapter 21 it talked about many interesting things but what really caught my attention was Hitler and the Nazis.  Usually when someone thinks of Hitler and the Nazis they think about what they did to the Jews, and the concentration camps and all the cruel things that they did.  But what I found interesting was how Hitler was able to turn around Germany before that all happened.  Once Hitler was legally the chancellor of the German government he quickly overcame the political parties, arrested thousands of opponents, abolished labor unions and much more.  Hitler was on a mission to bring Germany out of the Depression and he did.  He brought many important key factors to Germany but rebuilding and investing in highways, canals, bridges, and public buildings.  He also created new jobs for many people.  Before him around 6.2 million were unemployed and he brought it down to 500,000 in 1937 which was amazing.  The book said that Hitler had in some way found the secret for recovery by “ economic planning, controlled wages and prices, government investment, and enforced peace between capital and labor” (Strayer, 640).  I found that to be interesting because a lot of the time people don’t realize how he changed Germany before he used the Jews as a symbol of the corrupting the German culture.

            In the chapter the rise and fall of world communism, what I found interesting was the communist Feminism. It “declared full legal and political equality from women; marriage became a civil procedure among freely consenting adults; divorce was legalized and made easier; as was abortion; illegitimacy was abolished; women no loner had to take their husbands’ surnames; pregnancy leave for employed women was mandated; and women were actively mobilized as workers in the country’s drive to industrialization” (Strayer, 669).   I found that to be interesting because women were able to do so many things that they were not able to before.  This was adopted in the west with the forms of “women’s liberation”.   During this time women were given great opportunities to do things that they have never done before. I could not imagine living in today’s world and having all those things rights taken away from me.  So I could only imagine how the women felt once everything changed.

            Lastly the independence and development in the global south, what caught my eye was the experiments with culture: the role of Islam in turkey and Iran.  With the economic development and the change in in global culture of modernity such as the change of technological  achievements, the scientific outlook and the focus on the material values.  With all these new changes it was harder with older traditions.  In turkey, polygamy was abolished, and women gained legal rights.  Despite how the west changed the Turkey government stayed to their roots.  “Turkey went a cultural revolution in public life, but not a social or economic revolution” (Strayer, 716).