Night, by Eliezer Wiesel

Well, Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel was just a boy when the Holocaust took place.  Elie recounts the many traumatic events that occured while he was displaced through several concentration camps.  Not only was he starved,  beaten and overworked, but he was mentally scarred, something that to him will last forever.  The things he saw, the pains he bore, the many tragedies that could not break him all happened to him in a matter of a few years.  Wiesel was a strong boy.  Physically, he did the work he was forced to do.  He was worked to the core, everything about him physically did not, could not work when he was finally freed.  He was beaten, and tossed about.  Luck kept him alive.  The decisions he made were crucial to his survival, but he did not know any consequences of his actions beforehand.  Instead of going with the children, he went with the men, who laboured intensely.  Most children were put to death at that point.  Seeing the ashes rise from the smokestacks puzzled him, until he realized what the ashes meant.  Thousands upon thousands, millions upon millions of innocent people were killed because of stereotype, greed, and hostility.  Elie would not give up.  He saw too many people collapse, freeze in the snowy onslaught during a bitter storm, and burn in the giant "ovens".  Each of those faces- they all had a face.  Sharp, clear, innocent faces of people who had families, who had lives, who each had the ability to change others' lives- burned a memory in Eliezer Wiesel that cannot be taken from him.  It is the true specifics that change how we see the war.  It was not just murder.  It was physical and mental torture, and then psycopathic murder.  A warm shower turned into a bitter death.  Shovels, blood, flesh, dirt, bodies-once people- altered Eliezer Wiesel's life.

Goff! Moss! Terry! Upshur! Schroeder! 124-137

Tragedy: To an extent the war was a tragedy because of the many lives that were changed and lost.  After the war, however, was a direct continuation of the actual tragedy of war.  Attempting to dissolve hatred and hostility between countries Wilson devised a plan of common unity known as the League of Nations.  Although he, himself, did not want to be part of it, Wilson played an active role with promoting European involvement within the organization.  The goals of the League were to ensure that a global war like WWI never happened again.  The book defines it well as "Collective Security".  If every country would have done their part to promote and maintain peace, this collective security could have prevented another war.

What good came of the war?
The United States learned from the war and engineered rockets, airplanes, submarines, and tanks.  Intense preparation for WWII was going on, just in case.  The United States economy boomed with easily produced consumer goods which sold at much lower prices than ever had in history. Society greatly changed because of the war.

Gilbert! 80-98 Questions

My question for this chapter involves mostly how the chapter talked about the Irish involvement in the war:

-Were smaller nations/nations with weaker military forces (ex. Ireland) pivotal in determining the fate of the war?

Another question or thought I had was involving Roumania's decision to join the Allies in the war.  Although they remained neutral for the first two years of the war, could it be considered an imperialistic interest of theirs to join the Allies in hopes of gaining land?

Goff!Moss!Terry!Upshur! 102-115

WWI changed the way the world saw war.  So many new inventions and ideas combined to alter the face of war as the war was going on.  German U-boats gave them effective spying tactics, which was an advantage no one else had.  Their submarines influenced the U.S. into joining the war.  Germany was also effective at blockading the British with the submarine.  Machine guns, although they had many flaws, were able to mow down the enemies' rushing teams.  Their presence in the war caused a stalemate between the powers.  I think technology changes the way we interact with other people.  Today, cell phones and the internet have changed communication between people to an extent that more and more people are losing their "people skills" and can't carry on a normal conversation.  However, technology has given many nations the advantage in conflicts or in emergency situations.  Likewise, the war was affected by improving naval forces, guns that took out millions of enemies, tanks that could plow through the toughest of geographic barriers, and many other inventions.