jeudi, février 03, 2005
the exciting evening of the history geek
Last night while I ate my dinner I watched a war movie. It's a documentary piece put together by the Canadian Film Board, with all this original black and white footage of images from World War II. The film series is called Canada at War, so it's giving me a pretty solid view of our role even at the early stages of the war. Other than a couple commercially-produced movies like Schindler's List that I've seen over the years, I really don't know much about the war (or, history in general, for that matter). So I'm totally fascinated, as I mentioned.
One of the cool (but sad) scenes shown was when Germany decided to attack London, sending over fleet after fleet of planes dropping bombs on the city. Apparently Hitler wanted to "crush the spirit of Londoners". So they all gathered in the subway system overnight to sleep - men, women and children, sleeping peacefully, grandmothers knitting casually on the subway platform, as the roar of planes and exploding bombs shakes the city. It was chilling to watch. And apparently, their spirits were NOT crushed.
When I went to bed, instead of reading my current Robert Langdon novel Angels and Demons (I'm almost done), I continued with that great book I got yesterday from the library, Czechoslovakia since World War II. It's really well written, so it plays out like a novel itself. The cabinet members of Czhechoslovakia's government have just convinced Novotny (the leader) that he needs to resign (he was about to initiate a military coup to take over the government by force, but they found out and called him on it!), and they hold these marathon meetings trying to decide who should take over his role. They settle on Dubcek, who is an unexpected choice - to this point he had not demonstrated any great ambition to take a leading role in the government. He is Slovak, too, so he represents the needs of the Slovak side of the country, which struggles to be recognized. Where I am in the story, it is currently January 1968 and the "Prague Spring" is about to begin.... ooh, suspense...(!) (/dork!) | ¶ 9:19 a.m.
One of the cool (but sad) scenes shown was when Germany decided to attack London, sending over fleet after fleet of planes dropping bombs on the city. Apparently Hitler wanted to "crush the spirit of Londoners". So they all gathered in the subway system overnight to sleep - men, women and children, sleeping peacefully, grandmothers knitting casually on the subway platform, as the roar of planes and exploding bombs shakes the city. It was chilling to watch. And apparently, their spirits were NOT crushed.
When I went to bed, instead of reading my current Robert Langdon novel Angels and Demons (I'm almost done), I continued with that great book I got yesterday from the library, Czechoslovakia since World War II. It's really well written, so it plays out like a novel itself. The cabinet members of Czhechoslovakia's government have just convinced Novotny (the leader) that he needs to resign (he was about to initiate a military coup to take over the government by force, but they found out and called him on it!), and they hold these marathon meetings trying to decide who should take over his role. They settle on Dubcek, who is an unexpected choice - to this point he had not demonstrated any great ambition to take a leading role in the government. He is Slovak, too, so he represents the needs of the Slovak side of the country, which struggles to be recognized. Where I am in the story, it is currently January 1968 and the "Prague Spring" is about to begin.... ooh, suspense...(!) (/dork!) | ¶ 9:19 a.m.
