Blog final part 2

I learned a couple new things from taking this class. I learned more about German food and the culture like how people support being nudist. I learned more about the horrors of world war one by reading All Quiet on the Western Front. I also learned more about Prussia. I thought the class was ok for a once a week class. There wasnt too much work that made it ridiculous for a once a week class. The class discussions and research was fun, but watching presentations for two and a half hours was very annoying. We also hardly touched into the subject of German culture all we did was scrape the frosting off of the cake we never dove into the whole cake. I was fine with posting blog posts once a week that fulfilled a certain requirement it was the requirement itself I had a problem with because all the requirements were to write a minimum amount of words and have a relevant topic everything else was our decision to make. I don’t mind having the freedom to write, but I need a little more than a topic and a minimum written amount of words because for the written assignments I wasn’t sure if we could go off and ramble with the info we pulled up or we had to stick with the info that we found and keep it professional and I’m over 200 words so in summary the requirements for the blog assignments were a little vague and needed a little more info on the requirements and the presentations were boring and we hardly touched into German culture and could’ve gone deeper other than that the class was awesome. 

Blog final part 1

Blog Reviews

Blog 1: http://ge110alexmc.blogspot.com/

Blog 2: http://ge110jonpo.blogspot.com/

Blog 3: http://ge110sladesi.blogspot.com/

All blogs were chosen through random chance by rolling two ten sided dice.

Blog 1:

It’s a little hard to tell how much care he seems to have kept up with all of his blog posts, but the blog itself lacks any color background so I’d say he cared so-so for his blog. I would give the overall informative quality a 4/5 the quality of info was good, but it was minimal. I would give the readability a 4/5 there was some typos and one of the blog posts had a font that was hard to read. I’d say the blog is a little better than mine mostly because I got a little off course and rambled a bit on some of my posts.

Blog 2:

The author showed great care for the blog it has a very nice background format and nice pictures on the blog posts. The quality of the blog was very informative 5/5. Everything in the blog is easy to read and pretty free flowing 5/5. This blog is way better than mine mostly because of how detailed it is.

Blog 3:

The author showed great care for his blog as it is very colorful in both background and posts. The quality is 5/5, very detailed and thorough. The blog gets 5/5 for the readability as it was clear and concise. The Blog is way better than mine as I said before I got into rambling in mine as well as details that may have been unnecessary.

RAF

                                 
The Red Army Faction was one of Germany’s most violent left wing groups after World War 2. The group described themselves as a “communists and anti-imperialist urban guerilla group engaged in armed resistance” against the state which they deemed as fascist at the time. The RAF was founded by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Enisslin, Horst Mahler, and Ulrike Meinhof in 1970.

The RAF existed from 1970-1998 and committed numerous operations throughout that period. In 1977 an operation they committed lead to a national crisis known a “German Autumn”. RAF was held responsible for thirty-four deaths including many secondary targets and many injuries in its almost thirty years of activity.    

On 30 July 1977, Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former officer of the SS and NSDAP, was abducted in a violent kidnapping, soon after a letter was delivered to the Federal Government, demanding the release of eleven detainees from Stammheim. A crisis committee was formed and employed delay tactics to allow police time to discover Schleyer’s location. The crisis dragged on for more than a month, but on October 18, 1977 Hanns-Martin Schleyer was shot to death by his captors and the next day his kidnappers announced that he had been executed and revealed his locations his body was discovered later that day and the French newspaper his body was discovered later that day and the French newspaper Liberation received a letter stating “After 43 days we have ended Hanns-Martin Schleyer's pitiful and corrupt existence... His death is meaningless to our pain and our rage... The struggle has only begun. Freedom through armed, anti-imperialist struggle”. The events that happened on the autumn of 1977 are reffered to as Der Deutsche Herbst ("German Autumn").

Sources:

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Red_Army_Faction.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction#German_Autumn

Blog presentation

For my blog presentation I chose the topic Rulers, governments, and politics  but my two previous blog posts are different because they are what I chose in the beginning of the sign up and will make adjustments for the final presentation.

Germany relations with it's neighbors

Brian Madsen

There was no Germany in the 18^th century there was a country that occupied the area where Germany would now be and that country was known as Prussia. Over the course of its history Prussia did not have many conflicts as the country was more of “an army with a state rather than a state with an army”.  Prussia did have a little involvement in the Great Northern War, but mostly to have some control over the Baltic as Sweden was dominating all the power before the war.

In 1740 Prussian troops invaded Silesia which was the richest province in Austria and that started the Silesian wars which lasted from 1740-1763 and ended with Prussia as the victor. Afterwards Prussia did take some lead parts in the French Revolution, but then remained quiet for around a decade because of the Peace of Basil in 1795. Tensions begin to rise against France as certain negotiations failed and Prussia soon suffered a devastating defeat against Napoleon in the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt. Afterwards Prussia had to pay some large dues and give up one-third of their land and allow French troops to be garrisoned throughout the land which made the kingdom a French satellite.

After Napoleon lost to Russia Prussia jumped on the British band wagon to fight against Napoleon and was rewarded with the return of its lost land and some extra land for their help at the Battle of Waterloo.  Prussia soon withdrew from Poland to allow the creation of Congress Poland under Russian Sovereignty. Soon after Prussia joined the German confederation and Germany became a patchwork of independent, monarchical states with Prussia and Austria competing for influence. There was much conflict between the three countries as they all tried to gain influence, but eventually war broke out leading into the Schleswig war in which Prussia was trying to stop Denmark from spreading their influence, the Austro-Prussian war  which was a struggle of supremacy between Austria and Prussia for Germany, and the Franco-Prussian war which was France being a douche bag because they thought the German states were going to go into a civil war and tried to take advantage of the situation. After the wars of unification parts of Prussia slowly melded into the German republic until it was all gone.

The formal unification of Germany occurred on January, 18 1871 at the Versailles palace in France. Germany then took the remnants of Nobles from Prussia and other various people and assigned important duties as the new nobles of Germany. Germany afterward had very few tensions with its neighbors as the defeat of Napoleon left Europe with the desire for peace and was left that way until The Great started up in the twentieth century.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Germany

The role of German Military in the 20th and 21st century

Brian Madsen

At the start of the twentieth century the role of the German military was fighting in World War one. Once Germany was pulled into the war they initiated the Schrieffer plan to deal with the French and the Russians who had formed an alliance known as the Franco-Russian alliance. When the war started Germany attacked France by going through their Belgium border to avoid the French defenses at the German border. The Germans were beaten back at the First battle of the Marne with three years of stalemated trench wars that resulted in millions of casualties. New tactics were developed in 1918 opened up the war, but a series of failed German offensives in 1918 and freshly trained American troops caused Germany to go on the defensive. With their military defeated, no allies to turn to, and exhausted on the home front, Germany sign the Treaty of Versailles.

After the Treaty was signed Germany’s military was severely limited and with the great depression in America it lead the people of Germany into even more despair, but when the Nazi’s came to power in 1933 and began remilitarization, the heavy spending revived the ravaged economy of Germany and made Hitler popular. The Nazi’s encouraged the army to experiment with tanks and motorized infantry. The Nazi’s then rebuilt the navy and started a new air force division. After that Germany turned into a military police state where the military was in control of everything until the Germans were defeated by the Allies in 1945. Afterward Germany was split into several factions to prevent them from gaining power, eventually some of the factions joined together to the point where only two were left East and West Germany. Once Germany was formed into East and West Germany the role of military declined greatly due to the fact half of it belonged to the Allies against the Soviet Union and the other half belonged to the Soviet Union.

On October 3^rd 1990 East and West Germany united as one to become Germany once more after 45 years. In 1990 with the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Germany agreed to reduce the strength of its armed forces.  Since then Germany has participated little in military matters and have focused most of its attention toward economic industries and work ethic to make the world a better place through capitalistic economic prosperity.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Germany#First_World_War_.281914-1918.29

Reaction to Berlin Calling

1.       Drugs are Ickarus’s way of relaxing and his way of trying to escape the world so he can focus more on his work.

2.       The fans are taking the drugs to enhance their experience, they are taking them during and after the concerts, they are taking them orally, and taking everything, but heroin.

3.       The subculture focuses on drugs most likely it enhances the experience of the music to the point of an extreme and the wild ride people experience from that gets them addicted to the drugs and they continue to do it.

4.       People in this society wallow in darkness and take drugs and fornicate each other like it’s nothing.

5.       I don’t think so because this is just one subculture of a massively huge infrastructure within the German economy. Also even though Ickarus was in the ward he still wanted to work when he wasn’t trying to get better he even put his work before his health that shows the dedication the Germans have toward their work ethic.

My reaction to this film would be that it was an okay film. For being a cult following movie the quality of the video itself was not bad and the story is the classic story of a man who goes through great tribulations and becomes stronger by the end of it. Cultural differences in the movie well for one when Ickarus’s Girlfriend is trying to find him in the bathroom stalls and we see those two people fornicating was quite unexpected. Showing the inside of the toilet in Ickarus’s house was also another unexpected event. The fact that this is an X-rated movie is quite a shock because no one in the USA would dare do something like this because one organization or another would bitch about it and whine to the government like the statists they are. All in all the story of Ickarus and his development in the story is a good one I just wish they would explain his schizophrenia was he born with it or was the cause of it the drugs they briefly mentioned it in the movie and I ,as a viewer, would have liked to know more about it. Overall the movie besides the X-rated material was alright.