Thursday, March 19, 2020

The Beginning Of World War II Essays - International Relations

The Beginning Of World War II Essays - International Relations The Beginning of World War II At daybreak on the first day of September, 1939, the residents of Poland awakened to grave news. A juggernaut force of tanks, guns, and countless grey-clad soldiers from nearby Germany had torn across the countryside and were making a total invasion of the Pole?s homelands. Germany?s actions on that fateful morning ignited a conflict that would spread like a wildfire, engulfing the entire globe in a great world war. This scenario is many people?s conception of how World War II came about. In reality, the whole story is far more detailed and complex. The origins of war can be traced as far back as the end of the first World War in 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles placed responsibility for that terrible war squarely on Germany. Years later, in the Far East, Japanese ambition for territory led the nation to invade Manchuria and other parts of nearby China, causing hostilities to flare in the Pacific Rim. Great Britain, the United States, and many other nations of the world would all be drawn into battle in the years to come, and each nation had it?s own reason for lending a hand in the struggle. Although Germany was the major player in World War II, the seeds of war had already been planted in the Far East years before conflict in Europe. On September 18, 1931, the powerful Japanese military forces began an invasion of the region known as Manchuria, an area belonging to mainland China. This action broke non-aggression treaties that had been signed earlier. It also was carried out by Japanese generals without the consent of the Japanese government. In spite of this, no one was ever punished for the actions. Soon after the assault on China, the Japanese government decided it had no choice but to support the occupation of Manchuria. By the next year the region had been completely cut off from China (Ienaga 60-64). Because of the Japanese offensive in China, the League of Nations held a vote in October to force Japan out of the captured territory. The vote was passed, 13 to 1, but Japan remained in control of Manchuria. A second vote, taken in February, 1933, a formal disapproval of the Japanese occupation, was passed 42 to 1. Instead of expelling Japan from the area of Manchuria, it caused the nation to formally withdraw it?s membership in the League of Nations the next month (Ienaga 66). Now unrestrained by the recommendations of the League of Nations, Japan continued it?s intrusion onto Chinese soil. By 1937 Japan had moved military forces into Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing, as well as other regions of China. By 1940, Japanese seizure of territory had spread to deep inside Southeast Asia and even parts of Australia (Sutel et al). Also in 1940, the Triparte Pact was signed, allying Japan, Germany, and Italy into a powerful force that stretched halfway around the planet. The association with Hitler and Germany unified the war in the Pacific and the war in Europe. Japan was now fully involved in what came to be known as World War II. As warfare raged in the Pacific Rim, a chain of events was unfolding that would produce catastrophic results. The Treaty of Versailles of 1919 held Germany fully accountable for the tragedy of World War I. The nation was stripped of large areas of land, it?s armaments, as well as it?s dignity. In addition, the reparations that were to be paid to the allied nations virtually destroyed the economy of Germany. The resentment of the treaty burned in the hearts and minds of Germans for years afterward. In 1933, a man by the name of Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany after working his way up the ladder of government. By speaking against the Treaty of Versailles and making promises of a better life to the German people, Hitler gained the support of his fellow countrymen, and he easily won the election. Almost immediately after Hitler took office he began securing his position in power. Hitler took steps to eliminate all opposition, including political parties and anyone else who spoke out against him. The death of President Hindenburg in 1934

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Diacope Rhetoric

Diacope Rhetoric Diacope is a  rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase broken up by one or more intervening words. Plural diacopae or diacopes. Adjective: diacopic. As Mark Forsyth has observed, Diacope, diacope ... it works. Nobody would have cared if Hamlet had asked, Whether or not to be? or To be or not? or To be or to die? No. The most famous line in English literature is famous not for the content but for the wording. To be or not to be (The Elements of Eloquence, 2013). Etymology:  From the Greek, a cutting in two. Examples of Diacope Scott Farkus staring out at us with his yellow eyes. He had yellow eyes! So help me, God! Yellow eyes!(Ralphie Parker, A Christmas Story, 1983)I hate to be poor, and we are degradingly poor, offensively poor, miserably poor, beastly poor.(Bella Wilfer in chapter four of Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens)It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesnt know; and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.(Joyce Cary, Art Reality, 1958)It is explained that all relationships require a little give and take. This is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didnt give enough.(Quentin Crisp, Manners From Heaven, 1984)Life is not lost by dying! Life is lostMinute by minute, day by dragging day,In all the thousand, small, uncaring ways.(Stephen Vincent Benà ©t, A Child Is Born, 1942)Their entire lives had been spent in the deification of the unessential, in the reduction of puttering to a science. They had puttered their lives away and were still puttering, only, as they grew older, with a greater intensity, and from the first their lives had been extremely happy.(Charles Macomb Flandrau, Little Pictures of People. Prejudices, 1913) There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.(Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 1927)All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.(Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877)I am neat, scrupulously neat, in regard to the things I care about; but a book, as a book, is not one of those things.(Max Beerbohm, Whistlers Writing. The Pall Mall Magazine, 1904)He wore prim vested suits with neckties blocked primly against the collar buttons of his primly starched white shirts. He had a primly pointed jaw, a primly straight nose, and a prim manner of speaking that was so correct, so gentlemanly, that he seemed a comic antique.(Russell Baker, Growing Up, 1982)Put out the light, and then put out the light.(Othello in William Shakespeares Othello, the Moor of Venice, Act Five, scene 2)And now, my beauties, something with poison in it, I think. With poison in it, but attractive to the eye and soothing to the smell.(The Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz, 1939) Of course, in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too.(Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King. Viking, 1959)Youre not fully clean until youre Zestfully clean.(advertising slogan for Zest soap)I knew it. Born in a hotel roomand goddamn itdied in a hotel room.(last words of playwright Eugene ONeill)Tourettes teaches you what people will ignore and forget, teaches you to see the reality-knitting mechanism people employ to tuck away the intolerable, the incongruous, the disruptiveit teaches you this because youre the one lobbing the intolerable, incongruous, and disruptive their way.(Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn. Doubleday, 1999)[British Prime Minister] Blair sounded like a man who had spent the morning riffling through handbooks of classical rhetoric: This indulgence has to stop. Because it is dangerous. It is dangerous if such regimes disbelieve us. Dangerous if they think they can use w eakness, our hesitation, even the natural urges of our democracy towards peace, against us. Dangerous because one day they will mistake our innate revulsion against war for permanent incapacity.(Anthony Lane, The Prime Minister. The New Yorker, March 31, 2003) Diacope in Shakespeares  Antony and Cleopatra Cleopatra: O sun,Burn the great sphere thou movest in! darkling standThe varying shore o the world. O Antony,Antony, Antony! Help, Charmian, help, Iras, help;Help, friends below; lets draw him hither.Antony: Peace!Not Caesars valour hath oerthrown Antony,But Antonys hath triumphd on itself.Cleopatra: So it should be, that none but AntonyShould conquer Antony; but woe tis so!Antony: I am dying, Egypt, dying; onlyI here importune death awhile, untilOf many thousand kisses the poor lastI lay upon thy lips.(William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act Four, scene 15)Throughout the text [of Antony and Cleopatra] we find not rational and syllogistic logic, but persuasive figures that indicate tension, friction and explosion. . . . The play is filled with exclamations of vehemence and hyperbole, made more emphatic by the undercurrent of the colloquial. For example the iteration of thou at 4.2.11, the device ploce, works to construct conversational ease; at the same time the repetition of words with one or more in between, or diacope, although similar to ploce, has a very insistent and desperate effect, as in Cleopatras help at 4.15.13-14.(Sylvia Adamson, et al., Reading Shakespeares Dramatic Language: A Guide. Thomson Learning, 2001) Types of Diacope Diacope comes in a number of forms. The simplest is the vocative diacope: Live, baby, live. Yeah, baby, yeah. I am dying, Egypt, dying. Game over, man, game over. Zeds dead, baby, Zeds dead. All you do is chuck in somebodys name or their title and repeat. The effect is to put in a bit of emphasis, a certain finality, on the second word. . . .The other main form of diacope is the elaboration, where you chuck in an adjective. From sea to shining sea. Sunday bloody Sunday. O Captain! My Captain! Human, all too human. From harmony, from heavenly harmony . . . . or Beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. This form gives you a feeling both of precision (were not talking about fake beauty) and crescendo (its not merely a sea, its a shining sea).(Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase. Icon Books, 2013) The Lighter Side of Diacope Someone ate the baby,Its rather sad to say.Someone ate the babySo she wont be out to play.Well never hear her whiny cryOr have to feel if she is dry.Well never hear her asking, Why?Someone ate the baby.(Shel Silverstein, Dreadful. Where the Sidewalk Ends. Harper Row, 1974)Im gonna cut out now with this unusual song Im dedicating to an unusual person who makes me feel kind of unusual.(Christian Slater as Mark Hunter in Pump Up the Volume, 1990)I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because theyd never expect it.(Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts) Pronunciation: di AK oh pee Also Known As: semi-reduplication