Biography of Zakir Husain, 1897-1969, president of India.

A long look at how contemporary Germany is remembering the Holocaust

D-Day, the Allied invasion of northwestern France in June 1944, has remained in the forefront of American memories of the Second World War to this day. Depictions in books, news stories, documentaries, museums, monuments, memorial celebrations, speeches, games, and Hollywood spectaculars have overwhelmingly romanticized the assault as an event in which citizen-soldiers—the everyday heroes of democracy—engaged evil foes in a decisive clash fought for liberty, national redemption, and world salvation. In D-Day Remembered, Michael R. Dolski explores the evolution of American D-Day tales over the course of the past seven decades. He shows the ways in which that particular episode came to overshadow so many others in portraying the twentieth century’s most devastating cataclysm as “the Good War.” With depth and insight, he analyzes how depictions in various media, such as the popular histories of Stephen Ambrose and films like The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan, have time and again reaffirmed cherished American notions of democracy, fair play, moral order, and the militant, yet non-militaristic, use of power for divinely sanctioned purposes. Only during the Vietnam era, when Americans had to confront an especially stark challenge to their pietistic sense of nationhood, did memories of D-Day momentarily fade. They soon reemerged, however, as the country sought to move beyond the lamentable conflict in Southeast Asia. Even as portrayals of D-Day have gone from sanitized early versions to more realistic acknowledgments of tactical mistakes and the horrific costs of the battle, the overarching story continues to be, for many, a powerful reminder of moral rectitude, military skill, and world mission. While the time to historicize this morality tale more fully and honestly has long since come, Dolski observes, the lingering positive connotations of D-Day indicate that the story is not yet finished.

Jonathan Harris demonstrates that the leaders of Stalin's Secretariat clashed sharply over the nature of the Communist party's 'leadership' of the Soviet state in the period between 1939 and 1948. The term 'party leadership' is generally misunderstood; it does not refer to the activities of the party as a whole, but to the efforts of its full time officials (the 'inner party') to direct the activities of the members of the party who manned the Soviet state (the 'outer party'). This study argues that A. Zhdanov and G. Malenkov, the two junior Secretaries of the CC/VKP(B) who directed the two major bureaucratic divisions of the Secretariat for most of the period under review, supported diametrically opposed conceptions of the leadership to be provided by the party's officials. A. Zhdanov argued that they should give priority to the ideological education of all members of the party and should allow the Communists who manned the state considerable autonomy in their administration of the five-year plans. In direct contrast, G. Malenkov, who directed the cadres directorate for most of the period under review, had little sympathy for ideological education and urged party officials to engage in close and detailed direction of the Communists who directly administered the five-year plans. This study contends that it is possible to illustrate this never-ending conflict by a careful examination of the public discussion of this issue in the various publications controlled by the major divisions of the Secretariat. When examined in conjunction with recently published archival materials, it is possible to pinpoint the linkages between the leadership conflict within the Secretariat, the shifts in the ongoing public discussion, and Stalin's role as the final arbiter in the dispute.