History and Repetition

“History always repeats itself,” is a common statement going around quite a bit lately… usually accompanied with declarations of “…never again,” or some other trivialization of a historic figure, event, or circumstance.

Even in this blog, I have wrestled with what the past can
teach us about who we are and where we are headed:

Hitler,
Hussein, and the Problems of Comparison

To most people, I think the pre-Second World War events in Germany involve Hitler magically appearing and subsequently invading Poland, when the truth of how Germany descended into the post-First World War political and social chaos is a lot more complicated. 

First
World War Musings

There are times when, during my studies in this class and others that have touched on the causes of the First World War where I find myself on tangential research trying to correlate or disprove the idea that we never truly seem to…