Maarten van Rossem is Professor of American Studies (in Dutch: Amerikanistiek) at the University of Utrecht. He is also known in the Netherlands for his elaborate and witty comments on TV about current political affairs. Last evening Robbert, Micha and I attended his 2½ hour (including a short break) lecture “The Cold War (part I)”.
Van Rossem’s lecture addressed the chain of events that lead to the Cold War, the era of tension after the Second World War between the United States and Russia. It covered the events from 1945 up till the year 1956; next week, in part II, the later years will be discussed.
Although the many historical events he presented during his lecture are well known, he managed to position them all in the context of the Cold War. Moreover, he has a true gift for interesting diversions that eventually return to their originating track. The way that he narrates clearly shows he possesses a large amount of factual knowledge. He displays all of that knowledge in an authorative yet funny way, which makes it easy to absorb. My only negative comment is that sometimes his pronounciation is not very clear and it requires some degree of concentration to get all details of his argument.
Events he talked about were, for example: the conferences at Jalta and Potsdam, the division of Berlin, the incident with the U2 spy plane, the Russian A-bomb, the Korean War, and the 1956 uprising in Hungary. He not only explained historical facts but also provided detailed background information about the underlying goals of the world leaders in this political game of chess.
He argued that the Russians were not as bad as the Americans thought they were, because they clearly suffered the most during the Second World War. The number of Russian war victims is estimated at up to 30 million. Therefore, it is understandable that Russia wanted to keep a buffer zone, the Eastern European countries, to ensure the safety of Russia. The Cold War was a conflict whose origin lay in the military situation at the end of the Second World War. The Russian and Allied Forces each had liberated a large part of Europe, where the separation line would later be called the Iron Curtain. Sadly, Maarten argued, the Cold War was mainly about mistrust: often defensive actions were misinterpreted by the other side as offensive steps.
To summarize, Maarten van Rossem’s dry humour and storytelling qualities made this lecture an interesting and pleasant experience, even though the bad chairs and uncomfortably high room temperature could have been a good reason to make us feel otherwise. I highly recommend going to his lectures because they breathe the air of storytelling in the grand tradition of your favourite history teacher.
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