Jennifer's 20th Century History Blog

During World War II, the Nazis built approximately 8,000 bunkers along the coast of Denmark (7,000 of them on the west coast) to guard against an Allied invasion. Each cement bunker was about 215-square feet and housed nine German soldiers plus their commander. Sixty-three years after the end of the war, four of these bunkers were recently found buried in sand completely intact. It was as if the Nazis had just stepped out of the bunker. Inside these four bunkers were artifacts that revealed how the ten men lived, including both furniture (such as beds and chairs) and personal items.

In a new memoir, Carol Thatcher, the daughter of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, reveals details of her mother's eight-year struggle with dementia. Carol first noticed her mother's impeccable memory slipping during a conversation over lunch in 2000. Since then, Thatcher's memory has continued to deteriorate to the point where she often forgets that her husband of 52 years passed away in 2003. Thatcher has refrained from making public speeches after suffering several small strokes in 2002.

Young boys sent to World War I contended with mud, blood, gore, and death. And though these young men grew up with Victorian values, they often used alcohol and sex to help them cope with the horror. In a new book by historian Joshua Levine, Forgotten Voices of the Somme (which comes out on October 2, 2008), Levine delves into the sex lives of WWI soldiers. After listening to tens of thousands of hours of taped interviews with WWI veterans housed at the Imperial War Museum, Levine gives examples of soldiers' experiences with prostitutes and even the taboo of buggery. For more about the book and a few examples, read this Guardian article.

The U.S. National Archives recently opened more than 35,000 files relating to the men and women who worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) prior to 1947. Among those who worked for the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) were celebrity chef Julia Child, diplomat Ralph Bunche, actor Sterling Hayden, baseball player Moe Berg, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, and historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Historians and archivists are constantly grappling with the question: What is worth preserving? We cannot save everything and yet we must decide what will be important to history in the decades to come. The most recent concept is to preserve virtual worlds - interactive online games. With millions of people playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORG) like World of Warcraft, should the history of such games be recorded? Will we someday research game history like we do Disney films or modern artists? If you want to know more about this new effort of preserving the history of virtual worlds, check out this BBC article.

In a recently released 500-page report, the Rwandan government accuses the French government of not only having prior knowledge of the 1994 Rwandan genocide but also actively aiding the perpetrators. Some French officials named in the report include former President Francois Mitterand, former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, and former Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. AllAfrica offers a succinct account of the accusations against the French.

Joseph Heller's famous novel, Catch-22, was first published in 1961. Set in World War II, the book is a comic satirical novel about bureaucracy. The phrase "Catch 22" in the novel is used to denote the vicious circle of military bureaucracy. The term "Catch 22" has made it into mainstream usage to mean any two choices that are mutually dependent (for example, which came first: the chicken or the egg?).

However, the term we now know as "Catch 22" was almost "Catch 18" for Heller had originally chosen Catch-18 as the title of the book. Unfortunately for Heller, Leon Uris published his Mila 18 novel just before Heller's book was to be published. Heller's publisher didn't think it would be good to have two books out at the same time with "18" in the title. Attempting to come up with another name, Heller and his publisher considered Catch-11, Catch-17, and Catch-14 before deciding on the title we all know, Catch-22.

Be sure to check out more interesting and fun history trivia.

Twenty pages of General Hideki Tojo's diary, covering the two weeks after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, were recently released by the Japanese National Archives and published in the Nikkei newspaper. General Tojo, the prime minister of Japan for most of World War II, emphatically states in his diary that he was against the Japanese surrender after the atomic bombings. Tojo considered the surrender humiliating and believed that the Japanese leaders were "frightened" by the atomic bombs. After the war, Tojo was tried for war crimes by the Allies and sentenced to death in 1948. For more about Tojo's diary, read the Associated Press article.

The History Channel has just created a five-part mini-series called, 50 Things You Need to Know About British History, which will air in the United Kingdom in September 2008. The goal of the show was to choose 50 events in British history that would define what it means to be British. Would you be surprised to learn that they have excluded Winston Churchill and Queen Victoria from the list? What events do you think should definitely be included in the top 50?

On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman shot ex-Beatles rock musician John Lennon in the back outside his New York apartment building. After shooting Lennon, Chapman pulled out a copy of The Catcher in the Rye from his pocket and read it until the police arrived. Lennon was taken to a hospital but was pronounced dead.

Chapman was charged with second degree murder and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. He has spent most of his time at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York. Since 2000, Chapman has come up for parole every two years. In August 2008, Chapman was once again up for parole but it was denied.