fandomhigh | World Wars in the Media, Tuesday

"The second World War," Mitchell began, sitting on top of a sofa in his classroom with his fingers knotted together, "Was a little more obvious in how it spawned, I think." He took a breath. "Getting everyone in the country together was nice and all, but imperial bastards like Hitler never stop at something like that. He was obsessed with this idea that the Jews and 'lesser races'," you could hear the airquotes, "Were responsible for all that had gone wrong in the world. If they just let the Aryans, blue-eyed blonde-haired pale types, rule everything as the master race, everything would be fine."

Sarcasm: you could hear it. "In order to do this, the Germans would need 'lebensraum'. Room to live. You'd think with a country that size they'd be happy, but no. So Hitler started poking at the terms of Versailles, remilitarizing places that should have been kept free of soldiers, that kind of thing. The Allies, the countries that had won the last war, had also taken chunks of land populated mainly by Germans and stuffed them into other countries - such as Czechoslovakia. Hitler pushed to occupy those lands as well. The Allies did nothing - they were following the politics of 'appeasement', to keep Hitler happy so he wouldn't do anything rash."

Mitchell snorted. "The next step was even bigger. Austria, a country which had always been populated by Germanic people, wound up annexed by Germany in what they termed the 'Anschluss' - joining up. Italy had joined with them as well at the time, as an ally." He waved a hand at the map of Europe behind him. "Germany took more of Czechoslovakia. Again, the Allies did nothing. That was very discouraging. Really."

He took a breath. "September 1st, 1939," he said, "Germany invaded the neighbouring country of Poland. Some of the Allies declared war. By the time they actually acted, though, the Germans owned half of Poland, and the other chunk had been snagged by Russia just to make sure the Germans wouldn't come knocking on their door. It wasn't until April 1940 that the Allies acted for the first time, and by then it was too late: Germany had already taken the Netherlands, Belgium and, soon after, France."

He gestured at the map again. The image had changed. "What happened?" he asked. "How did it manage to happen?" He shook his head. "Nazi propaganda is still prevalent even in our time," he continued, "Idiots raging around blaming it all on anyone who doesn't have the right hair colour. Back in those days, it energized millions and led to the conquest of Europe. How does that happen? If you were one of the Allies, when would you have acted?" Beat. "No, I don't want you to discuss that. Today, we're putting it into a more visual medium."

[[ and up! ]]

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Expansionistically!

Hurley Reyes

Chloe Saunders

Yamanaka Ino

Dinah Lance

Kate Gregson ~~with a random attack of cleavage that's totes expansionistic~~

Edited 2009-10-27 15:33 (UTC)

Leda ~~This is her 'secretly plotting to annex Pland' face~~

Jenny Sparks

Jon O'Neill

Jaina Solo

Blah blah blah...

Chloe was taking notes, her face grim as she listened.

Ino? Had her tinted shades (yes, shut up, they were pink ones--they were the only ones she owned, geez) firmly on and was sitting at her desk radiating misery and sooo not really listening to the lecture.

Though, if pushed, she'd probably be able to parrot it back with tone and inflection. Listening wasn't the same as hearing, after all.

Kate's notes were mostly along the lines of The world was full of FAIL. But she was listening, and understanding, and taking notes.

Mitchell has set out several boxes of the board game in question. Mod your units, handwave as you see fit, Allies vs Axis is a go-- play through the first stages of the war in your own fashion. Yes, that means starting with the militarization of the Rhineland.

Hurley looked at the pieces of the game.

"...dude, this is a lot of little blocks."

"How's this game work anyway?" Leda asked, trying to figure out the directions.

Once she pings in!

Dinah was half asleep. Except for the part where she really didn't want to do that at all, and was twitching back awake every few minutes.

He's still sitting on top of that sofa.

"So. Accepting what we can't control," Kate told Mitchell, walking over to the sofa after the class ended. "That was what we were supposed to learn, last week."

Half of this was just Kate wanting to check in with him after being so rattled last week. The other half was wanting to study his face for his reaction when she told him. To see whether he thought it made sense.

She wasn't sure whether she thought so.

"That's stupid," was Mitchell's highly intellectual verdict. His face? Dubious. ~~See the icon.~~

Kate seemed a little relieved by that. "Well, yeah," she agreed. "I mean, I kinda get the lesson, but..." She shrugged one shoulder; she couldn't say she agreed with the way it was being taught, no.

"It's not a lesson if it's done without your consent," Mitchell pointed out, still looking dubious. "I'm surprised it wasn't taken to the principal."

"Maybe no one else took it as bad as me," Kate replied, shrugging again. "I don't know, I haven't talked about this with anyone who was actually in the class."

And she'd been too preoccupied with her panic to notice Jack had refused to drink the tea and walked out

"You should think about doing it," he said, "You might have a case in this, you know."

"I tried something like that, once. It didn't work out so well," she said, and rolled her eyes at a memory. It hadn't been exactly the same kind of thing, and she knew that. She shook her head. "I don't know, it's kinda complicated, you know?"

No, Kate, he doesn't.

"...What did you try?"

Mitchell was just trying to keep up, here.

Kate had a bad habit of distracting herself from the uncomfortable thing at hand by bringing up previous uncomfortable things.

"Standing up for my rights in front of administrative authority people," she said.

Mitchell's eyebrow went up. "You know my next question is going to be 'for what', right?"

"Sexual harassment in the workplace." She'd dragged herself down this path of conversation, so she was going to be truthful about it.

He paused. "You got sexually harassed?" he asked, with a disbelieving laugh. "Really?"

"It's complicated," she replied. 'Complicated' was something close to an understatement, here. "But basically, yes."

On vacaaation. I nearly forgot about this. And you have no idea how much time it took for me to wrangle my computer into posting this.

World Wars in the Media, Tuesday

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OOC