Aufgabe NT 2 · Abitur NRW Geschichte GK · Nachtermin · bilingual Englisch 2022

Abiturprüfung 2022 – Geschichte bilingual-englisch, Grundkurs

Aufgabe NT 2

Materialgrundlage & Hinweise zum Autor:

Henry R. Luce: The American Century. In: Life, 17. Februar 1941, S. 61 – 65.

(Rechtschreibung und Hervorhebungen wie im Original)

Henry Luce (1898 – 1967): American magazine publisher who built a publishing empire on Time, Fortune, and Life magazines, becoming one of the most powerful figures in the history of American journalism. He founded his publications as a means of educating what he considered a poorly informed American public.

Life: American, wide-ranging general-interest magazine, being especially popular in the 1930s and 40s, it circulated 4 million copies a week.

[...]

1 Where are we? We are in the war. All this talk about whether this or that might or might

not get us into the war is wasted effort. We are, for a fact, in the war.

If there’s one place we Americans did not want to be, it was in the war. We didn’t want

much to be in any kind of war but, if there was one kind of war we most of all didn’t want

5 to be in, it was a European war. Yet, we’re in a war, as vicious and bad a war as ever struck

this planet, and, along with being worldwide, a European war.

Of course, we are not technically at war, we are not painfully at war, and we may never

have to experience the full hell that war can be. Nevertheless the simple statement stands:

we are in the war. The irony is that Hitler knows it – and most Americans don’t. It may or

10 may not be an advantage to continue diplomatic relations with Germany. But the fact that a

German embassy still flourishes in Washington beautifully illustrates the whole mass of

deceits and self-deceits in which we have been living.

[...]

Now that we are in this war, how did we get in? We got in on the basis of defense. Even

15 that very word, defense, has been full of deceit and self-deceit.

To the average American the plain meaning of the word defense is defense of American

territory. Is our national policy today limited to the defense of the American homeland by

whatever means may seem wise? It is not. We are not in a war to defend American territory.

We are in a war to defend and even to promote, encourage and incite so-called democratic

20 principles throughout the world. The average American begins to realize now that that’s the

kind of war he’s in. And he’s halfway for it. But he wonders how he ever got there, since a

year ago he had not the slightest intention of getting into any such thing. Well, he can see

now how he got there. He got there via “defense.”

[...]

25 Almost every expert will agree that Britain cannot win complete victory – cannot even, in

the common saying, “stop Hitler” – without American help. Therefore, even if Britain should

from time to time announce war aims, the American people are continually in the position

of effectively approving or not approving those aims. On the contrary, if America were to

announce war aims, Great Britain would almost certainly accept them. And the entire world

30 including Adolf Hitler would accept them as the gauge of this battle.

Americans have a feeling that in any collaboration with Great Britain we are somehow

playing Britain’s game and not our own. Whatever sense there may have been in this notion

in the past, today it is an ignorant and foolish conception of the situation. In any sort of

partnership with the British Empire, Great Britain is perfectly willing that the United States

35 of America should assume the role of senior partner. This has been true for a long time.

Among serious Englishmen, the chief complaint against America (and incidentally their best

alibi for themselves) has really amounted to this – that America has refused to rise to the

opportunities of leadership in the world.

[...]

40 The big, important point to be made here is simply that the complete opportunity of

leadership is ours. Like most great creative opportunities, it is an opportunity enveloped in

stupendous difficulties and dangers. If we don’t want it, if we refuse to take it, the responsibility

of refusal is also ours, and ours alone.

[...]

45 In 1919 we had a golden opportunity, an opportunity unprecedented in all history, to assume

the leadership of the world – a golden opportunity handed to us on the proverbial silver platter.

We did not understand that opportunity. Wilson mishandled it. We rejected it. The opportunity

persisted. We bungled it in the 1920’s and in the confusions of the 1930’s we killed it.

To lead the world would never have been an easy task. To revive the hope of that lost

50 opportunity makes the task now infinitely harder than it would have been before. Nevertheless,

with the help of all of us, Roosevelt must succeed where Wilson failed.

[...]

Throughout the 17th Century and the 18th Century and the 19th Century, this continent

teemed with manifold projects and magnificent purposes. Above them all and weaving them

55 all together into the most exciting flag of all the world and of all history was the triumphal

purpose of freedom.

It is in this spirit that all of us are called, each to his own measure of capacity, and each

in the widest horizon of his vision, to create the first Great American Century.

1.

Analyse the source. [26 Punkte]

2.

Put the source into the context of US foreign policy regarding Europe since World War I [14 Punkte] and examine the author's argumentation concerning the international role of the USA [14 Punkte]. [28 Punkte]

3.

Take a critical stand on the views the author holds about the USA's role in international affairs. [26 Punkte]