David Brion Davis - Becoming A Historian

Becoming A Historian

Instrumental in Davis’s decision to become a historian were his experiences during the post-war occupation of Germany. There he encountered many of the issues involving moral evil and racism that would dominate his later scholarship. Among his most vivid memories was his capture in Mannheim of a Polish guard who had raped a 6-year-old German girl, transmitting gonorrhea to her during the attack.

Several incidents involving racial conflict stood out in his contemporary letters and memory. On a troopship bound for Germany, he was given a billy club and told to make sure that the black troops aboard the ship “weren’t gambling.” Until then, he had not realized that there were some 2,000 black soldiers below deck; the sight struck him as resembling the hold of a slave ship. He subsequently witnessed an armed confrontation between black and white U.S. troops outside a GI club. As he later wrote, the early years of the US occupation of Germany served as “a microcosm of the racial and civil rights struggles that would dominate America in the 1950s and 1960s,” giving African American troops a racial freedom that they had never experienced at home while laying bare the “semi-fascist racism” of many white officers and enlisted men.

In a letter to his parents, dated October 9, 1946 and postmarked Stuttgart, he first expressed his interest in history:

I've been thinking over the idea of majoring in history, continuing into post-graduate research, and finally teaching, in college, of course, and have come to some conclusions which may not be original, but are new as far as I'm concerned. It strikes me that history, and proper methods of teaching it, are even more important at present than endocrinology and nuclear fission. I believe that the problems that surround us today are not to be blamed on individuals or even groups of individuals, but on the human race as a whole, its collective lack of perspective and knowledge of itself. That is where history comes in.

There has been a lot of hokum concerning psychoanalysis, but I think the basic principle of probing into the past, especially the hidden and subconscious past, for truths which govern and influence present actions, is fairly sound. Teaching history, I think, should be a similar process. An unearthing of truths long buried beneath superficial facts and propaganda; a presentation of perspective and an overall, comprehensive view of what people did and thought and why they did it. When we think back into our childhood, it doesn't do much good to merely hit the high spots and remember what we want to remember--to know why we act the way we do, we have to remember everything. In the same way it doesn't help much to teach history as a series of wars and dates and figures, the good always fighting the bad, the bad usually losing. Modern history especially, should be shown from every angle. The entire atmosphere and color should be shown, as well as how public opinion stood, and what influenced it.

Perhaps such teaching could make us understand ourselves. It would show the present conflicts to be as silly as they are. And above all, it would make people stop and think before blindly following some bigoted group to make the world safe for Aryans or Democrats or Mississippians.