 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(April 2024) |
Alan Morris Cedric Strauss-Schom (born 9 May 1937 [lower-alpha 1] in Sterling, Illinois), known as Alan Schom [lower-alpha 2] and legally Alan Strauss-Schom is an American historian and biographer. Specialising in French History, his work on Napoleon, subject to controversy among academics, saw him receive Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations. [2]
Alan Morris Cedric Strauss-Schom, also known as Alan Schom was born in Sterling, Illinois, on May 9, 1937. His father Irving (died 1983). [3] His mother was Matilde, née Strauss Stoler. He had one sister, Faith Sharon Schom, was a psychologist, who died in 2002. [3] [4] He was married in London in 1963 to Juliana Leslie Cotton Hill. They divorced in 1984.[ citation needed ]
He attended Beverly Hills High School and received his A.B. in French/ European History from University of California, Berkeley in 1965. [5] He continued his education at the School of Oriental Studies, Durham University, where he completed his doctoral research (including one year course in Arabic, where he was a member of the Hatfield College Middle Common Room and completed his PhD on the French soldier and administrator Hubert Lyautey, entitled A study of Marshal Lyautey's Protectorate administration of Morocco, 1912-1925, in relation to the administration of the country, in 1968. [6] [lower-alpha 3] ). [7]
Schom taught French and Modern European History at Southern Connecticut State University and at the University of California, Riverside. [5] He served as the President and Founder of the French Colonial Historical Society (1974–76), and founded its research journal, French Colonial Studies. In 1977 he left academia to become a full-time writer and speaker. [5]
In 1997 Schom prepared the first of two reports for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles on the policies of the Swiss Government toward Jewish refugees during World War II that revealed the presence of up to 80 forced labor camps reserved for Jewish refugees. The reports – actually prepared by Schom and his research assistant], but authored by Schom only – were criticised by a Swiss diplomat in the United States, Thomas G. Borer, who accused Schom of 'shoddy scholarship' in a letter sent to the Los Angeles Times, a completely fraudulent accusation in order to protect his country's historical interests at a time when the Swiss Government was being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars for looted Jewish funds. [8] [9] In Switzerland itself reaction was also highly negative, with President Flavio Cotti denouncing the conclusions of the reports, denying the presence of camps, etc.<ref. Dr A M C Strauss-Schom>. [10]
Amid the controversy, Simon Wiesenthal expressed displeasure at the publication of these articles, because he was very ill, and after a lifetime of chasing Nazis, was simply worn out, and was no longer strong enough to face another major campaign. Dr Strauss-Schom and Wiesenthal communicated and his situation was discussed. (His wife was also very ill at that time). [11] [12] Schom, for his part, defended the contents of the reports when challenged by reporters at a press conferences in Los Angeles, New York and Paris. Schom presented official copies of the Swiss government documents (found in the Swiss National Archives) in which the highest government officials, in secret meetings held in the office of the Swiss Minister of Justice and Police, Bern. declared their intention to exclude Jewish refugees, an even suppress Jewish schools in Switzerland. President Flavio Cotti attempted to have these documents suppressed, but Dr Strauss-Schom was able to find and publish them first.<ref. Strauss-Schom>
Schom has been highly critical of Napoleon. His 1997 900 page biography, Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life, was the first complete revision of Bonaparte's life and career. This the result of a ten-year period of research in the French archives, reveals Napoleon's destructive personality to friends and subjected country, his love of conquest, subjugation and power. He literally held every country in Western and central Europe captive, ensured by the presence of French bayonets, their taxes going to Paris. Napoleon's attempt to exclude Britain from Europe resulted in the destruction of that continent's commerce and economy, resulting in great hardship. A paranoid egotist, everything he did was for himself. His wars resulted in the deaths of one million Frenchmen—excluding those his enemies. Many tens of thousands of women and girls were raped by his troops as they marched through Europe over a period of 15 years. Schom "even casts doubt on Napoleon's military genius", even though, he is widely considered to be one. [13] Napoleon was in the final analysis, a terrorist, the worst in European history until the arrival of Hitler and Stalin. He did bring order to France, including new law codes. (He introduced the concept followed to this day, that anyone accused by the police was and is automatically guilty. If is for the accused to prove his innocence. [14]
Schom also thinks, contrary to all serious historians such as Thierry Lentz (Fondation Napoléon), [15] Jean Tulard (Sorbonne and the Institut de France), Patrice Gueniffey, Sir Andrew Roberts, David A. Bell (Princeton), that Napoleon was poisoned on Saint-Helena. [16]
The work saw Schom accused in some quarters of failing to present an objective view of Napoleon's career. His book was listed at the second place in the Los Angeles Times Annual National Book award in 1997 in the field of biography. [17] Schom's history of the first two years of World War II, The Eagle and the Rising Sun: The Japanese-American War, 1941-1943: Pearl Harbor through Guadalcanal [18] has received the highest acclaim from senior military officers, including former First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Henry Leach (Falkland's War). [19]
As Alan Schom
As Alan Schom
As Alan Strauss-Schom
Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was a younger brother of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. He was a monarch in his own right from 1806 to 1810, ruling over the Kingdom of Holland. In that capacity, he was known as Louis I.
Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte was the youngest brother of Napoleon I and reigned as Jerome Napoleon I, King of Westphalia, between 1807 and 1813.
Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte was a French statesman, lawyer, diplomat and older brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. During the Napoleonic Wars, the latter made him King of Naples (1806–1808), and then King of Spain (1808–1813). After the fall of Napoleon, Joseph styled himself Comte de Survilliers and emigrated to the United States, where he settled near Bordentown, New Jersey, on an estate overlooking the Delaware River not far from Philadelphia.
Lucien Bonaparte, 1st Prince of Canino and Musignano, was a French politician and diplomat of the French Revolution and the Consulate. He served as Minister of the Interior from 1799 to 1800 and as the president of the Council of Five Hundred in 1799.
Napoleon III was the first president of France from 1848 to 1852, and the last monarch of France as the second Emperor of the French from 1852 until he was deposed on 4 September 1870.
Napoleon Bonaparte, later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military officer and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led a series of successful campaigns across Europe during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars from 1796 to 1815. He was the leader of the French Republic as First Consul from 1799 to 1804, then of the French Empire as Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1814, and briefly again in 1815.
Jean-Charles Pichegru was a French general of the Revolutionary Wars. Under his command, French troops overran Belgium and the Netherlands before fighting on the Rhine front. His royalist positions led to his loss of power and imprisonment in Cayenne, French Guiana during the Coup of 18 Fructidor in 1797. After escaping into exile in London and joining the staff of Alexander Korsakov, he returned to France and planned the Pichegru Conspiracy to remove Napoleon from power, which led to his arrest and death. Despite his defection, his surname is one of the names inscribed under the Arc de Triomphe, on Column 3.
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of sweeping military conflicts resulting from the French Revolution that lasted from 1792 until 1802. They pitted France against Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and several other countries. The wars are divided into two periods: the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension. After a decade of constant warfare and aggressive diplomacy, France had conquered territories in the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries, and the Rhineland due to its very large and powerful military, which had been totally mobilized for war against most of Europe with mass conscription of the vast French population. French success in these conflicts ensured military occupation and the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe.
Joachim Murat was a French military commander and statesman who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. Under the French Empire he received the military titles of Marshal of the Empire and Admiral of France. He was the first Prince Murat, Grand Duke of Berg from 1806 to 1808, and King of Naples as Joachim-Napoleon from 1808 to 1815.
The Battle of Arcole or Battle of Arcola was fought between French and Austrian forces 25 kilometres (16 mi) southeast of Verona during the War of the First Coalition, a part of the French Revolutionary Wars. The battle saw a bold maneuver by Napoleon Bonaparte's French Army of Italy to outflank the Austrian army led by József Alvinczi and cut off its line of retreat. The French victory proved to be a highly significant event during the third Austrian attempt to lift the siege of Mantua. Alvinczi planned to execute a two-pronged offensive against Bonaparte's army. The Austrian commander ordered Paul Davidovich to advance south along the Adige River valley with one corps while Alvinczi led the main army in an advance from the east. The Austrians hoped to raise the siege of Mantua where Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser was trapped with a large garrison. If the two Austrian columns linked up and if Wurmser's troops were released, French prospects were grim.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance education, defending Israel, and its Museum of Tolerance.
Charles Tristan, Marquis de Montholon was a French general during the Napoleonic Wars. He chose to go into exile on Saint Helena with the ex-emperor after Napoleon's second abdication.
Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture, and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration camp, the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Louis, Prince Napoléon was a member of the Bonaparte dynasty. He was the pretender to the Imperial throne of France, as Napoléon VI, from 3 May 1926 until his death on 3 May 1997.
Marvin Hier is the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, its Museum of Tolerance and of Moriah, the center's film division. He has been a Track II diplomacy contributor to the genesis of the Abraham Accords.
Arthur Fonjallaz was a Swiss military figure, publisher, and fascist.
The National Movement of Switzerland was a Nazi umbrella-group formed in Switzerland in 1940.
Maison Bonaparte is the ancestral home of the Bonaparte family. It is located on the Rue Saint-Charles in Ajaccio on the French island of Corsica. The house was almost continuously owned by members of the family from 1682 to 1923.
The Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles is a college-preparatory, Modern Orthodox Jewish high school founded in 1979 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. It has no affiliation with Yeshiva University in New York City.
Abraham Cooper is an American rabbi. He is the associate dean and director of Global Social Action Agenda for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. He is chairman emeritus of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
