Global History of the Second World War - Einzelansicht

Our world today is what it is in large part because of World War II. The seminar will give students the opportunity to evolve their knowledge of this seminal and transformative conflict. While addressing key battles and war theaters, as well as the Holocaust as the horrific „defining moment” of the concept of genocide, a prevalence will be given to the social history of the war: the immensity and diversity of how the war affected people's lives, civilians' and soldiers' alike. History-writing on World War II has often been shaped by particular countries’ roles and experiences in it. A global approach permits to put in perspective the controversies about how to interpret it. After all, the legacies of the war often guide policy decisions even today, and catastrophically so, as was compellingly visible in the wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and is presently horrifically observable as one motif behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Anna Wylegala, Sabine Rutar, Malgorzata Lukianow (eds), No Neighbors Lands in Postwar Europe. Vanishing Others (Cham: Springer Palgrave, 2023).

Michael J. Lyons, David J. Ulbrich, World War II. A Global History, 6th edition (New York: Routledge, 2021)

Evan Mawdsley, World War II. A New History, 2nd revised edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction. The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (New York: Penguin, 2006)

David M. Crowe, War Crimes, Genocide, and Justice. A Global History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Requirements: in-class presentation (30 minutes); seminar paper of approximately 45,000 characters.