History 671, Spring 2006



History 6400, Fall 2021

Graduate Readings Seminar in the Global History of World War Two

Paul Harvey

Email: pharvey@uccs.edu. Ext.: 4078. Office hours Tuesday 2 – 4, Columbine 2055

EXPLORE QUESTION KNOW

Course Description and Aims

This is a graduate-level readings seminar in the history of the origins, course, and aftermath of the Second World War, considered as a global phenomenon. This course is intended to introduce you to a global way of thinking about World War II. The topics that you usually think of regarding World War II will be covered – the war in Europe and the Pacific Theater, the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, and so on – but you will also engage in serious study of parts of the war that you may know little or nothing about, most especially the war as it affected South Asia and East Asia. Students will thus be challenged to explore a “familiar” event in unfamiliar contexts. Ultimately, the object is to know World War II in a global way, and to prepare yourself for a research project on the subject in the semester following this one.

Class Attendance and Participation

All students will be expected to participate in classroom discussion weekly and vocally. Class attendance is absolutely mandatory except in case of significant illness; class “skips” will result in grade penalty, and after more than two you will need to drop the class or receive a failing grade. If you have a work conflict with this class, resolve that conflict out now.

Class Assignments and Grading Policy

Class Attendance, Participation, Discussion Leadership, Short Analyses,

Teaching Exercise, biweekly discussion posts, and footnote exercise 50%

Think Piece Essay 20%

Final Paper 30%

REQUIRED BOOKS

Evan Madwsley, World War Two: A New History

Frans Coetzee, A World in Flames: A World War II Sourcebook

Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II

Jochen Hellbeck, Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich

Yasmin Khan, India at War: The Subcontinent and the Second World War

Nicholas Stargaardt, The German War

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food

Haruko Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History

Michael Neiberg, Potsdam

REQUIRED PRIMARY SOURCES, ARTICLES, AND BLOG POSTS

All available as pdfs or links on the Canvas course page

***Iris Chang, “Six Weeks of Horror,” chapter 4 of The Rape of Nanking, pdf available on Canvas

***Richard Bessel, “Death and Survival in the Second World War,” and Jochen Hellbeck, “Battle for Morale: An Entangled History of Total War in Europe,” from The Cambridge History of the Second World War, vol. III, 252-277 and 329-363.

***“America and the Holocaust,” U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,

***Lucy Noakes, “Popular Memory, Popular Culture: The War in the post-war World,” and Jie-Hyun Lim, “The Second World War in Global Memory Space,” from The Cambridge History of the Second World War, vol. III, 675-724.

“The Fallen of World War Two,”

FILMS AND RECORDED LECTURES: Available on Canvas

***Paper Presentations by scholars Weinberg, Stoler, and Hitchcock at , start at 6:00.

***Richard Frank, “China in World War II: New Perspectives,”

***”Symposium on Myths of World War Two,”

***Conversation with Rana Mitter about China and Japan during the war, at

***Lecture by Anthony Beevor on “The Soviet Role in World War Two,”

***Reina Pennington, “Wings, Women, and War: Soviet Airwomen During World War Two,” lecture at U.S. Army War College,

***Lecture by Timothy Snyder at , start at 11:30

***Lecture by Michael Neiberg, on the Potsdam Conference. , start at 6:00.

***Lecture by Christopher Browning, Hitler and the Decision for the Final Solution. OR Christopher Browning, “Ordinary “Men as Perpetrators of the Holocaust,”

**BBC 6-part documentary series “Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution,” available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and also available through our library (details to be given in class). Note – on Netflix, you can find it at .

***Lecture by Lizzie Collingham, “Food as a Weapon of War” - -

***Lecture by Yasmin Khan, “The Raj at War,”

***Eiko Siniawar, “World War Two in Japanese Memory,”

***”Colorado Experience: Amache,”

SCHEDULE

Aug 24 Introduction: World War Two: Reflections and Interpretations of the Inferno

Read: Bessel, “Death and Survival in the Second World War,” and WIF, Chapter 1

Watch: “The Fallen of World War Two,”

Watch: this symposium from 3 historians about WW II:

Aug. 31 World War Two: A Short History

Read: Mawdsley, Chapters 1-9, and WIF, chapter 2-3

Watch: “Myths of World War Two”

WDQ: In the text (so far) and videos, what ideas have you seen confirmed, and what overturned, about World War Two?

Sept. 14 China and World War Two

Read: Mawdsley, 9 – 12 and WIF, Chapter 8

Read Mitter, Forgotten Ally (1st half); chapter from Iris Chang on Canvas

Watch: Richard Frank, “China’s in World War II: New Perspectives,”

Watch: Rana Mitter at

WDQ: When and where did World War II begin, and what is the basis of your argument? How important was China as a factor in the war?

Sept. 21 China, Japan, and World War Two in the East

Read: Mitter, Forgotten Ally, all and WIF, Chapter 5

Watch: “Colorado Experience: Amache,”

WDQ: how would you compare American attitudes towards the Japanese, Chinese, and Soviets?

Sept. 28 Germany at War

Read: Stargaardt, all

Read: WIF, Chapter 6

Watch: Lecture by Timothy Snyder, (start at 11:00)

WDQ: Discuss: “Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was the defining event of the war” (a quotation taken from Ian Hastings, Inferno).

Oct. 5th The Soviets in the War

Read, Hellbeck, Stalingrad. 1-203, 222-291, 331-356, 399-430.

Watch Reina Pennington, “Wings, Women, and War,”

Watch: Beevor, “The Soviet Role in World War Two,”



WDQ: To what degree was air power an important factor in combatting German power? In combatting Japanese power? How did the Soviets defeat the German advance? The Holocaust

Oct. 12th War and Genocide, Part I

Read: Bergren, War and Genocide, all

Watch: one of two lectures by Christopher Browning from youtube lecture list.

WDQ: What is the best way to understand the Holocaust within the more general story of mass deaths and genocide during World War Two?

Oct. 19th Read: Bergren, War and Genocide, all, and WIF, Chapters 9 - 11

Watch: BBC Series “Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution

Scroll Through: the website “America and the Holocaust,”

WDQ: What is the best way to understand the Holocaust within the more general story of mass deaths and genocide during World War Two?

Oct. 26th Food and World War Two.

Read: Collingham, The Taste of War, all, and WIF, Chapter 4

Watch: “Food as a Weapon of War,”

WDQ: was World War Two ultimately a struggle over food resources?

Nov. 2 India and the War.

Read: Jasmin Khan, India at War, all.

Watch: “The Raj at War,” public lecture,

WDQ: how did World War Two affect the British Empire?

Nov. 9 Japan at War.

Read, Japan at War, and WIF, Chapter 7

Watch: Siniawar, “WWII in Japanese Memory”

WDQ: how may we best use the oral histories collected in this volume to interpret Japanese society during World War Two?

oHowH

Nov. 16 Potsdam

Read, Neiberg, all

Watch: David Reynolds, Roskill Lecture on the Yalta Conference, delivered at Cambridge, Feb. 2020.

How would you assess the impact of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, historically?

Nov. 23 Free day for writing. Classtime: discussion of your papers

Due: Paper on the historiography of World War II

Nov. 30 The Bomb and the Post-War World

Read: WIF, Chapter 12, and

Lucy Noakes, “Popular Memory, Popular Culture: The War in the post-war World”

Jie-Hyun Lim, “The Second World War in Global Memory Space,” from The Cambridge History of the Second World War, vol. III, 675-724.

WDQ: how may we best present the historical complexity of the issue of the role of the bomb in the end of the war to a public that is resistant to encountering historical complexity?

Dec. 7th Wrap-up and Conclusions

Discussion Leadership and Writing Assignments

1) Each student should be prepared each week to provide a cogent, 2 or 3 minute oral answer to the question posed for the week in the syllabus. Every other week, from Sept. 14th to Nov. 16th, you will bring and turn in either via Canvas or in hard copy a 2 - 3 page single-spaced response to the question, which employs the reading and uses quotations from the reading in answer to the question. On the alternate weeks you are not doing this response, I will ask you to bring in a short (one-page) description and analysis of a primary document from WIF; I will assign those documents to you individually.

2) You should be prepared to take the role of discussion leader for one week of the semester. When your week comes to be a discussion leader, I would expect your student team to come prepared with a short (1 p.) list of discussion questions which you will use to guide the class as a whole through the discussion of the work. Please be ready to submit those questions ahead of time.

3) I will ask each student to “lead” a sample undergraduate class for 20-25 minutes once during the semester, showing us how you would lead a group of less advanced students through the material we are discussing. This could involve a mini-lecture, some kind of presentation, a special “group exercise” kind of thing, or whatever other pedagogical tools that come to mind. You will do this on some evening other than the one where you are the class discussion leader. Early in the semester you will “sign up” for your week to lead us in your teaching exercise. (This is an oral exercise – nothing written required).

4) “Think piece” essay on China, India, and Japan, 5-7 pp., details to come later. Due Nov. 23rd.

7) One “follow the footnote” primary source exercise: Find one of the primary sources used by one of our authors in her/his footnotes, reading over that source, and then comparing that source to the analysis the author gives to the source. Note: your “source” can be not just written documents, but also audio or visual material. Again, 2-3 pages, and focus here on how the author employs the source in his/her analysis; what choices the author makes in using that source; and how else that source might be interpreted. Due on any week of the semester when we are discussing a book. I will ask everyone to present their “follow the footnote exercise to the class.

8) Final Paper: a combination of a historiographical analysis together with a few pages projecting a research paper to come next semester. 8 – 10 pp. Details forthcoming.

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