3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This course focuses on three major areas: the reasons for the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazi party; the mechanics of the operation of a totalitarian regime as well as various aspects of life in Nazi Germany; and the Holocaust including the fates of Europe’s Jewish populations and other groups such as homosexuals targeted by the Nazi regime. These topics will necessitate the study of various sources – histories of this era, documents, memoirs, personal accounts, literature and films. The course looks at perpetrators, bystanders and victims in an attempt to grapple with one of the most written about and mystifying periods of the 20th century. The period still resonates today both in terms of its horror and its revelations about genocide, a new word coined in the late stages of WWII in an attempt to describe such unfathomable acts. By necessity, the study of these topics includes a consideration of political, social, economic and cultural history as well as ethics and the role of memory in shaping and commemorating events and traumas on this scale.