2010-2011 Academic Catalog

May 05, 2024

2010-2011 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

HIST 143 - War and Peace: Central Europe, 1914-2003

Type of Course: Lecture, Discussion

The “heart of Europe” is often seen as crucial to the fate of Europe. This is true for the recent process of European unification and even more for the period of mass violence and genocide, which shaped Europe’s history in the first half of the 20th century. This course will trace the outbreak of the First World War and the impact it had on the political and social landscape of Central Europe. Special attention will be paid to the historical reasons and the political problems of the changing borders and borderlands of nations like Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The course then explores the paradoxes of the “Age of Extremes” (E. Hobsbawm): the rise of a modern mass culture and the radicalization of mass violence during the first half of the century, the collapse of fragile democracies in the 1930s, the stabilization of the Nazi regime, the organization of the Holocaust, and the consequences of the war of extermination in Central Europe. The course will conclude with an evaluation of the reunification of Germany and the future perspectives of Central Europe as a center part of the European Union.

Cross Listed: HGS 143

Instructor: Mr. Kuehne

When Offered: Offered biannually

Faculty: Thomas Kuehne, Ph.D. Professor of History; Strassler Family Chair in the Study of Holocaust History