Spring 2010

REE 335 • World War II in Eastern Europe-W

Course Description

In Eastern Europe, the Second World War was, as the Czech Jewish woman Heda Margolius-Kovaly remarked, "a war no one had quite survived." Wedged between Hitler's Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Empire, Eastern Europe was the site of unprecedented human and material destruction in the years between 1938 and 1948. As the staging ground for Hitler’s vision for a new racial order in Europe, the region was devastated by genocide and ethnic cleansing, programs of economic and social exploitation, and warfare. Using a wide variety of sources, this course will examine the war in Eastern Europe with a particular emphasis on occupation, collaboration, and resistance; the Holocaust; and the connection between ethnic cleansing, population transfer, and the establishment of Communism in postwar Eastern Europe

Grading Policy

Participation 25% Book Response (3 pages/750 words) 15% Document Analysis (3 pages/750 words) 15% Research Paper (10 pages/2500 words) 30% Final Exam 15%

Texts

Lee Baker, The Second World War on the Eastern Front Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Jan T. Gross, Neighbors Heda Kovaly Margolius, Under a Cruel Star Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans.

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