History 117 - Fall 2008 - Buffalo State College - Europe in the Twentieth Century

Sorry, I had the stomach flu over Thanksgiving Break and didn't finish the final examination until today. You can find it here and it is posted under the last week's information on the syllabus.

November 25, 2008

I am still working on the final exam. I want to draw up next week's lecture to make sure terms from that week will be on the exam.

ALSO - VERY IMPORTANT

For reasons unknown to me, Buffalo State has suspended my e-mail account. If you need to get in contact with me use my personal e-mail account.

October 26, 2008

Quizzes this week. The assignment for The Magic Lantern will be out next week and final exam questions will be ready by the week of Thanksgiving Break.

Several students asked about other books about the Holocaust and Nazism. Most of the books are quite long, but are worth mentioning to get some of you started if you ever find yourself writing a paper some day. This is not a definitive list.

The book that takes issue with Browning is Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. Goldhagen comes to the conclusion that Germans were practically genetically predisposed to anti-Semitism and that Hitler simply gave free reign to what most Germans trully wanted. Goldhagen's arguments are dissected in the conclusion of your book.

A good introduction to Holocaust studies, and one which I've used in a Holocaust course is Lessons and Legacies edited by Peter Hayes. It contains essays by most of the leading Holocaust scholars.

Other, larger monographs are out there for the serious reader. Probably the definitive work would be Saul Friedländer's two volume collection Nazi Germany and the Jews. Yehuda Bauer's volume on the Holocaust is also quite good. Similarly, Ian Kershaw's two volume bibliography of Hitler sets the current standard for those wanting to know more about the person behind it all.

Michael Burleigh's The Third Reich - A New History offers a good overview of Nazism and roughly operates on the notion that Nazism was akin to a kind of religous movement. Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman's The Racial State offers an excellent view of race and racial policy.

Many students are interested in stories of survival and persecution. Among the best known are Night by Elie Wiesel, Survival at Auschwitz by Primo Levi, Maus by Art Speigelman, and The Diary of Anne Frank. Also of interest might be I Will Bear Witness by Viktor Klemperer and The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has a good bibliography at:
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394677

The United States Holocaust Museum also has one at:
http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/bibliography/

October 7, 2008

Reminder that there are split sections tonight and Thursday.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The baby (Vera Lucinda) was born this afternoon and both the mother and child appear healthy and strong. Therefore, there will be class Thursday night.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

No baby yet, but stay tuned. We're a week overdue, so an induction is likely sometime this week. I will use this space if possible to inform the class. If I am not to class within fifteen minutes of starting time, you can assume class is cancelled.

Fixed link to the Wannsee Conference transcript.

Also, study notes for the quiz next week are up and I will have the questions and study guide for Ordinary Men up by Tuesday. Notes for the first half of the book are already posted.

We will be studying the economic collapse in Europe in a couple weeks, which was linked to the American collapse of stock and real estate markets in the late 1920s. Given the news over the weekend, it might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with current events considering that as of late Sunday night, this week may prove historic in terms of global economic history.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Fixed link to Word document of syllabus.
Fixed slides so students can view them.

Also, a couple students have asked about additional reading about some of the areas covered. I talked about Nietzsche during the last lecture and you all probably shouldn't run out and read all of his material because it will involve a lot of time and it will leave you, as it has most scholars even, a bit confused.

An excellent place to get a good overview of Nietzsche, and one I used while preparing the lecture is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which gives an excellent, concise summary of his ideas.

Another good idea is that I ought to reference my lectures. Just like students writing essays, none of what I discuss is wholly my idea and is a synthesis of other readings.

Other books I read and sourced for the lecture included (but aren't limited to):

On Modernism:

Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and The Descent of Man

Barbara Jelavich, Modern Austria

ThomasMann, Observations of an Unpolitical Man and Buddenbrooks

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra and, of course the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Schorske, Carl Fin de Ciecle Vienna

Wagner, Richard Ring of the Niebelungs

On Imperialism

Charles Spence, The Search for Modern China

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghosts

Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Emprie

September 2, 2008

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