ABOVE CLASS OPEN TO UNDERGRADUATES ONLY
Need study skills help?  Then contact the Student Academic Center
(855-7313) for on-line authorization for EDUC-X101 (Learning
Strategies for History, two additional credits) that will be offered
2:30 MW or 4:00 MW.

In the first half of the 20th Century, Europe witnessed an
unprecedented explosion of violence.  For one thing this was
the “age of total war”.  Two total wars took the lives of tens of
millions of European citizens, not just combatants but increasingly
casualties on the home front.  But it was also the “age of
extremes”.  There were bloody episodes of ethnic cleansing before
and after the First World War, violent revolutions in the post-WW1
period, and state-sanctioned purges costing the lives of millions of
Germans, Soviets and East Europeans in the 1930s and 1940s. This
course seeks to understand the violence. It asks about causes and
interrelationships – what was the relationship between international
war and civil wars, between total war and political extremes?  It
asks about participation – what was involved in turning citizens
into soldiers and killers, and turning whole societies into the
workshops and breeding grounds for war?  And it asks about effects –
why did interwar society prove such fertile ground for violent
ideologies and renewed total war, and why did the post-1945 period
prove, by and large, so much more peacable?

Readings will be from a text book and some articles and documents on
e-reserve.  The course will explore the difference between primary
sources and secondary materials.  Some documentaries and films will
also be part of the course materials.  Students’ learning will be
evaluated through essay exams and in-class written exercises.