HIS 350L Spring 2011
World War II in Eastern Europe
Dr Tatjana Lichtenstein Office: GAR 0.110 Office Hours: Th 5-7 pm Email: [email protected]
Class meets M 4-7 pm in GAR 1.126
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 Stalin’s terror and 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 state violence, occupation, collaboration, and resistance; the Holocaust; and the connection between ethnic cleansing, population transfer, and the establishment of Communism in postwar Eastern Europe.
Course Goals • Explore the history of World War II in Eastern Europe • Learn how to analyze primary and secondary sources • Engage the course materials through active participation in class discussion • Write analytical, thesis-driven papers based on close reading of the course materials
Please Note: The use of electronic equipment incl. laptops, net books, iPads, phones, MP3 players among others is not allowed in this class. A designated note taker will assist students with documented needs.
Course Books Alan Adelson, ed., The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Łódź Ghetto (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998) Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010) Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
Readings marked with * can be found in the course packet available at Paradigm Books, 407 W. 24th St. Austin, TX 78705 All readings and other course materials are required
1 Grading Policy Participation 25% Map Quiz 5% Document Analysis (3 pages) 10% Essay 1 Diary (3 pages) 10% Essay 2 Ordinary Men (4 pages) 15% Essay 3 Terrible Revenge (4 pages) 15% Article Project (4 pages) 20%
Grades: A through F. Plus and minus grades will be issued for this course.
Extra Credit Opportunities: You can receive extra credit by attending events on or off campus that are related to our course. I will make announcements in class about relevant events and welcome suggestions from you as well. To receive credit you need to write 1 double-spaced page in which you reflect on the exhibit, film, or lecture that you attended. Being able to make connections between your subject and our class readings and lectures is always a plus. You should hand in your piece to me in the first or second class following the event.
On Campus Events in Spring 2011 (all are opportunities for extra credit!) • The Restless Heart of Europe – a Czech Film Series at UT When: Every Tuesday @ 7 pm (begins Feb 1) -- Tentative time and place – updates will follow Where: GRG 102 (Geography Building) For the full program, see http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/slavic/
Films in this series dealing with the Holocaust and antisemitism: Feb 1 “Protector” (98 min/2009) Feb 15 “Romeo, Juliet, and Darkness” (92 min/1960) Mar 22 “A Trial in Prague” (84 min/2000) Apr 12 “The Shop on Main Street” (125 min/1965)
• “A Film Unfinished,” 2010, dir. Yael Hersonski When: Jan 25, 2011 @ 7 pm in GAR 0.102
• Pictures of Resistance: The Wartime Photography of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman When: Feb 28-Mar 28, 2011 (M-F 9 am to 9 pm) Where: At the Texas Hillel, 2105 San Antonio Street, Austin
Course Policies Students with Disabilities Any student with a documented disability who requires academic accommodations should contact Services for Students with Disabilities at 471-6259 (voice) or 1-866-329-3986 (Video Phone) as soon as possible to request an official letter outlining authorized accommodations. http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/ssd
2 It is essential that you inform Services for Students with Disabilities and me in the beginning of term so we can make appropriate accommodations.
Attendance and Participation Lectures and class discussions are a significant part of this course. Therefore, attendance and participation are required. You are expected to have done the readings before you come to class. This will be essential for your ability to participate in group work, to ask questions, and to do well on in-class assignments.
You are expected to be on time for class. If you are consistently late or leave class early, this will affect your final course grade. If you have any concerns about this, please contact me in the beginning of term.
Academic Dishonesty Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, cheating on assignments or examinations; plagiarizing, which means misrepresenting as your own work any part of work done by another; submitting the same paper, or substantially similar papers, to meet requirements of more than one course without the approval and consent of all instructors concerned; depriving another student of necessary course materials; or interfering with another student’s work. Any act of academic dishonesty will result in an F for the course and referral to Student Judicial Services.
Schedule of Classes
Week 1 Jan 24 Introduction to the Course
Introduction to the class, readings, and assignments
Snyder, Bloodlands, “Preface”
In-Class Film Excerpt: The Nazis: A Warning from History (‘The Wrong War”)
Week 2 Eastern Europe before WWII Jan 31
Snyder, “Introduction” 1-20 and “The Soviet Famines” 21-58.
*“German Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference,” in Sources of Twentieth-Century Europe, edited by Marvin Perry et al (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 81-84. ISBN 0- 395-92568-1.
*Ernst von Salomon, “Brutalization of the Individual,” in Sources of Twentieth-Century Europe, 86-87.
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*“The War Against the Church and Peasantry,” in Revolutionary Russia: A History in Documents, edited by Robert Weinberg and Laurie Bernstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 126-139. ISBN: 978-0-19-533794-5
*Miron Dolot, “Famine in Ukraine,” in Sources of Twentieth-Century Europe, 124-128.
Map Quiz
Week 3 Feb 7 German Visions for a New Racial Order – Race and Space
*David F. Crew, “The Racial State: Nazi Germany, 1933-1939,” 69-97, in Hitler and the Nazis: A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
*“The ‘Euthanasia’-programme, 1939-1945,” 389-440, in Noakes & Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3.
Adolf Hitler, “Mein Kampf,” in Sources of Twentieth-Century Europe, 164-168.
Adolf Hitler, “Poland will be depopulated and settled with Germans,” in Sources of Twentieth- Century Europe, 232-233.
Document Analysis due in class
Week 4 German-Soviet Alliance and the Beginning of WWII Feb 14
Snyder, “Molotov-Ribbentrop Europe,” 119-154.
*The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty, August 1939 * Adolf Hitler, “Poland will be depopulated and settled with Germans,” 232-233, in Sources of Twentieth-Century Europe *“The German Occupation of Poland,” 931-946, 961-974, 987-995 (Incorporated Territories, General Government, and Forced Labor) in Noakes & Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3.
Week 5 Feb 21 “Survival through Labor” – Jewish Ghettos in German-Occupied Poland
The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Łódź Ghetto,
Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak essay due in class
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Week 6 Feb 28 Operation Barbarossa and the Barbarization of Warfare
Snyder, “The Economics of Apocalypse,” 155-186, and “Final Solution,” 187-223.
*Karel C. Berkhoff, “Prisoners of War,” 89-113, in Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004)
*Commissar Order June 6, 1941 *Indoctrination of the German Soldier: For Volk, Führer, and Fatherland”
*“An Eyewitness Describes a Mass Shooting in the Soviet Union.” *Major General Walter Brun’s Description of the Execution of Jews outside Riga on Dec 1, 1941 *Affidavit of SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf
*Stalin’s Speech on 3 July 1941 *Soviet Order Concerning Discipline in the Red Army, 28 July 1942 *Ilya Ehrenburg, Excerpt from “Kill” (1942)
Week 7 Mar 7 Ordinary Men, the Holocaust, and German Warfare in the East
Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (all)
Essay due in class SPRING BREAK
Week 8 Mar 21 Death Camps
Snyder, “The Nazi Death Factories,” 253-276. *“The Extermination Camps,” 1137-1191 in Noakes & Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader. *Vasily Grossman, “Treblinka” (1944) in A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945, 280-306. *Tadeusz Borowski, This way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen, 29-49.
Week 9 Mar 28 Partisans
Snyder, “Holocaust and Revenge,” 225-252.
5 *Karel Berkhoff, “Toward the End of Nazi Rule,” 275-304, In Harvest of Despair
Read entry on “The Bielski Partisans” in the United States Holocaust Museum’s online Holocaust Encyclopedia www. ushmm.org
*Nechama Tec, Defiance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 86-148.
Watch Film: “Come and See” (1985) and optional “Defiance” (2008)
In-Class Film Excerpt: War of the Century: When Hitler Fought Stalin (Partisans in Belorussia)
Week 10 Apr 4 Warsaw 1943/1944 – a symbol of resistance
Snyder, “Resistance and Incineration,” 277-312
*Samuel D. Kassow, Who Will Write our History? Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto (New York: vintage Books, 2007), 1-8, 285-332, 342-361, 372-383.
*Radio Documentary: “Red Runs the Vistula: The Warsaw Uprising of 1944,” American Public Media/BBC (about 50 min) http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/warsaw/
Watch Film: “The Pianist” (2006)
Week 11 Apr 11 Group Work on Article Projects
Read and prepare comments on draft of article projects for each of your group member Come to class as usual In class groups gives feedback on each student project
Week 12 Apr 18 Retribution Against the Germans of Eastern Europe
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (all)
Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 (New York: Picador, 2006), 299-335.
A Terrible Revenge paper due in class
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Week 13 Apr 25 Jews and the End of War in Eastern Europe
*Jan T. Gross, “Introduction,” and “The Unwelcoming of Jewish Survivors,” in Fear: Antisemitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House, 2006), ix-xv, 31-80.
*“The Victory,” in Henryk Grynberg, The Jewish War and The Victory (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 61-102.
*Piotr Wrobel, “Double Memory: Poles ands Jews After the Holocaust,” East European Politics and Societies vol. 11, no. 3 (Fall 1997), 560-574.
Week 14 May 2 The Unsettling Memory of War
*Tony Judt, “From the House of the Dead: An Essay on Modern European Memory,” 803-831, in Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2006)
In-Class Film Excerpt: The Shop on Main Street (Czechoslovakia, 1965)
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