The Holocaust

Tutor: Dr Nik Wachsmann

This course examines the systematic extermination of European Jews during the Second World War. The discussion of key aspects of the Holocaust is set into the wider historiographical context, introducing students to debates surrounding the research and academic study of Nazi extermination policy. The course begins by locating the Holocaust in German history. It then explores the development of Nazi anti-Jewish policy and the implementation of the ‘final solution’, with particular emphasis on victims, bystanders and perpetrators. Finally, the course examines the place of the Holocaust in the world after 1945, and looks at genocide in the 20th century more generally.

Seminar Outline

1) Introduction

2) Jews in Germany until 1933

3) Anti-Jewish policy in Nazi Germany, 1933-39

4) The racial war, 1939-41

5) The Nazi ‘final solution’ (i)

6) The Nazi ‘final solution’ (ii)

7) Victims

8) Perpetrators

9) Collaborators, bystanders & rescuers

10) Memory

11) Genocide in history

Preliminary Reading

S. Friedländer, The Years Of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945 (2007)

M. Marrus, The Holocaust in History (1988)

O. Bartov, The Holocaust. Origins, Implementation, Aftermath (2000)

U. Herbert (ed.), National-socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German

Perspectives and Controversies (2000)

C. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy

September 1939-March 1942 (2004)

P. Longerich, The Unwritten Order (2001)

C. Browning, Ordinary Men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in

Poland (1992)

P. Levi, If this is a Man (1960)