The Holocaust

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Professor Nikolaus Wachsmann
• Assessment: one essay of 5000-5500 words (100%)

We will examine 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 you 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.

Indicative module content

• Jews in Germany until 1933
• Anti-Jewish policy in Nazi Germany, 1933-39
• The racial war, 1939-41
• The Nazi ‘final solution’
• Victims
• Perpetrators
• Collaborators, bystanders and rescuers
• Memory
• Genocide in history