History

Time and Place: 1942: Holocaust

Module code: V1331
Level 5
15 credits in spring semester
Teaching method: Seminar, Lecture
Assessment modes: Coursework

This module offers you an opportunity to study the Nazis’ attempt to create a new world order by annihilating the Jews of Europe and targeting other groups –including gay people, gypsies and people with disabilities –for discrimination and death. It offers a multilayered examination of the transition from prejudice to exclusion, and to extermination, placing the Holocaust within the broader conceptual framework of genocide in the 20th century. We will consider issues such as: how was the so-called 'Final Solution to the Jewish problem' put into effect? Why is 1942 a key year in the development of the Final Solution? What part was played by the perpetrators across occupied Europe? We will consider the reaction of the victims, and explore possibilities of resistance. We will also deal with questions of justice and memory, and will ask whether it is accurate to characterise most people as bystanders.We pay close attention to how it was possible for a plan of mass murder to be carried out so effectively in such a short time at the hub of western civilisation; a plan which relied on the active involvement of many people and the acquiescence of even more.

Module learning outcomes

• Critically evaluate the historiography around a particular moment.
• Critically evaluate the applicability of historical concepts to particular cases.
• Supply evidence of these skills in extended essay form.
• Demonstrate ability to use limited amounts of primary source material in extended historical argument.