During the Second World War, the United States fought against and helped to defeat Nazi Germany. For years afterwards, the fact that Nazi Germany in many ways stood as the antithesis of the United States, obscured certain historical parallels between these two radically different states.

Recently, research on Nazi Germany and on ethnic cleansing and genocide has started to uncover such parallels. Thus, historians have paid renewed attention to Hitler’s interest in expansion in North America and have uncovered possible paths to genocide that started outside Europe. 

This summer's course, Topics: The German East and the American West, introduces and investigates a growing body of research that places expansion and empire building by Nazi Germany and American expansion in broader context by assessing possible similarities as well as differences.  This class does not take it as a given that Nazi empire building was identical to American expansion, but introduces this area of transnational history. We will identify both areas of convergence and areas of difference. We'll also explore contemporary debates about the roots of genocide and extent to which Nazi leaders sometimes drew precedents from the United States.  



Topics presented include:

• Settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing in North America
• Forced assimilation in North America and in Europe
• Jim Crow and the Nazi Racial State
• Eugenics and treatment of the “disabled:” Germany and the United States
• Paths to genocide
• Nazi imperialism and ethnic cleansing

Who should enroll in this course?

Topics: The German East and the American West is a course that is especially useful for educators who teach either United States, European, or World History and anyone interested in the history of the American West, the history of the Second World War, or in new directions in transnational and comparative history. We will meet intensively for four days in a Summer Institute and then finish up work with a final project or paper to be submitted later. Final projects can be designed for use in teaching. Credits can be applied to a master’s program or as professional development points.

Get started and register today for this upcoming Summer I course, HIST 9106 Topics: The German East and the American West.

Thank you to our guest blogger, Professor Benjamin Lieberman, Ph.D., for his contribution to the GCE Blog.