Globalizing the History of the Second World War, 1931-1955

(2.5-3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course offers a study of the Second World War from a worldwide perspective. We are used to studying and remembering the war in national, or at best regional often Eurocentric terms. Though that keeps things relatable, it scarcely does justice to the scope and scale of this most global of conflicts. From the mid 1930s to the late 1940s, women and men fought, produced for and supplied the war on every continent and every sea on Earth, including the Arctic and even Antarctica. The war also fired the imaginations and defined the memories of people all over the world not involved in the fighting. None of these experiences fit easily within national boundaries. We will explore these themes in two parts, in unfamiliar places and across unusual timescales. The first part begins with the question of what makes (and unmakes) a war a world war and reviews the conflict s development from its origins to its ending, well beyond the familiar 1939 1945 chronology. In the second part, we will explore themes both familiar and unfamiliar from a global viewpoint, from the war s multinational forces to its ecology, economy, and popular memory. By the end, you will be able to place the world in the Second World War.