Prof. Mark Grimsley
Winter Quarter 2000

This course begins with a look at European imperialism in the last third of the nineteenth century, which was implicitly (and often explicitly) underpinned by racialist assumptions about the colonized people. These racialist assumptions extended, to a lesser extent, to the Europeans themselves. Where we nowadays see Europeans as monolithically "Caucasian," fin de siècle Europeans saw different varieties of whiteness; e.g., the "Nordic," "Teutonic," and "Mediterranean" types, to name just one attempt at taxonomy.

Both the drive for colonies and the belief in specific national characters contributed powerfully to the notion that the struggle among different peoples was normal and healthy. Although the First World War arguably undercut this belief among the western Allies and the United States, it reinforced it among other powers, especially Italy and Germany. The result was the emergence of "fascism," a complex, somewhat elusive phenomenon but universally characterized by extreme nationalism, the subordination of the individual to the state, and the glorification of violent struggle--both as a means of acquiring domestic power and of extending power abroad. Racialism was another characteristic of fascism, particularly in its National Socialistic incarnation, which rapidly carried racialist ideology to its most logical, ruthless extreme.

Racialism underpinned the Pacific War as well. The Japanese incursion into China and its coercive imposition of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere were based on assumptions of racial superiority. The ferocity of the Pacific War was a consequence of the large cultural distance between the Japanese and American adversaries, with the stakes--especially from the British, French, and Dutch perspectives--considerably bound up with the fear that military success on the part of the Japanese would permanently undercut the racialist hegemony on which their colonial empires rested. The ultimate result was to force a reorientation, half willing, half grudging, from a posture based on racial superiority to one based (rhetorically at least) on racial equality.

Enrollment

All students must be officially enrolled in the course by the end of the second full week of the quarter. No requests to add the course will be approved by the department chair after that time. Enrolling officially and on time is solely the responsibility of each student.

Requirements

One 5-page book review (approximately 1,000 words)
One 15-page (approximately 3,000 words) research or analytical paper

Texts

I have asked that all required texts be placed on closed reserve (Main Library), but can't guarantee that they will be there in every case.

Week 1. Organizational

NB. A good introduction to the general subject is Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West

Week 2. The Racial Dimension of Imperialism

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Edition) Read esp. ix-xvii, 1-76, 79-141, 239-242, 251-285, 391-405.

Supplemental:

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
D. K. Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires
Frank Furedi, The Silent War: Imperialism and the Changing Perception of Race
Thomas Packenham, The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912
Edward Said, Orientalism

Week 3. The Cult of the Offensive

Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914

Supplemental

V. R. Berghan, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914
Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory
Michael Howard, "Men Against Fire: The Doctrine of the Offensive in 1914," in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
Paul M. Kennedy, ed., The War Plans of the Great Powers

Week 4. The Glorification of Struggle

Ernst Junger, The Storm of Steel

Supplemental

Michael C. C. Adams, The Great Adventure: Male Desire and the Coming of the First World War
Gunter Berghaus, Futurism and politics : between anarchist rebellion and fascist reaction, 1909-1944
Francis L. Carsten, The Rise of Fascism
Nigel L. Jones, Hitler's heralds : the story of the Freikorps 1918-1923
Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929
Roland N. Stromberg, Redemption by War: The Intellectuals and 1914
Eugen Weber, The Varieties of Fascism
Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914

Week 5. The Culmination of Race and Ideology

Eberhard Jaeckel, Hitler's World View
MacGregor Knox , "Conquest, Foreign and Domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany," The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 56, No. 1. (Mar., 1984), pp. 1-57. (Available on J-Stor via OSU Libraries)

Supplemental

Götz Aly, Peter Chroust, and Christian Pross, Cleansing the Fatherland : Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene
Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution
Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust
Richard L. Rubenstein, The Cunning of History: Mass Death and the American Future
Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence

Week 6. Complicity

Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944

Supplemental

Philippe Burrin, France under the Germans : Collaboration and Compromise
Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews

Week 7. The Implementation of the Nazi Vision

Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Supplemental

Norman G. Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn, A Nation on Trial : The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth
Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The "Final Solution" in History
Robert R. Shandley, ed., Unwilling Germans? : The Goldhagen Debate

Week 8. Race and Ideology on the Eastern Front

Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich

Supplemental

Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941-45 : German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare
Stephen G. Fritz,. Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II
Charles W. Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction : the SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945
Theo Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Politics in Occupied Russia

Week 9. Race and Ideology in the China "Incident"

Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: the Forgotten Holocaust of World War II

Supplemental

George Hicks, The Comfort Women
Joyce C. Lebra Chapman, comp., Japan's Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere in World War II : Selected Readings and Documents
Francis Clifford Jones, Japan's new order in east Asia: its rise and fall, 1937-45
Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race, and Equality : The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919
Louise Young, Japan's Total Empire : Manchuria and the culture of wartime imperialism

Week 10. Race and Ideology in the Pacific War

John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War

Supplemental

Craig S. Cameron, American Samurai: Myth, Imagination, and the Conduct of Battle in the First Marine Division, 1941-1951
Akira Iriye, Power and Culture : The Japanese-American War, 1941-1945
Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon
Kenneth P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire : U.S. Bombers over Japan during World War II

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