History (HIST) 367

Overview

This course is intended to provide a fuller understanding of the events and attitudes of the war years and of some of the arguments that are very much alive today concerning what really happened in that vital decade of 1937 to 1947. The Second World War still affects our lives. The division of much of the postwar world into two armed camps, one dominated by the United States and the other by the Soviet Union, was to a large extent the result of actions taken and decisions made during the previous decade. The Second World War also directly affected the personal stories of many of us, through family deaths or marriage or other fundamental social changes that resulted from the worldwide upheaval.

This course will focus on a number of key wartime events, as well as on the issues and controversies that often still surround them and continue to absorb modern-day historians because of their political, social, moral and ethical implications and consequences. These will include but are not limited to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis; the expansion of Imperial Japan; the Nazi-Soviet Pact; the Fall of France and the Battle of Britain; the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union; the Nazi occupation of much of Europe and the adoption of the “Final Solution”; the area bombing of Germany; D-Day and the liberation of France; the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan; and the legacy of the Second World War and the postwar crisis that followed it.

Outline

• Unit 1: Sources of War in the West
• Unit 2: Sources of War in the East
• Unit 3: Expansion of the European War, 1939–1940
• Unit 4: Expansion of the War in Asia, 1937–1941
• Unit 5: Great Britain at War
• Unit 6: Soviet Russia at War
• Unit 7: Nazi Germany at War: The Fate of Occupied Europe
• Unit 8: In the Balance: The Western Theatre, 1941–1943
• Unit 9: The War at Sea
• Unit 10: The War in the Air
• Unit 11: Imperial Japan at War: The Pacific Theatre, 1942–1943
• Unit 12: The Defeat of Nazi Germany
• Unit 13: The Defeat of Imperial Japan
• Unit 14: The Postwar Crisis and the Legacy of the Second World War

Evaluation

To receive credit for HIST 367, you must obtain at least 50% on the examination and achieve a final course composite grade of D (50 percent) or better. The weighting of the course assignments is as follows:

To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.

Course Materials

Textbook

Other Materials

The course materials include an online study guide, online readings from learned journals and ebooks, and DVDs of the Thames Television series The World at War (26 episodes) which students will be able to borrow from the AU Library.