Handbook

This course gives students an understanding of the greatest global conflict in history. It explains the origins of the war and its outcome through analysis of the military, social, political, economic, diplomatic and ideological forces that shaped it. Students will study the strategic decisions, the major air, sea and land campaigns and the key turning points of the military struggle from the outbreak of the war in 1939 to its conclusion in 1945. The course also examines the mobilization of the home fronts with questions of leadership, morale and social change; and life under foreign occupation, its difficulties and the choices between resistance and collaboration. The study of the Second World War raises many moral issues, amongst them the barbarisation of warfare; the Final Solution; the dropping of the first atomic bomb; and the trials that ended the war. The course concludes with an overview of the aftermath and immediate effects of the war.