Handbook

This course will give the student an understanding of the greatest global conflict in history through the analysis of the military, social, political, economic, ideological and moral issues 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. The course also examines the impact of the war and mobilization on the home fronts, raising questions of leadership, morale and social change. Students will study life under foreign occupation and the difficulties this imposed on the defeated. The study of the Second World War raises many moral issues: amongst them, the barbarisation of warfare; the Final Solution; the choices of resistance and collaboration; the dropping of the first atomic bomb; and the trials and punishment at the end of the war. Students will examine different historical interpretations of these issues and engage in the arguments surrounding them.