| |
Dec 14, 2025
|
|
|
|
|
HST 2031 - World War II3 lecture hours 0 lab hours 3 credits
Course Description
This course provides a general survey of the history of the causes, course, and consequences of World War II. The course focuses upon the diplomatic, political, and military facets of the war and those ideological forces that gave rise to the war. Topics covered include the causes and course of World War I, the final diplomatic settlement of World War I, the rise of communism and fascism in Europe after World War I, the march to war in Europe and Asia, the battles and campaigns of the European and Pacific Theaters of Operation, the Holocaust, and the origins of the Cold War. This course meets the following Raider Core CLO requirement: Exhibit Curiosity. (prereq: none)
Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Explain the rise of extremist political ideologies in both Europe and Asia, particularly Japan, and the central tenets of these ideologies that were the ultimate cause of World War II in both Asia and Europe
- Explain how new technologies, particularly the tank and airplane, shifted the nature of warfare in Europe to one of static defense, as during World War I, to the new concept of mobile warfare, or Blitzkrieg, during World War II
- Explain the shift of religious anti-Semitism to racial anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century and explain how this was a pan-European phenomenon that laid the ideological basis for the Jewish Holocaust
- Compare and contrast Nazi racial theories held Western Europeans to be of superior Aryan stock and Eastern European Slavic populations to be of inferior racial stock and how this led to the various atrocities common on the Eastern Front during World War II
- Compare the foreign policies of the United States (particularly the Truman Doctrine) and the Soviet Union and how these laid the foundation for the Cold War after World War II
Prerequisites by Topic
Course Topics
- World War I: great turning point
- Legacy of World War I
- Rise of the dictators
- Road to war: Asia and Europe
- First year of World War II: Blitzkrieg and Sitzkrieg
- Fall of France
- Battle of Britain
- Mediterranean and Balkans
- Operation Barbarossa: invasion of the Soviet Union
- Holocaust and Hitler’s New Order in Europe
- America enters the war
- Japan triumphant: Dec. 1941 - May 1942
- Struggle for initiative in the Pacific
- Tide turns in Russia: Stalingrad and beyond
- Tide turns in North Africa: El Alamein to Tunisia
- Probing the underbelly: Sicily and Italy
- War in the Atlantic
- Target Germany: Allied bombing offensive
- Total war and the home fronts
- Cross-channel invasion: D-Day to the German border
- Last year of World War II: end of the thousand-year Reich
- America gains the initiative in the Pacific
- Collapse of Japan
- Nuremburg trials and aftermath of World War II
- Harry Truman and the early Cold War
Coordinator
Dr. Patrick Jung
Add to Portfolio (opens a new window)
|
|
Skip to Main Content
