Current course offerings

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Course description

Warfare in the twentieth century assumed unprecedented scales in its scope, destruction and effects. Advances in communications, science, technology and industrialisation gave nations and empires hitherto unimagined powers to deploy force and to project it across large portions of the globe. New techniques of propaganda and indoctrination helped to generate enormous armies, while growing state control forced even the unwilling to participate. When combined with racial and ideological hostility, such factors formed a potent mix, resulting in wars that reached new heights of intensity and which plunged depths of depravity. Warfare in the twentieth century was a profound human experience, for men and women of many nationalities, which brought out the best and the worst in the human condition. The wars of the twentieth century also do much to explain the present, at both the international level and at the domestic. This course will survey the major conflicts of the twentieth century, their causes and their effects. It will also explore particular themes that explain the nature, evolution and impact of twentieth-century warfare, such as race hatred, gender ideals, ideological fervour and technological advances.

Archived offerings