Date:
Friday, February 3, 2017 - 9:00am to 11:00am
Location:
421 Belk Library
Description:
Center Research Colloquium
Professor Edward Westermann
Book Discussion of Edward Westermann's Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars
Faculty, students, and staff are invited to discuss Dr. Edward Westermann’s recent book, Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest (University of Oklahoma, 2016) on February 3, 9-11AM, 421 Belk Library. Please RSVP by email to holocaust@appstate.edu or phone to 828.262.2311. Participants will receive a complimentary copy of the book. Dr. Westermann’s visit is sponsored by the Humanities Council and the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies.
In Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars, Westermann critically examines the parallels Hitler drew between the Nazi quest for Lebensraum in Eastern Europe and the westward expansion of the United States known as Manifest Destiny. Westermann shows how both projects linked national identity with racial stereotypes in order to justify a politics of exclusion and violence. He also identifies crucial differences between these projects of national expansion.
Westermann’s book has been described as “comparative history at its best.” One reviewer writes: “This thoughtful, provocative book compares the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe with the United States’ conquest of the American West. Its insights and conclusions are sure to stimulate new debates among a broad array of scholars.” Robert Wooster, author of The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783–1900
Edward Westermann is Professor of History at the University of Texas—San Antonio. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2000. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, a German Academic Exchange Service fellow on three occasions, as well as a fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Dr. Westermann also the author of Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East (2006), and numerous articles and chapters. He is a retired US Air Force Colonel with 25 years of service.