BA History / Course details

How did ordinary people experience the Nazi occupation of Europe? What led some to collaborate while others chose to resist? What were the political and social aims of resisters and collaborators? How did occupation, violence and war reshape the gendered, social and cultural landscapes of Europe? What political legacies did these experiences leave within and beyond Europe? How have societies remembered these events, and how do they continue to shape politics across the continent?

This unit addresses these questions to provide a fresh understanding of everyday life and political struggle in Hitler's European empire. It weaves together the experiences of resistance fighters, collaborators, bystanders, civilians, soldiers and political elites to examine how individuals and communities responded to the challenges of occupation, and how war, resistance and collaboration transformed European societies. Drawing upon a diverse range of primary sources, including memoirs, letters, newspapers, photographs, films and archival material, alongside recent historical scholarship, students will explore the complex realities of life under occupation from a comparative perspective. Through seminar discussions, debates and source-based activities, the unit develops a nuanced understanding of occupation, political violence and memory while fostering advanced skills in historical interpretation, comparative analysis and source criticism. 

This unit examines the political, social, cultural and intellectual history of resistance, collaboration and mass violence in Axis-occupied Europe during the Second World War. It explores the diversity of occupation regimes across Europe and examines how occupation policies shaped the experiences of civilians, resistance movements, collaborationist regimes and perpetrators of violence. Through a comparative approach, the unit analyses the relationship between ideology, nationalism, warfare, ethnicity and political violence, while introducing students to major historiographical debates on resistance, collaboration, genocide, civil war and the politics of memory. Drawing upon a wide range of primary sources and historical scholarship, the unit develops a critical understanding of the complexity and diversity of wartime experiences across occupied Europe. 
 

Students completing this unit will develop advanced skills in historical analysis, critical thinking and the evaluation of complex bodies of evidence. Through the comparative study of occupation, resistance and collaboration, they will strengthen their ability to construct persuasive, evidence-based arguments, communicate complex ideas clearly in both written and oral forms, and engage critically with competing historical interpretations.

The unit also develops a range of transferable skills valued by employers, including independent research, problem-solving, information management, teamwork and oral communication. Students will gain experience in locating, analysing and synthesising diverse forms of evidence, exercising critical judgement, and presenting well-supported conclusions. These skills are applicable across careers in education, research, public policy, journalism, the heritage sector, archives and museums, the civil service, and other professions requiring analytical reasoning and effective communication.  

The unit adopts a comparative approach to the history of Nazi-occupied Europe and examines the varied responses of European societies to occupation, collaboration and resistance between 1939 and 1945. It explores the social, political and military dimensions of occupation, together with the legacies of wartime violence and their post-war remembrance. Indicative topics include the Grey Zone and everyday life under occupation; collaboration, accommodation and the politics of occupation; collaboration and complicity in the Holocaust; partisan warfare and armed resistance; women and resistance; mass violence and reprisals; liberation and the legacies of wartime violence; and memory, commemoration and the politics of the past. 

The unit is delivered through a weekly three-hour seminar that combines short tutor-led introductions with student discussion, source analysis and collaborative learning activities. Seminars encourage students to engage critically with primary sources and historical scholarship through structured debates, close reading exercises, group discussions and comparative case studies. Students are expected to undertake independent reading and seminar preparation before each session and to contribute actively to seminar discussions.

Teaching is supported through Canvas, which provides access to module information, seminar materials, reading lists, digitised primary sources, lecture slides where appropriate, and links to relevant electronic resources and archival collections. Coursework is submitted electronically via Turnitin, with written feedback provided through the University's online assessment system. The unit combines synchronous face-to-face seminar teaching with asynchronous online learning resources that support independent study and assessment preparation.

1  Analyse the diverse forms of occupation, collaboration and resistance across Nazi-occupied Europe and explain how they shaped the experiences of different European societies.

2  Evaluate the principal historiographical debates on resistance, collaboration, mass violence and memory in occupied Europe during and after the Second World War. 
 

1 Critically evaluate primary and secondary sources relating to occupation, political violence and resistance in their historical context.

2 Construct comparative historical arguments that assess the relationship between occupation, ideology, violence and political change across different European societies.

1 Locate, select and interpret a wide range of historical and digital sources to investigate historical problems relating to occupation, collaboration and resistance

2 Synthesise historical evidence from diverse primary and secondary sources to produce coherent, evidence-based historical interpretations.

1 Communicate complex historical arguments clearly and effectively to specialist and non-specialist audiences in oral and written forms.

2 Work independently to plan, manage and complete historical research while exercising critical judgement in the evaluation and use of evidence.

Research proposal and source analysis (Formative) 500 words

Primary Source Analysis 1000 words (Summative) 40%

Research Essay 3000 words (Summative) 60%

Formative - Students receive written and verbal feedback through seminar discussion and/or office-hour consultation

Summative -  Primary Source Analysis: Written feedback via Turnitin in accordance with University policy.

Summative - Research Essay: Written feedback via Turnitin in accordance with University policy. 

Bársony, János and Ágnes Daróczi (eds.), Pharrajimos: The Fate of the Roma During the Holocaust. New York: International Debate Education Association, 2008.  
Batinić, Jelena, Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.  
Berkhoff, Karel C., Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.  
Bitunjac, Martina and Julius H. Schoeps (eds.), Complicated Complicity: European Collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021.  
Browning, Christopher R., Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.  
Cerović, Masha, "War Wives: Women, Marriage, and the Soviet Partisan Movement (1941–44)," The Russian Review, 83, no. 4 (2024): 535–547.  
Dumitru, Diana, The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.  
Gildea, Robert, Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance. London: Faber & Faber, 2015.  
Gildea, Robert, Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation, 1940–1945. London: Macmillan, 2002.  
Gildea, Robert, Olivier Wieviorka and Anette Warring (eds.), Surviving Hitler and Mussolini: Daily Life in Occupied Europe. Oxford: Berg, 2006.  
Hoare, Marko Attila, Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.  
Jones, Jeffrey W., '"Every Family Has Its Freak": Perceptions of Collaboration in Occupied Soviet Russia, 1943–1948', Slavic Review, 64, no. 4 (2005): 747–770.  
Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. London: Heinemann, 2005.  
Lagrou, Pieter, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.  
Mazower, Mark, Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–44. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.  
Mlakar, Boris, To Walk with the Devil: Slovene Collaboration and Axis Occupation, 1941–1945. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023.  
Newsome, W. Jake, Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022.  
Paxton, Robert O., Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.  
Pavlowitch, Stevan K., Hitler's New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia. London: Hurst & Company, 2008.  
Ragaru, Nadège, Bulgaria, the Jews, and the Holocaust: On the Origins of a Heroic Narrative. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2023.  
Slepyan, Kenneth, Stalin's Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006.  
Snyder, Timothy, "The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing, 1943," Past & Present, no. 179 (2003): 197–234.  
Traverso, Enzo, Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914–1945. London: Verso, 2016.  
Tsoutsoumpis, Spyridon, A History of the Greek Resistance in the Second World War: The People's Armies. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019.  
Vervenioti, Tassoula, "Left-Wing Women between Politics and Family," in Mark Mazower (ed.), After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943–1960. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. 105–121.  
Vinen, Richard, The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation. London: Allen Lane, 2006.  
Virgili, Fabrice, Shorn Women: Gender and Punishment in Liberation France. Oxford: Berg, 2002.  
Wieviorka, Olivier, The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940–1945. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Foreword by Robert O. Paxton. N