Old Dominion University
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James V. Koch




HIST 368/396

ECON 202

ECON 301

ECON 456/556

ECON 604




HIST 396


COURSEWORK»TEXTBOOKS

John Keegan, The Second World War (New York: Penguin Books, 1989)
Keegan, an Englishman, is a renowned military historian. His recent history is well written, well researched, and offers more analysis than most previous histories. Also, it takes advantage of recent military intelligence revelations that have changed our views of how and why events occurred. Note: Keegan was on the Old Dominion campus in 1997 and taught one evening in this class.

Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier (New York: Harper and Row, 1967)
Sajer was a very young Alsatian who grew up of mixed German and French parentage. He enlisted in the Luftwaffe, but failed its pilot tests and was assigned to a support unit on the Eastern Front. Subsequently, he volunteered for service in Grossdeutschland, an elite German army division that deliberately contained soldiers from all of the areas of the greater German Reich. Sajer fought for almost four years against the Russians on the eastern front. His story is regarded as the best first person account of the utter horror experienced by the millions of combat infantrymen on both sides of the line in the former Soviet Union. I should note, however, that some critics do not believe he actually was in Grossdeutschland when and where he said he was. We'll discuss the implications of this.