Germans can be found at the heart of nearly every transformative conflict of Western civilization.  From the Protestant Reformation to the “total wars” of the twentieth century, scholars have often located Germans and/or so-called “German ideologies” at the center of these phenomena.  Indeed for some critics of Germany, the guiding principle of the Sonderweg, or “special path” continues to exercise a firm teleological hold on scholarship about Germany.  Yet, recent interdisciplinary globalization studies have demonstrated that European cultures, along with their knowledge bases and technologies were surprisingly far more interconnected in the past than has been assumed.  Given that today many scholars are finding more similarities between national cultures than differences, to what extent can a certain phenomenon continue to be labeled specifically “German”?

In addition to widely accepted arguments that political and social development in Germany was characterized by exceptionalism, scholars have also argued that the nation developed a specific “way of war.”  Although this “German way of war” remains disputed, it has been described alternately on the one hand as the focus on movement (Bewegungskrieg) which reached its culmination in the Blitzkrieg tactics of World War II and on the other as the focus on deterrence, in which an imposing military machine achieved its aim through the threat of force and not its deployment.  To what extent are these conflict models mirrored in other war-time conflicts?  Do we find a particularly “German” approach to industrial competition, medical research, economic development, or the cultural productions of the past centuries? Is there a German “way of war”?  Can we speak of a specifically German “culture of conflict”?  How do these ideas stand up to comparison across time and space?

The theme of the 2^nd annual NCGS conference, Ways of War: Violence and the Culture of Conflict in Modern Germany examines these ideas in an international and interdisciplinary forum. We invite scholarly presentations which consider the general phenomenon of competition and conflict in Germany—especially its theoretical development, practical exercise, and long-term impact on both Germany and the wider world.

PROGRAM

FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2009

OPENING and WELCOME
5:00 pm

• Nancy Gutierrez (Dean; UNC Charlotte, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences)
• Heather R. Perry (UNC Charlotte, Dept. of History)

KEY NOTE ADDRESS:
5:15 – 7:00 pm

• Introduction and Chair: Heather R. Perry
• Robert M. Citino (Visiting Professor; United States Military Academy at West Point, Dept. of History):
  The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich

COMMENTS:

• Karen Hagemann (UNC Chapel Hill, Dept. of History)
• Gerhard Weinberg (UNC Chapel Hill, Dept. of History)

RECEPTION
7:00 pm

DINNER
8:00 pm

SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 2009

Welcome COFFEE
8:30-9:00 am

PANEL 1: THINKING ABOUT MODERN WAR
9:00-10:30 am

Chair: Robert Whalen (Queens University of Charlotte, Dept. of History)

• Dirk Bönker (Duke University, Dept. of History):
  A German Way of War? The Case of the Wilhelmine Navy
• Kristie Macrakis (Georgia Institute of Technology, School of History, Technology, and Society):
  Was there a German Espionage Style during the Cold War?
• Richard Langston (UNC Chapel Hill, Dept. of Germanic Languages and Literatures):
  Kluge, Film, and the Ideology of War

Coffee BREAK

PANEL 2: THE BUSINESS OF WAR
11:00-12:30 pm

Chair: Mark Spaulding (UNC Wilmington, Dept. of History)

• Alfred Mierzejewski (University of North Texas, Dept. of History):
  German Ways of Business: War, Competition, Rivalry
• Bryan Ganaway (College of Charleston, Dept. of History):
  Marketing Total War: Toys, Producers and Consumers in World War I Germany
• Wilfried Wilms (University of Denver, Dept. of German Studies):
  ‘A Wealth of Dramatic Material’: The Return of History as Soap

LUNCH
12:30-2:00 pm

PANEL 3: THE CULTURE OF WAR
2:00-3:30 pm

Chair: Thomas Pegelow Kaplan (Davidson College, Dept. of History)

• Andy Donson (University of Massachusetts Amherst, Dept. of History):
  World War I, the November Revolution 1918 and Gender in Germany
• Mara Lazda (Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts):
  Gender, Resistance, and Collaboration: Nazi Occupation of Latvia
• Elizabeth Snyder (UNC Asheville, International Studies & Foreign Languages):
  Possibilities for Peace: Germany's Transformation of a Culture of Conflict

Coffee BREAK

ROUNDTABLE: IS THERE A GERMAN “WAY OF WAR”?
4:00 -5:30 pm

Chair: Jim Hogue (UNC Charlotte, Dept. of History)

• Robert M. Citino (West Point, Dept. of History)
• Claudia Koonz (Duke University, Dept. of History)
• Wilfried Wilms (University of Denver, Dept. of German Studies)
• Paul Youngman (UNC Charlotte, Dept. of Languages and Culture Studies)

Program

Poster

Organizer:

Heather Perry
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Department of History
9201 University City Blvd.
Charlotte • NC 28223
Phone: 704-687-3976 • Fax: 704-687-3218 • Email: hrperry@uncc.edu

Information Contact: ecastleg@uncc.edu

Sponsors: