The Student Experience

The continuing education program aims at the student who is less concerned with grading and accumulation of academic credit hours, and more interested in the satisfaction and intellectual stimulation of lifelong learning. Continuing education courses will be briefer and more concise, while still drawing upon the combined resources and personnel of The National WWII Museum and Arizona State University.

Continuing education courses will also take participants “behind the lines” at the Museum, allowing them to see artifacts and documents that are not displayed as part of the regular exhibits. Without assignments, papers, or exams, the continuing education experience amounts to education for the purest reason of all: the challenge of learning.

Holocaust: Origins

Fire with bystanders in Ober Ramstadt, Germany. November 10, 1938. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Trudy Isenberg

Holocaust: Origins looks at the long-term and short-term causes that created Hitler, the Nazi party, fascism, and the Holocaust. Taking a wide purview, the course juxtaposes broad post-Enlightenment trends of nationalism, imperialism, racism, and totalitarianism with the specific components of anti-Semitism, pan-Germanism, and Hitler's rise to power.

Course opens for enrollment April 28, 2022.

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Stalingrad: Chaos on the Volga

The Battle of Stalingrad is familiar to many of those interested in the Eastern Front of World War II. It was one of the main turning points that sealed the fate of the Wehrmacht and the Third Reich. But much about the battle remains shrouded in myth and is often influenced by hindsight. The city on the Volga bearing Stalin's name was never the main target of Operation Blau. How was it that a city that was initially supposed to be bypassed came to define the 1942 campaign?

Throughout this course we will look at the German advance and siege of Stalingrad—the Sixth Army's attempt to destroy the forces of the 62nd Army within the confines of the city. The course will also explore the Soviet attempts to keep Vasily Chuikov's troops supplied and reinforced as they scrambled to figure out how to defeat the Germans in the depths of the Soviet Union while fighting to save Stalin's namesake.

While no reading is required, course participants will also receive exclusive access to a curated list of relevant books and articles as well as an online discussion board where they can interact with instructors and fellow enrollees.