Patrick Tobin
M.A. Student
Major Field: European History
Other Fields: Russian and East European History
Advisor: Browning
Research Interests: My primary research interests
concern issues of the Holocaust, memory, and German coming to terms
with the Nazi past in the postwar decades. In particular, my
Master's Thesis focuses on the reintegration of former Nazis and
Holocaust perpetrators into West German society and chronicles the
societal shifts that led to their investigation, arrest, and ultimate
conviction for war crimes in the so-called 1958 Ulm Einsatzkommando
trial. This trial itself has become emblematic of a shift towards
a German openness to the Nazi past in the years since. I use the
investigation and trial as a window onto the processes of change at
work in 1950s West Germany.