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NCGS Seminar: Till Knobloch
November 18, 2022 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Friday, November 18, 2022
2:00 – 4:00 pm (EST) (Zoom Seminar URL: https://unc.zoom.us/j/94945107041)
TILL KNOBLOCH I PhD Candidate (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dept. of History) will present on The ‘Manufactured Crisis.’ The Outbreak of World War II in Europe.
The ‘Manufactured Crisis’: The Outbreak of World War II in Europe
Claus von Stauffenberg once described the inner circle of Nazi leaders as consisting solely of “opportunists and psychopaths” and indeed rarely had a war been instigated by a more peculiar lot of people. Fanatics, amateurs, yes-men and the inevitable “alte Kämpfer” – they all gathered around their leader at the Berghof where Hitler’s endless monologues and absurd mannerisms created a conspiracy-prone bubble that reason could not penetrate. Drawing from my dissertation research, the presentation will demonstrate how those personal factors shaped the Third Reich’s foreign policy and ultimately the outbreak of World War II. It will thus become clear that Hitler’s perceptions and ideas, his decisions and actions, were not the result of calculated diplomacy but the product of a system designed to appeal to the personal habits of one man.
TILL KNOBLOCH is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, spending the academic year 2022/23 in Berlin as a fellow of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies. His research interests focus on International History, Modern German and European History, Hitler, the Third Reich, and the Second World War, as well as Causes and Outbreaks of Wars. His dissertation, “The ‘Manufactured Crisis’: The Outbreak of World War II in Europe,” examines the diplomatic crisis at the eve of the Second World War from an international perspective with a particular emphasis on Polish sources.
Comment: CHAD BRYANT (Associate Professor, UNC-Chapel Hill, Dept. of History)For the URL please contact the NCGS graduate assistants KEVIN HOEPER or MADELINE JAMES and ask them to be added the NCGS list serve.For more information, please visit the NCGS website or see the attached flier.