…is what I’m teaching in the fall, or co-teaching with a historian, and I’m designing it now.
I had way too many novels on my first reading list (Naked and the Dead, Gravity’s Rainbow, the Young Lions, Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-five, Williwaw, The Gallery, the Caine Mutiny, A Special Providence, Los Alamos were all under active consideration). This is a course for incoming freshman and the only thing I learned from my last such freshman course, in the literature of New York City in the 19th century, was the freshmen are remarkably averse to reading long novels, much less many long novels, despite the truth that doing hard work is what college if for. So I’ve eliminated some of the denser reading for starters, and am looking for ideas to make the course seem less daunting without dumbing it down too much:
Among the ideas are having them read MAUS (or some other graphic novel, which they don’t seem to regard as “work” quite the same way); having them read some oral histories of the war (and then interview some elderly folks about their experieinces during the war); inviting some WWII vets into class to talk; visiting a museum or two in regard to WWII-related material; showing a film or three about the war (All My Sons, maybe, the Great Escape, 30 Seconds over Tokyo, or Julia); teaching shorter genres such as poetry or short stories. They’ll have a load of history to read as well, but I’ve got very little input into that.
Anyone ever take a course like this, or want to? Anyone knowledgable about the war feel that I’m leaving out some crucial element? With such a huge subject, it’s almost evitable that I will omit some key stuff, so I’d appreciate a heads-up on what people consider essential.
Please, please give serious consideration to George MacDonald Fraser’s “Quartered Safe Out Here.”
One of the best military memoirs from the point of view of the man in the front line, by a very good storyteller, and written in such a way to appeal to both the general reader and the seasoned historian.
If you go the short-story route, I’d argue for “My Enemy’s Enemy,” “Court of Inquiry” and particularly “I Spy Strangers,” all by Kingsley Amis. If you pick just one war memoir, my vote is for Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Perhaps you could consider essays, such as George Orwell’s wartime work or Paul Fussell’s “Thank God for the Atom Bomb”?
The Willie and Joe cartoons by Bill Mauldin might be good to show your students how the war was viewed through the eyes of two average soldiers. Mauldin’s cartoons were featured in the Stars and Stripes, the daily Army newspaper.
I’m not sure how you’re breaking out the work, but I wouldn’t suggest Churchill, Ryan, or any other histories, without clearing it with the historian. Maus is a great idea. Students will read a graphic novel with no compaint, I think. You might also want to include selected readings from The Good War by Studs Terkel.
In college, I took a historiography class, and when studying oral histories, we read Shoah, then saw part of the film. As a college senior, I found it quite powerful, and it works both as a written piece and as a documentary.
Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938-1946 is a two volume set from the Library of America collection. It’s an excellent collection of over 200 articles by journalists written during the war.
Hiroshima by John Hersey vs. the essay “Thank God for the Atom Bomb” by Paul Fussell (who went on to become an English prof. at Penn). Both are quick reads, FWIW.
Will all the course material be written from the perspective of the Allies? US & UK only, or the Soviets too? Are you largely limiting the readings to works more or less contemporaneous with the war, or can you include recollections written decades after? How about war-inspired poetry, etc. by those who matured (or were even born) after the war? Some Yevtushenko (b.1933) might be nice (his “Babiy Yar” is renowned; other war-themed poems include “The Companion” “Knights,” “Party Card,” and “Weddings”).
Another vote for nixing the Frank memoir – too familiar. Maus is great, but your students might be familiar with that, too – in which case another Holocaust memoirist (the Italian Jew Primo Levi, say) might be a better choice.
I hadn’t even thought about poetry. Archibald McLeish’s “The Young Dead Soldiers” would be great. It’s been adopted by the peace movement, lately, but it really isn’t a pacifist piece.
Colonel Dax has already mentioned Thank God for the Atom Bomb. I’ll add Wartime by the same author. Really any of his books on WW2 would be good for this class. Fussell is a fine, acerbic author, and a good counterpoint to the greatest generation stuff you get from Brokaw and Ambrose. Fussell served in the European theatre and, IIRC, was wounded in combat.
Not the least of Fussell’s accomplishment’s as a critic was his discovery and promotion of Eugene Sledge. Sledge was a Marine who wrote one of the finest war memoirs ever, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Words are inadequate to describe this book’s honesty and it’s value to anyone interested in the horrors of modern war, and the character of the men who fight it. I note Colonel Dax also recommends this book.
Goodbye Darkness by William Manchester is another memoir by a veteran of the First Marine Division. I don’t care for Manchester’s sometimes purple prose (Sledge by comparison writes clear as glass), but there are some good stories.
Bomber, by Len Deighton is, IMO, the best novel of world war two ever written, better, if I may say so, than Catch-22 or Slaughterhouse-5. (Not that those were bad books.) Deighton is the anti-Clancy, pouring on the technical detail, but using it to drive home the horror and hypocrisy of war.