Symposium Weinberg Wittmann transcript.pdf

Gerhard Weinberg & Rebecca Wittmann: The Liberation of Europe, 1945

Noted scholar and military historian Gerhard Weinberg, a veteran of the U.S. Army and its post-World War II occupation of Japan, discusses with author and University of Toronto History Professor Rebecca Wittmann the liberation of Europe from East to West. As part of the 2015 ON WAR Military History Symposium, this program was made possible by sponsors of the 2015 Liberty Gala.

Exploring the idea that "liberation" was different for different groups of people at the end of World War II, historians Weinberg and Wittmann offer a variety of perspectives on the reality of what is commonly thought of as a glorious end to a horrific reign. But what were the actual experiences like for guards, prisoners, or even the liberators themselves? And how does our collective memory of liberation differ across cultures, generations, and in history books?

GERHARD L. WEINBERG, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has served on the faculty since 1974. A German expatriate and veteran of the U.S. Army during the post-WWII occupation of Japan, Dr. Weinberg is an internationally recognized authority on the origins and course of World War II, earning the 2009 Pritzker Literature Award for his writings on the subject. Among his most notable works are A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders, and Germany, Hitler, and World War II

REBECCA WITTMANN, PhD, is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto, where her research focuses on the Holocaust and postwar Germany, trials of Nazi perpetrators and terrorists, and German legal history. Dr. Wittmann is the author of Beyond Justice: The Auschwitz Trial, winner of the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History, and has published articles in scholarly journals including Central European History, German History, and Lessons and Legacies.  She is now at work on a second book, entitled Nazism and Terrorism: The Madjanek and Stammheim Trials in 1975 West Germany.