The Holocaust Course at the United States Air Force Academy

Abstract

The stated mission of the United States Air Force Academy is to motivate and train the future leaders of the United States Air Force, to develop knowledge as well as character. In conjunction with this objective, the Academy's Department of History provided a 42-lesson course on the genocide of the European Jews during the National Socialist dictatorship. The course addressed the moral, political, and military aspects of the Nazi program of terror, propaganda, and eventually annihilation. Providing a concentrated and in-depth program on the attempted annihilation of the Jews offers a unique perspective to the students of a college known both for its academic excellence and its military reputation. Students are forced to wrestle with the moral dilemmas faced by members of the European Jewish community in the years between 1933 and 1945; given the role of military professionals, it is especially important that their training confronts them with the moral dilemmas that will arise when the execution of military orders may directly affect the life and death of innocent civilians.

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References

1. Air Force Academy Catalog 1991-1992 (Colorado Springs, CO: United States Air Force Academy, 1991), p. 4.

Donald Niewyk , ed., The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (Lexington, MA: D.C. Health, 1992).

Raul Hilberg , The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961).

Yehuda Bauer, “Negotiating for Jewish Lives,” in ibid.

Lucy Dawidowicz , The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Bantam Books, 1975).

6. Peter Wyden , Stella (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).

7. Jeremy Josephs , Swastika over Paris: The Fate of the Jews in France (New York: Arcade, 1989), pp. 71-72.

Irving Howe , “The Road Leads Far Away,” New Republic, 3 May 1993, pp. 29-36.