Raffael M. Scheck
The John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Professor of History
5331 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, Maine 04901-8853
MTWThF, 11-12:30

Education
Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts Ph.D. in Comparative European History in May 1993.
Universität Zürich (Switzerland) Lizentiat (equivalent to the M.A.), May 1988.
Konservatorium und Musikakademie Zürich Musical training as a cello student, 1980-1981.
Areas of Expertise
- Prisoners of War in World War II (specifically French colonial prisoners)
- Crimes against French Black African soldiers in World War II
- German political history 1914-1945
- German history and literature
- Modern European history and politics
Courses Currently Teaching
Course | Course Title |
---|---|
HI112 A | Mentalities, States, and Societies in Europe since 1618 |
HI224 A | Germany and Europe, 1871-1945 |
HI297J A | Europe and the Second World War |
HI321 A | The First World War |
HI421 A | Research Seminar: Debating the Nazi Past |
Other Courses Taught
Course | Course Title |
---|---|
HI 321 | The First World War |
HI 322 | Europe and the Second World War |
HI 323 | Yugoslavia: Emergence to Dissolution |
Professional Information
Current Research
Publications
"This is a well-written tale of how ordinary men become brutal killers and how racism can corrupt their moral sensibilities." Martin Klein, University of Toronto
"This elegant, slender volume describes a forgotten war crime: the murder by the German soldiers of thousands of Black African soldiers in the French Army in June 1940." Jonathan Steinberg, University of Pennsylvania
"Professor Scheck has provided a great service by carefully researching this vile episode and also placing it into the context of a military descending step by step into an abyss of ever worse criminality." Gerhard Weinberg, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (emeritus)
"Professor Scheck's excellent and original study details instances during the French campaign of 1940 when German Army and Waffen SS units killed French colonial troops after they had surrendered ..." Charles W. Sydnor, Jr.
![]() What role did right-wing women play in the Nazi rise to power? Mothers of the Nation analyzes the work of women in the German People's Party and the German National People's Party - parties that covered the range from the moderate to the radical right. Looking at politics on both the local and national level, the author discusses issues ranging from social welfare to foreign policy. He shows that right-wing women, in keeping with the tradition of the German bourgeois women's movement, refused to stand up primarily for women's interests and instead invoked the Volksgemeinschaft (community of the people), a vision of harmony and cooperation of the groups involved in production. "In this excellent study, Raffael Scheck explores a series of fateful paradoxes that imperiled Weimar democracy: attachments to household and motherhood propelled women into the public arena; the mobilization of female voters strengthened the nationalist, anti-democratic Right; the effort to imbue middle-class parties with the virtues of the people's community only helped the Nazis; and the campaign to protect Christianity legitimized eugenic legislation. Scheck's great contribution is to trace so well the seams of Germany's political culture between 1918 and 1933." | |
![]() | Alfred von Tirpitz and German Right-Wing Politics, 1914-1930 (Atlantic Highlands, 1998) In a skillful combination of biographical case study and contextual anaylsis, Raffael Scheck presents a readable, often thrilling, account of German right-wing politics in the two decades before the rise of the Nazis and the role played in them by Great Admiral von Tirpitz. In examining that, he explains the predicament of the conservatives during the period. |
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