The Second World War in ten trials

This course will look at the Second World War through a series of major courtroom battles. Starting with Hitler's 1923 trial after the Munich putsch, the course will cover the trials of Marinus van der Lubbe for the 1933 Reichstag Fire and of the anti-Nazi student Sophie Scholl and her colleagues in the White Rose movement; at the postwar treason trials in London and Paris of William Joyce ('Lord Haw-Haw), Marshal Pétain and Pierre Laval; at the the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials and the questions they raised; and the later trials of two major Nazi war criminals Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie. This is a 10-session course and must be taken with W410Am03 in Week 4.