Ronald Smelser
Ronald Smelser | |
---|---|
Born | 1942 (age 81–82) Pennsylvania, United States |
Occupation(s) | Professor of history, author, editor |
Academic background | |
University of Wisconsin | |
Academic work | |
Era | 20th century |
Institutions | University of Utah |
Main interests | Modern European history, historiography |
Notable works | The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture |
Ronald Smelser (born 1942) is an American historian, author, and former professor of history at the
Education and career
Smelser was born in 1942 in
Historian of Nazi Germany
Smelser is a historian of
Smelser is the co-editor of four prosopographic anthologies[note 1] in which he and his co-editors compiled biographical essays on leading figures of the Nazi movement and the Nazi state, authored by various historians. The first in the series was the 1989 work The Brown Elite I, co-edited with Rainer Zitelmann, with twenty-two biographical sketches of leaders of the Nazi Party and of functionaries of the military and the Nazi regime of World War II.[5]
In 1993 Smelser published The Brown Elite II, which contained twenty additional sketches of the same type, co-edited with Enrico Syring . The 1995 volume was a collection of essays on the military elite of Nazi Germany, which included twenty-seven sketches specifically about military leaders of the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht during the 1930s and 1940s. The 2000 volume, Die SS: Elite unter dem Totenkopf: 30 Lebensläufe (Elite under the Skull) contains biographical sketches of thirty leading members of the SS.[6]
Holocaust educator
Smelser established the annual Holocaust "Days of Remembrance" program at the University of Utah, directing it for 21 years.[7] He has worked closely with the Holocaust Educational Foundation and is the editor-in-chief of the Learning about the Holocaust: A Student Guide. Based on the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, the four-volume work presents the events surrounding the Holocaust to teenagers in the language they can understand.[8]
Smelser has also studied the cultural impact of the Holocaust – from the marginal topic that it was in the 1950s and 60s to the event, in Smelser's words, that has "practically absorb[ed] the war". His research has focused on how several counterbalancing narratives of World War II and the Holocaust can co-exist, with the goal of demystifying and explaining their impact on popular culture.[9]
The Myth of the Eastern Front
Together with fellow historian Edward J. Davies of the
Foreign Affairs magazine called the book a "fascinating exercise in historiography", highlighting the authors' analysis of how a "number of Hitler's leading generals were given an opportunity to write the history of the Eastern Front (...) provid[ing] a sanitized version of events".[12] Military historian Jonathan House reviewed the book for The Journal of Military History, describing it as a "tour de force of cultural historiography" and commending the authors for "hav[ing] performed a signal service by tracing the origin and spread of this mythology". House recommends that military historians not only study the book, but "use it to teach students the dangers of bias and propaganda in history".[13]
A review published in the journal History provided a critical assessment of the book. While it praises Smelser and Davies for setting out the main myths concerning the Eastern Front, the review argues that they did not provide convincing evidence to support their argument that most Americans accept such an account. It concludes that "the book therefore delivers a rather weak conclusion, which dilutes the impact of the useful analysis earlier in the book..."[14] Likewise, American historian Dennis Showalter acknowledges that the romanticised views described in the book exist, but argues that they remain limited in their impact on the wider popular culture: "Eastern Front enthusiasts—who buy a disproportionate number of the books romanticizing the Eastern Front—are a minority within a minority, and, as a rule, are at some pains to deny sympathy with the Third Reich". The reviewer concludes that the opening of the Russian archives since the fall of the Soviet Union has enabled "balanced analysis at academic levels", leading to a new interest in the Red Army operations from popular history writers and World War II enthusiasts.[11]
Select bibliography
- 1975 – The Sudeten problem, 1933–1938: Volkstumspolitik and the Formulation of Nazi Foreign Policy, Middletown, Conn., ISBN 0-8195-4077-3
- 1988 – Robert Ley: Hitler's Labor Front leader, New York, ISBN 0-85496-161-5
- 2000 – Die SS: Elite unter dem Totenkopf: 30 Lebensläufe, co-edited with ISBN 3-506-78562-1
- 2001 – Learning about the Holocaust: A Student Guide, New York, ISBN 0-02-865536-2
- 2008 –ISBN 978-0-521-83365-3
Notes
- ^ Prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a historical group, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable, by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis. Prosopographical research has the goal of learning about patterns of relationships and activities through the study of collective biography; it collects and analyses statistically relevant quantities of biographical data about a well-defined group of individuals.
References
Citations
- ^ Archives West – Ronald M. Smelser papers, 1919–2008, archived from the original 5 December 2015
- ^ Professors Emeritus, The University of Utah
- ISBN 978-0-521-83365-3– author notes from inside flap
- ^ Archives West – Ronald M. Smelser papers, 1919–2008, archived from the original 5 December 2015
- .
- ^ "Smelser, Ronald". worldcat.org. Retrieved October 20, 2016.
- ^ The University of Utah – Ron Smelser Holocaust Education Fund, archived from the original 5 December 2015
- ^ Learning about the Holocaust: a student's guide / Ronald M. Smelser, editor in chief, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum web site
- ^ Jonathan Petropoulos, John Roth (eds) (2005): Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath
- ^ Kelly 2010.
- ^ a b Showalter 2009.
- ^ Freedman 2008.
- ^ House 2008.
- ^ Folly 2010.
Bibliography
- Folly, Martin H. (October 2010). "The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. By Ronald Smelser and Edward L. Davies II". History. 95 (320): 846. .
- Freedman, Lawrence D. (2008). "Review: The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture". Foreign Affairs (May/June 2008). Archived from the original on March 26, 2016. Retrieved December 20, 2015.
- House, Jonathan (December 2008). "Review: The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture". The Journal of Military History. 73 (2): 681–682. S2CID 161546314.
- McFall, Kelly (2010). "Tracing the Resurrection of a Reputation: How Americans Came to Love the German Army". H-Net. Archived from the original on March 26, 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
- Showalter, Dennis (June 2009). "Book Review: The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. By Ronald Smelser and Edward L. Davies II". S2CID 145671599.
External links
- Nazi Olympics Exhibit Opens at the University of Utah, The Daily Utah Chronicle, 2001; archived from the original on 5 December 2015
- The Myth of the Eastern Front on Cambridge University Press web site; archived from the original on 5 December 2015
- Myth of the Eastern Front in American Popular Culture: interview with Ronald Smelser and Edward J Davies in Oriental Journal, a Moscow-based online publication