Department of History

Thomas KuehneThomas Kühne, Ph.D.

Professor of History and Strassler Family Chair in the Study of Holocaust History
Department of History
Clark University
Worcester, MA 01610-1477

508.793.7523 phone
email: tkuehne@clarku.edu

Thomas Kühne is the Strassler Family Professor in the Study of Holocaust History at Clark University. He teaches Modern European and German History.  His academic and research work is concerned with the relation of war, genocide, and society, with long-term traditions of political culture of Central Europe, above all with the problem of locating the Holocaust and Nazi Germany in the social and cultural history of the 20th century.

Professor Kühne received his academic degrees in Germany. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen in 1994 and taught at the Universities of Konstanz, Tübingen and Weingarten thereafter. Awarded major grants from the German Research Foundation, he completed his habilitation thesis at the University of Bielefeld in 2003. Accepting an invitation from the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Thomas Kühne came to the United States in 2003. He has been at Clark since 2004.

Kühne’s initial scholarly work focused on the political culture of Wilhelmine Germany.  His recent research revolves around the mythical idea of comradeship and the impact of that notion on the actions and experience of Germany WWII soldiers and the Holocaust perpetrators.  He is especially interested in synthesizing new approaches to the history of mass violence.

Professor Kühne has organized numerous conferences and edited several volumes to advance relevant scholarly discussions on gender, military and political history. His essay collection on the history of masculinities in modern Germany (1996) established this field in Central Europe and stimulated a broad range of innovative gender studies.

As his recently launched book Kameradschaft (2006) suggests, the myth of comradeship, born in WWI, shaped the experiences and actions of German WWII soldiers as well as war memory after 1945. In the Nazi war of annihilation, comradeship served as social cement in military face-to-face units. Comradeship combined male bonding through criminal means with in-group “humanity.” It thus established a moral framework that abandoned the idea of individual responsibility and enabled soldiers to support and to carry out the Holocaust.

Kühne is currently working on a new book addressed to the Anglophone public exploring how the Germans switched to community-based violent ethics even before the Nazis came to power. Belonging and Genocide revolves around the thesis that the German nation eventually found itself through committing the Holocaust.

Kühne’s publications include three monographs:

  • Kameradschaft.Die Soldaten des nationalsozialistischen Krieges und das 20. Jahrhundert[Comradeship. The Soldiers of the Nazi War and the 20th Century] (2006)
  • Dreiklassenwahlrecht und Wahlkultur in Preußen 1867-1914 [Three-Class Voting System and Electoral Culture in Prussia, 1867-1914] (1994)
  • Handbuch der Wahlen zum Preußischen Abgeordnetenhaus 1867-1918 [Handbook on the Elections of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies] (1994).

as well as five edited or co-edited volumes:

  • Massenhaftes Töten. Kriege und Genozide im 20. Jahrhundert [Mass Killing. War and Genocide in the 20th Century] (2004)
  • Raum und Geschichte [Space and History] (2001)
  • Was ist Militärgeschichte? [What is Military History] (2000)
  • Von der Kriegskultur zur Friedenskultur? Zum Mentalitätswandel in Deutschland seit 1945 [War Culture into Peace Culture. Mental Change in Germany since 1945] (2000)
  • Männergeschichte - Geschlechtergeschichte. Männlichkeit im Wandel der Moderne [Men’s History-Gender History. Masculinities in Modern History] (1996; Japanese version 1997, Korean version 2001).

Among his numerous book chapters and articles is the comprehensive review essay on the social and cultural history of the Nazi War:

  • Thomas Kühne, "Der nationalsozialistische Vernichtungskrieg und die "ganz normalen" Deutschen. Forschungsprobleme und Forschungstendenzen der Gesellschaftsgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Erster Teil [The Nazi War of Annihilation and "ordinary” Germans. Issues and Tendencies of Research into the Social History of WWII. Part I],"Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 39 (1999): 580-662, and idem, "Der nationalsozialistische Vernichtungskrieg im kulturellen Kontinuum des 20. Jahrhunderts. Forschungsprobleme und Forschungstendenzen der Gesellschaftsgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Zweiter Teil [The Nazi War of Annihilation as Part of the 20th Century’s Cultural Continuity Issues and Tendencies of Research into the Social History of WWII. Part II],"Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 40 (2000): 440-486

Read more about Professor Kühne's research in our Active Learning web pages: http://www.clarku.edu/activelearning/departments/history/kuehne/kuehneInt.cfm