Professor of History
Department: History
Affiliated Department(s): International Studies
Contact
Office: Miller Library 103A
Phone: 207-859-5331
Fax: 859-5340
Email: rmscheck@colby.edu
Mailing Address
5331 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, Maine 04901-8853
Education
Habilitation - Universität Basel (Switzerland), 2003
Ph.D. - Brandeis University, 1993
Lizentiat - Universität Zurich (Switzerland), 1988
Musical training as a cello student - Konservatorium und Musikakademi (Zurich), 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
History of Yugoslavia
German history and literature
Modern European history and politics
Swiss funding for Hitler
Professional Information
My last book dealt with massacres of Black African soldiers from the French army by the German army in 1940 (Hitler’s African Victims). It has been translated into French and German. Earlier, I published a book on right-wing women in the bourgeois parties of Weimar Germany and a book on Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz’s involvement in German right-wing politics (1914-1930). I have also written more than a dozen articles and book chapters on the history of childhood, on German putschists and right-wing women, on Hitler’s Swiss funding, and on the execution of Black soldiers by the German army during the invasion of France in 1940.
My non-academic pursuits are: classical music (cello) soccer (contact me if you want to play with some faculty and students at Colby!), and – most importantly – being a father of three children.
Please visit my personal home page with more information on my research, some course materials, and a recipe for Linzertorte.
Courses Currently Teaching 2011-12
| Course | Course Title |
| HI112 A | A Survey of Modern Europe |
| HI200 A | Introduction to History |
| HI322 A | Europe and the Second World War |
| HI421 A | Research Seminar: Debating the Nazi Past |
Publications
Access the Interview in the Colby Magazine about the discovery of a document by Léopold Sédar Senghor.
Click here to view Professor Scheck’s article on Senghor, in PDF format.
Read this article in French about Senghor and Professor Scheck’s scholarship on the subject.
Hitler’s African Victims (Cambridge University Press)
“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.
Click here to see the C-SPAN about the book.
Mothers of the Nation – Right-Wing Women in Weimar Germany
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 voters strengthened the nationalist, anti-democraci 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.” Peter Fritzsche, author of Reading Berlin 1900 and Germans Into Nazis.
Alfred von Tirpitz and German Right-Wing Politics, 1914-1930
In a skillful combination of biographical case study and contextual analysis, 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 Tirpirtz. In examining that, he explains the predicament of the conservatives during the period.