This course offers students an in-depth look at the largest and most destructive war in world history: the existential conflict between the USSR and Nazi Germany fought from June 1941 to May 1945. In addition to examining the major military encounters that culminated in the Red Army's decisive defeat of the German Wehrmacht, the course draws attention to the consequential ways in which the epochal events of 1941¿1945 radically re-shaped Soviet society and culture and laid the foundation for the Soviet Union's emergence as one of the twentieth-century's two superpowers. It also investigates how the conflict's contested memory has served as a historical, cultural, and spiritual touchstone for post-Soviet citizens and as an ideological weapon for contemporary state agents.