Holocaust historian to lead MSU program on German war crimes

Contact: Margaret Kovar

STARKVILLE, Miss.--A public program exploring World War II crimes of the German army will be held Thursday [Feb. 7] at Mississippi State.

Open to all, the address by Geoffrey Megargee, titled "The Crimes of the Wehrmacht," will get under way at 3:30 p.m. in 232 McCool Hall. He is visiting the university as part of the history department's International Security/Internal Safety Speaker Series.

Megargee is a senior applied research scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

A member of the center's research team since 2000, Megargee currently is organizing and editing a multivolume encyclopedic history of Nazi-run concentration camps and ghettos throughout Europe.

A military history doctoral graduate of Ohio State University, he is the author of "Inside Hitler's High Command" (2002, University Press of Kansas), winner of the Society of Military History's Distinguished Book Award. He also wrote "War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide at the Eastern Front, 1941" (2007, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers).

Megargee is a 1981 St. Lawrence University graduate. Following military service and work in the business world, he attended San Jose State University, where he received his master's degree in European history. For more information, visit www.ushmm.org/research/center/.

For additional information on Megargee's address, contact associate professor Mary Kathryn Barbier at 662-325-3604 or mkb99@history.msstate.edu.