USHMM | 2025 Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture

Territorial Expansion in Nazi Europe and the United States

Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi society removed people from the Reich they considered unworthy of being citizens because they did not fit into their vision of the racial national community. They forcibly displaced “undesirables” eastward into ghettos, simultaneously expanding their borders to create “living space” for their citizens. In a different context, the United States expanded its borders westward between 1801 and the 1970s. To free up land for its growing population, the United States violently removed Indigenous peoples, whom some Americans perceived as incompatible with national and racial ideals.

Join us to examine the intersections and divergences in these two histories of expansion, which were based on racist and antisemitic ideologies.

Speakers

Dr. Elise Boxer, Director, Institute of American Indian Studies; Associate Professor, Department of History, University of South Dakota; Author, “The Book of Mormon as Mormon Settler Colonialism” in Essays on American Indian & Mormon History

Dr. Edward B. Westermann, Regents Professor of History, Texas A&M University–San Antonio; Author, Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest

Moderator

Dr. Wendy Rohleder-Sook, Chair, Department of Communication Studies, Law, and Political Science; Assistant Professor of Political Science; Director of Pre-Law/Legal Studies, Fort Hays State University

This in-person and livestream discussion is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

To RSVP. click here .