Miami Presents: From Prussia to Putin - Germany's Military, Then and Now
Featuring Professor Erik Jensen
Presented on: Tuesday, February 17th 2026 at 12:00 PM EST
View Upcoming Events View Past Event Recordings
Join us for Winter College – five days of lunchtime webinar lectures and MUAA's famous virtual bourbon and wine tastings. All fun and no exams means this is the collegiate experience of your dreams!
Over the past months, Germany has begun to contemplate its most substantial military buildup since the interwar period, prompted first by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and then by the US's more recent reassessment of its NATO engagement. How did a nation that spent generations rejecting militarism—after having spent so many earlier generations glorifying it— reverse course so dramatically again? What role did Germany's peace movement play in shaping—and resisting—these shifts? This webinar traces Germany's remarkable military journey over the past century.
Erik Jensen is a historian specializing in 20th-century Germany, particularly the Weimar Republic, with research interests spanning gender, sexuality, and the body in modern European history. He is the author of Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity (Oxford University Press) and is currently completing a website that provides translated primary documents on the Weimar Republic to a non-German-speaking public, under the sponsorship of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC: German History in Documents and Images. Jensen teaches courses on German, European, and world history, as well as a Miami-Plan course on 20th-century genocides.
Please reach out to J.J. Slager at slagerjj@miamioh.edu with any questions.
| Support the Andrew Cayton Memorial Fund |
The Andrew R.L Cayton Fund commemorates Dr. Cayton’s profound impact as an instructor, advisor, and mentor of generations of students in the History department and at Miami University. It also supports history students’ research, internships, and other opportunities to expand their education and prepare them for a wide range of careers.
The views expressed by presenters are their own and their appearance in a program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by Miami University Alumni Association.