Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Areas of Interest
Modern Europe; Modern Germany; War and Society; Holocaust and Genocide
Biography
Gavin Wiens is an historian of modern Europe, modern Germany, war and society, and mass violence and genocide. His research interests include politics and the military in nineteenth and twentieth-century Germany; warfare from the French Revolution to the Second World War; and the role of the Wehrmacht (German military) in the Holocaust.
His first monograph, titled The Imperial German Army Between Kaiser and King: Monarchy, Nation-Building, and War, 1866-1918, explored the intersection of national integration, monarchical power, and military affairs in Germany between the Wars of Unification (1864-1871) and the end of the First World War, arguing that even though the Kaiser (emperor) became commander-in-chief of the armed forces in 1871, Germany’s system of military federalism enabled some of its twenty-one lesser crowned heads to exercise more control over soldiers from their respective states than scholars have often assumed.
His current research project takes a long view of the German army’s relationship with the franc-tireur, or partisan fighter, from the French Revolution to the Second World War. It aims to show that a range of factors, including the changing nature of warfare, political and social developments, geography, and ideological forces, combined to create an image of the franc-tireur as an omnipresent and ruthless foe, and that this image in turn shaped the behaviour of German soldiers towards civilians, most tragically during the Holocaust.
His research has been funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD); the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC; the Central European History Society; the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies; and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
In addition to teaching at the University of Toronto, he has served as an expert advisor to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) for the exhibition Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away. He has also worked with the Toronto Holocaust Museum to offer training workshops for educators who teach the Holocaust to their own students.
Education
Publications
- The Imperial German Army Between Kaiser and King: Monarchy, Nation-Building, and War, 1866-1918 (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan : 2023)
- “Guardians and Go-Betweens: Germany’s Military Plenipotentiaries during the First World War.” ( : 2022)
- “Empire, Oil, and Bavarians: The German Expeditionary Force in the Caucasus, 1918-1919.” (London: Palgrave Macmillan : 2019)
- “A Mixed Bag of Loyalties: Jewish Soldiers, Ethnic Minorities, and State-Based Contingents in the German Army, 1914-1918.” (London: Palgrave Macmillan : 2019)