Jeremy Best

Jeremy Best is associate professor of history at Iowa State University, where he explores histories of race, religion, and culture in 19th and 20th century Germany. Best looks at the history of imagination: “the construction of meaning by people and institutions in the past through fantasy, the articulation of those fantasies through cultural expression, and the transformation of that meaning into concrete policy behavior and goals.”

His most recent contribution to military history is his new project: “Toy Soldiering: West German Rearmament, the Holocaust, and the United States.” In this work, Best questions “how German and American military planners and wargaming hobbyists imagined the recent past (World War II and the Holocaust) and conceived of the future (the Cold War).” Read more at: Jeremy Best • Department of History • Iowa State University

We are thankful for Jeremy’s contribution, “The Last PowerPoint: Teaching World War II with the Holocaust,” for its insights on WWII and difficult history pedagogy.