- 200 years
- Study
- International
- Business and employers
- Research
- About us
https://webcdn.mmu.ac.uk/profiles/img/no-avatar.gif
My free time is taken up by friends and family (I now have 2 grandchildren and am hoping for more!), and I enjoy crime thrillers, socialising, visiting new places, etc. I wish I could say that I leap from aircraft or abseil from buildings, because it sounds a lot more daring than doing sudoku puzzles. But I have been paragliding, and there's still time for the rest...
I teach because I'm passionately interested in my area (twentieth century history, especially the Second World War and the Holocaust), and I hope I can communicate that to my students. Even with subjects as terrible as the Holocaust - when our first reaction is horror and compassion - we still need to act as historians, weighing the evidence and seeking to understand the circumstances in which mass murder emerged, and why some people had the courage to resist.
Errrm. Try to be kind, even - or especially - when feeling grumpy.
Through discussion, by looking at sources and considering alternative explanations.
After graduating from the University of London, I gained a PGCE at the University of Sussex and went on to achieve a DPhil from the University of Oxford. My thesis was on the Bund Deutscher Madel (BDM), the girls' section of the Hitler Youth, and the women's branch of the Labour Service.
I have taught in departments of History, German and Sociology. As well as working for the Open University, I have been a freelance translator of German history texts and a research assistant at the Imperial War Museum.
I was associated with the Foundation Year both as a lectutrer and as an administrator, and have been departmental representative on the Faculty Academic Development Committee and the Student Experience Committee.
I'm also Programme Leader for the BA History degree, which means I work with the administrative staff to help run the degree.
As well as English, I have done a lot of translation of German history texts.
Europe in Turmoil - Aspects of European history between 1900 and 1939
Europe, Nazism and War
Holocaust: the Destruction of the European Jewry (3rd Year Option). This surveys the main historiographical debates surrounding the development of the 'Final Solution', as well as examining aspects of Jewish resistance and the persecution of other racial and social groups such as the mentally handicapped and European gypsies.
This period of history shaped much of the world we live in today - and also saw the slaughter of millions in societies which thought of themselves as 'civilised'. What could be more important than understanding the conditions in which men and women thought it acceptable to kill millions of innocent human beings on the basis of their 'race' or disability?
Europe in Turmoil - Aspects of European history between 1900 and 1939
Europe, Nazism and War
Holocaust: the Destruction of the European Jewry (3rd Year Option)
My first research interest concerned youth organisations in Nazi Germany, particularly the Bund Deutscher Maedel (the girls’ section of the Hitler Youth) and the Young Women’s Labour Service.
More recently, I have also turned my attention to the German occupation of the Channel Islands, the only British territories to fall into Nazi hands during the Second World War. My main focus has been on aspects of defiance and resistance, and the extent to which these were possible on small, heavily-occupied islands cut off from outside help.
Protest, Defiance and Resistance in the Channel Islands: German Occupation, 1940-5, with Gilly Carr and Paul Sanders (London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2014)
‘Zur Geschichte des Bundes Deutscher Mädel’, in Dagmar Reese (Hg.), Die BDM-Generation, Potsdamer Studien 19 (Berlin: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2007), 89-158.
‘”Nothing was ever the same again”’: public opinion in the occupied Channel Islands, June – December 1942’, The Local Historian, (February 2005).
‘Noel McKinstry’, Channel Islands Occupation Review 32 (2003)
‘The goodness of strangers: help to escaped slave labourers in occupied Jersey, 1940-1945’, Contemporary European History 11, 2 (2002), 211-227
‘The Channel Islands’, in Bob Moore (ed.), Resistance in Western Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 65-92
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated by J.J.Graham, abridged and with an introduction by Louise Willmot (Ware: Wordsworth, 1997)
‘The debate on the introduction of an Auxiliary Military Service Law for women in the Third Reich and its consequences, August 1944-April 1945’, German History: the Journal of the German History Society 2 (1985), 10-20.
For the last four years I have worked with Dr Gilly Carr of Cambridge University and Dr Paul Sanders on the subject of resistance in the Channel Islands during the German Occupation. Our book on the subject was published in 2014.
G. Carr, P. Sanders, L. Willmot (2014). Protest, Defiance and Resistance in the Channel Islands. Bloomsbury.
CV. Clausewitz (1997). On War. Wordsworth.
LH. Willmot (2005). ‘”Nothing was ever the same again”’: public opinion in the occupied Channel Islands, June – December 1942. The Local Historian. 35(1),
LH. Willmot (2004). Noel McKinstry. Channel Islands Occupation Review.
L. Willmot (2002). The Goodness of Strangers: Help to Escaped Russian Slave Labourers in Occupied Jersey, 1942–1945. Contemporary European History. 11(2), pp.211-227.
LH. Willmot (1985). The debate on the introduction of an Auxiliary Military Service Law for women in the Third Reich and its consequences, August 1944-April 1945. German History: the Journal of the German History Society. 2(1), pp.10-20.
LH. Willmot (2007). Zur Geschichte des Bundes Deutscher Mädel. D. Reese. In: Die BDM-Generation.
LH. Willmot (2000). The Channel Islands. B. Moore. In: Resistance in Western Europe. Berg Pub Limited, pp.65-92.
In spring 2013, with Dr Gillian Carr, I attended the unveiling of a blue plaque in Guernsey to commemorate Major Marie Ozanne of the Salvation Army, who protested against the ill-treatment of Jews and OT workers in the island. I wrote the proposal recommending Ozanne for the plaque and gave an address at its unveiling, after undertaking research into her life and death during the Occupation.
I appeared on Channel Islands television with Gilly Carr in 2012 to discuss our work on resistance.