Donal O՚Sullivan

MA Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University, Bonn, 1989

PhD Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, 2001

HIST 449

HIST 457

Born in Cologne, Germany, Donal O’Sullivan graduated with an MA from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn in 1989, just as the Berlin Wall came down.

He pursued his studies with a PhD in 1995 on British and German views of Soviet Russia in the 1920s and 1930s, published as Furcht und Faszination - deutsche und britische Russlandbilder 1921-1933 (Fear And Fascination - British And German Images of Soviet Russia) (Cologne, Vienna: Böhlau, 1996).

With the partial opening of Russian and Eastern European archives in the 1990s, Dr. O’Sullivan’s next project, the Habilitation or second dissertation, centered on Soviet foreign policy between 1939 and 1949, looking at such diverse issues as Soviet policy in Eastern Europe, the beginning of the Cold War, and the consolidation of the Soviet bloc. Written at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in 2001, the thesis was published as Stalins cordon sanitaire. Die sowjetische Osteuropapolitik und die Reaktionen des Westens 1939-1949  (Stalin’s cordon sanitaire. Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe and the Western response), (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003. The book received the Kronauer Foundation Prize in 2008.

 

While working in the National Archives in Kew, England, Dr. O’Sullivan discovered recently declassified documents on cooperation between SOE and NKVD during wartime. This became the focus of his next book-length study, titled Dealing with the Devil. Anglo-Soviet Intelligence Co-Operation During the Second World War (New York: Peter Lang, 2010). The book highlights unknown episodes from the ‘war in the shadows’ such as parachute operations and double agents jointly run by British and Soviet officers.

 

Dr. O’Sullivan joined CSUN in 2007. He won the CSUN Distinguished Teaching Award in 2009 and the College Teaching Fellowship in 2012. He teaches classes in Russian and German history (HIST 449 and 457) and regularly leads student field trips to Europe, focusing on 20th century history and Jewish heritage. In 2011, he was invited to the Hoover Institution’s Summer Archives workshop, where he studied documents of the former KGB in Lithuania. He is currently working on a study of historical forgeries and the recruitment of former Gestapo officers by Allied services.