GEOFFREY MEGARGEE

Geoffrey Preaut Megargee (1959 - 2020) This is in loving memory of Geoffrey Preaut Megargee (Geoff), wonderful husband, father extraordinaire, dedicated family member, devoted friend, scholar, story-teller, baker and "honorable, honest and kind man."

Geoff passed away peacefully at home in Arlington Virginia on August 1, 2020 after a nine month illness. He loved spending time with family, friends and colleagues, listening to his son Ruslan play the guitar, travelling domestically and internationally, his work at the Mandel Center of the United States Holocaust Museum and as a military historian, reading everything from military history and holocaust studies (especially before bed) to Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, newspapers and various periodicals, listening to music of all types, Facebook and spending time in the great outdoors - particularly near his family home in Esopus New York - hiking, walking, camping, sailing and more. He loved Christmas and the 35+ year New Year's party in Esopus with family and friends.

Geoff was the son of Ann (né Mohan) and Anthony Scherer Megargee. He was born and raised in Esopus NY. He attended St Lawrence University (New York) (BA, 1981) during which time he joined ROTC and graduated from Winter Ranger School. After graduation, he served as a US Army officer as a field artilleryman at Fort Ord, California and then in the US Army Reserves. He spent a a number of years in business and then returned to his true passion - history. He received an MA in History from the San Jose State University (California) (1990) and a PhD in Military History at the Ohio State University (1998); he did research in Freiberg-im-Breisgau, Germany while working on his dissertation (recipient of a J. William Fulbright grant).

From 2000 through 2019, Geoff was dedicated to his work at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. As the Mandel Center's Senior Applied Research Scholar, Geoff led the Museum's effort to create an encyclopedia of all sites of incarceration operated by the Nazis or their collaborators across German dominated Europe. Under Geoff's leadership, this project went from a big idea to one of the Museum's largest, most complex and most successful projects. Thanks to his leadership and vision, the USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, which won a National Jewish Book Award, has become the authoritative resource for scholars, educators, and researchers who work not only on the Holocaust, but also on Nazism and World War II more broadly.

Three volumes of the Encyclopedia were published during Geoff's years at the USHMM. At the time he became ill, he was working on the later stages of volume 4, the volume perhaps closest to his heart given his training in military history. Due to the dedication of Geoff's colleagues at the Museum and his German co-editors, this volume, "Camps and Other Detention Facilities under the German Armed Forces" will be published in early 2022. This volume includes prisoner-of-war camps, military brothels, work camps for Tunisian Jews, and military penal camps and prisons. One of Geoff's dear colleagues and friends at the USHMM said last August that "Geoff was more than a Mensch. His graciousness, humility and generosity combined with his intellectual, speaking and organizational skills made him a uniquely kind and talented person and a rock for the Mandel Center."

Geoff remained active in military history scholarship and community after Ohio State. His first book, Inside Hitler's High Command (University Press of Kansas, 2000), won the Society of Military History's 2001 Distinguished Book award. This book was key in the repudiation of the disturbingly enduring legacy of "the dual myth of German military genius and moral correctness," particularly with regard to the Wehrmacht's war against the Soviet Union. His second book, War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) analyzed the organized mass murder of Jews, Soviet POWs, Roma, and other civilians deemed inimical to the Reich within the context of German military planning and policies and, written for a broad audience, the book alerted many readers to the key role that the German military played in the Nazi Reich passing the threshold towards genocide.

Geoff was active in the Society for Military History (SMH) from his time at Ohio State through the 2019 SMH Annual Conference, serving as an SMH Trustee, writing various SMH papers and participating in its annual conferences. He was involved in the U.S. Commission of Military History and in the Arlington VA Military Classics Seminar. Geoff was selected posthumously as the 2021 recipient of the Edwin H. Simmons Award (presented for long, distinguished or particularly outstanding service to SMH). As the widow of a past President of the SMH said, Geoff was "another cool kid of SMH, gone too soon."

Geoff was predeceased by his parents and his beloved sister Laurie Jane Cummins.

Geoff is survived by his wife Robin Jo Frank, retired international (including space), lawyer of Arlington VA; his 18 year old son Ruslan Nikolas Picker Megargee of Falls Church, Virginia; his half brother Gerald E Cummins Jr. and his wife Martha Nickerson Cummins of Colorado Springs, CO; his half brother David B. Cummins of Esopus, NY; and many beloved cousins.

The outpouring of friendship and caring of Geoff's friends, colleagues and mentees from many places and circumstances has sustained his family over this past year. Knowing Geoff lives on in all of us is a great comfort.