More than 60 years on, the rise of National Socialism and its unprecedented crimes remain the most written about historical events in twentieth century German history. What happened in Germany when the Nazis set out to establish their 'thousand-year Reich'? Why did innumerable Germans support the regime and, at a later stage, even engage in the Nazi-led genocide? How was it possible for the Nazi movement to gain ground in the highly developed and sophisticated German society in the first place? This course looks at National Socialism in its historical context. ‘High politics’ will be dealt with as well as ‘history from below’ in order to provide historical explanations for the rise and fall of the Third Reich.

This course aims to:

• provide a historical introduction the history and legacy of the Third Reich (1933-1945)
• facilitate an understanding of the significance of diverse historical experiences and identities in Germany, such as class, gender and race
• raise awareness about the plurality of historical perspectives on modern German history by examining the validity and shortcomings of different explanations of the triumph of Nazism in Germany

Show understanding of central aspects of German social, political, economic and cultural history in the period from 1933 to 1945.

• Demonstrate a capacity to critically evaluate the complex nature and historical causes of National Socialism, and to assess their implications for an understanding of contemporary German affairs.
• Demonstrate a critical awareness of the plurality of historical perspectives on the history of Nazism including the advantages and shortcomings of different explanations of the nature of National Socialism.
• Show ability to participate in argument and discussion with regard to major historiographical debates which have dominated the study of Nazism over the past thirty years.
• Use appropriate registers when communicating knowledge and understanding of the course material.

The course is taught by means of two lectures per week accompanied by weekly seminars and by feedback. Please bear in mind that learning is an active process, requiring not only the acquisition of knowledge but also the exchange of ideas, opinions and arguments with others. It is therefore essential that you do all the reading for the seminars (the essential preparatory reading will be provided on Learning Central) and contribute actively to seminar discussions. To facilitate your preparations, lectures will be complemented by relevant film screenings. You will receive continuous feedback throughout the semester. There will be a revision session (examination preparation) in the final week and guidance on how to write a quality essay will be given throughout the semester. Please make use of my weekly office hours – they are reserved for you!

On completion of this module a typical student will be able to:

Personal transferable skills

• Communicate ideas effectively and fluently, both orally and in writing
• Use communications and information technologies for the retrieval and presentation of information
• Work independently, demonstrating initiative, self-organisation and time-management
• Collaborate with others and contribute to the achievement of common goals

Generic intellectual skills

• Gather, organize and deploy evidence, data and information from a variety of sources
• Develop a reasoned argument, synthesize relevant information and exercise critical judgement
• Reflect on his or her own learning and make use of constructive feedback
• Manage his or her own learning self-critically

The generic skills will be manifest in the following activities: literature searches on the internet and CD ROM, compilation of bibliographies for essays, use of PowerPoint, presentation of written work, and mastery of „FootNote‟.

Coursework Essay: 30%; Essay of approx. 2,000 words (excluding bibliography).  Submission : 1 May 2014

Written Exam:  70% (2 hours); Spring Exam Period.

In the exam, you are required to answer two out of eight questions.  However, do not attempt a question likely to lead to repetition of material in the assessed coursework essay. 

 Lectures

Topics:

• Who voted for the Nazis?
• Hitler and the Nazi Weltanschauung
• Seizure of power and the politics of Gleichschaltung
• The constitutive void of Nazism: a psychoanalytic approach
• The SS state
• Nazi economic policy
• Mothers in the fatherland? Women in the Third Reich
• Race policy, Volksgemeinschaft and genocide
• Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
• Hitler unstoppable? NS foreign policy and the road to war
• The Third Reich in context
• Revision session

Seminars

• Triumph des Willensby Leni Riefenstahl (film discussion)
• What part did Hitler play in the Third Reich?
• How modern was National Socialism?
• Symbolic identification: the enigma of anti-Semitism
• The Eternal Jew and Jud Süß: Propaganda in the Third Reich (film discussion)
• ‘Arbeiterstaat und Führersozialismus‘?
• To what extent was National Socialism rooted in German history?
• Women in Nazi Germany
• Explaining the Holocaust: Moishe Postone
• Resistance

Recommended Text Books

Roderick Stackelberg, Hitler's Germany: Origins, Interpretation, Legacies (2^nd ed., London & New York: Routlegde, 2009) 263 pp. [DD 256.5.S8]

This volume provides an instructive overview of the history of Nazi Germany and sets it in the wider context of modern German history. Focusing on the period from 1870 to 1945, it analyses how a national culture of such creativity and achievement could generate such barbarism and destructiveness.

Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 4^th ed. (London: Arnold, 2000) 293pp. [DD 256.5.K3]

As an introduction to the major themes and debates relating to Nazism, The Nazi Dictatorship has become a classical account. This revised edition brings a wide range of long-standing and ongoing debates in the field into sharp focus and suggests ways of approaching contentious issues such as the essence of Nazism and the origins of the Holocaust.

Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (London: Macmillan, 2001) 992pp. [DD 256.5.B8]

The Third Reich is one of the most comprehensive single-volume assessments of the history, effects, and meaning of National Socialism to date. Filled with moral considerations based on notions of political religion and human decency, this interpretative history of Nazi Germany gives full weight to the experience of ordinary people who were swept up in or repelled by the Nazi movement.

Topic specific seminar reading with guiding questions will be provided on Learning Central.

Recommended further reading

• Aly, Götz, and Susanne Heim, Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction (2002). [D810.J4.A5]
• Bauer, Yehuda, Rethinking the Holocaust (2002). [D810.J4.B2]
• Bartov, Omer, ed., The Holocaust: Origins, Interpretations, Aftermath (2000). [D810.4.H6]
• Benz, Wolfgang, The Holocaust (2000). [D810.J4.B3]
• Berger, Stefan, Social Democracy and the Working Class in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany (2000). [HD8450.B3]
• Bridenthal, Renate, et al., eds., When Biology became Desitiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (1984). [HQ1623.W475.W4]
• Browning, Christopher R., Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (2000). [D810.J4.B7]
• Burleigh, Michael, Moral Combat: a History of World War II (2010). [D743.B8]
• Burleigh, Michael and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (1991). [DD 256.5.B8]
• Evans, Richard J., The Third Reich in Power (2006) and The Third Reich at War (2009). [D757.E9]
• Frei, Norbert, National Socialist Rule in Germany: The Führer State 1933-1945 (1993). [DD256.5.F7]
• Friedländer, Saul, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1:The Years of Persecution 1933-1939 (1997); vol. 2: The Years of Extermination 1939-1945 (2007). [DS135.G33.F7]
• Gellately, Robert, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (2001). [DD256.5.G3]
• Goldhagen, Daniel J., Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996). [D810.J4.G6]
• Grau, Günter, Hidden Holocaust? Lesbian and Gay Persecution in Germany 1933-1945 (1995). [364.1536.G]
• Herbert, Ulrich, Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labour in Germany under the Third Reich (1997). [HD8458.A2.H3]
• Hoffmann, Peter, The History of the German Resistance to Hitler (3rd edn., 1996). [DD256.3.H6]
• Kershaw, Ian, Hitler, 2 vols. (1999/2000). [DD247.H4.K3]
• Klemperer, Victor, I Shall Bear Witness: Diaries 1933-1941 (1998); idem, To the Bitter End: Diaries 1942-1945 (1999). [DD253.K5]
• Koonz, Claudia, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (1987). [HQ1623.K6]
• Koonz, Claudia, The Nazi Conscience (2003).
• Leitz, Christian, ed., The Third Reich (1999). [DD256.5.T4]
• Levi, Primo, If This is a Man (1987). [DD805.P6.L3]
• Mason, Timothy W., Social Policy in the Third Reich: The Working Class and the 'National Community' (1993). [HD8450.M2]
• Mühlberger, Detlev, Hitler's Followers: Studies in the Sociology of the Nazi Movement (1991). [DD256.5.M8]
• Noakes, Jeremy and Pridham G., eds., Nazism 1919 - 1945. A Documentary Reader, 4 vols. (1983/1998). [DD253.25.N2]
• Overy, Richard, War and Economy in the Third Reich (1994). [HC286.3.O9]
• Peukert, Detlev, Inside Nazi Germany (1993). [DD256.5.P3]
• Pine, Lisa, Nazi Family Policy, 1933-1945 (1997). [HQ625.P4]
• Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939 (2007).
• Stephenson, Jill, Women in Nazi Germany (Harlow: Longman, 2001). [DD256.5.S8]
• Stone, Dan (ed.), Theoretical Interpretations of the Holocaust (2001). [PN56.H55.T4]
• Taylor, Brandon and Wilfried van der Will, eds., The Nazification of Art (1990). [709.43N]
• Theweleit, Klaus, Male fantasies, vol. 1, Women, Floods, Bodies, History (1987); vol. 2, Male bodies: Psychoanalysing the White Terror (1989). [HQ28.T4]
• Zizek, Slavoj, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion (2001). [JC481.Z4]