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-- HIST 4P42 --
NAZI GERMANY
Brock University, Fall Term 2012
Seminars: Monday, 5-8pm (IC107)
Instructor:
Office:
Extension:
E-mail:
Office hours:
Dr Elizabeth Vlossak
573 Glenridge Ave, rm 217
4020
[email protected]
Mondays, 3-4pm; Fridays, 2-3pm
Course Overview
This course explores the evolution of Nazi ideology, the coming of the Third Reich, the nature of Hitler’s
dictatorship, the Nazification of German society, culture and the economy, war, genocide, postwar
denazification, and postwar Germany’s attempts to ‘come to terms with the past’. Through the use of
primary, secondary and visual sources, students will not only gain a more sophisticated understanding of
Nazi Germany, but will also be exposed to the major historical controversies and on-going problems and
perspectives of interpretation.
Required Textbooks
Jane Caplan (ed.), Nazi Germany (Oxford, 2008)
Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (4th ed., London, 2000)
Bernhard Schlink, The Reader: A Novel (1997)
Online sources:
‘German History in Documents and Images’(GHDI) – section on Nazi Germany available at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/section.cfm?section_id=13.
Roderick Stackelberg and Sally A. Winkle, The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts (London,
2002) – electronic copy available through the Brock University library website
Film: Das schreckliche Mädchen (trans. The Nasty Girl) (West Germany, 1990)
All additional seminar readings are available on Sakai.
Requirements and Evaluation
Seminar participation
30%
Seminar presentation / facilitation
10%
Seminar reading notes (2 x 5%)
10%
Research paper
30%
Take-home final
20%
All of the elements that make up the final grade are obligatory. A grade of ‘incomplete’ will be
given to students who fail to complete all parts of the evaluation.
Seminars
Participation (30%): Students must prepare and actively participate in the weekly student-led
seminars. Attendance in this course is mandatory, and more than one unexcused absence will result
in a failing grade for the seminar component of the course.
Presentation/Facilitation (10%): Seminars will be led by two (and sometimes three) students.
Seminar presenters must meet with the instructor in advance (preferably the previous week) to
go over their presentation and main discussion questions – part of the leadership mark will be
based on this meeting.
Reading notes (2 X 5% = 10%): On two occasions (the week of his/her facilitation, and another
week for which he/she will sign up) each student will submit a two-page reflection on the weekly
readings that will be posted to the course website 24 hours prior to class for everyone to review.
These reflections should provide a brief overview of the themes/arguments of the texts, as well as a
critical assessment of them (Do you agree with the author(s)? Whose argument do you find more
compelling? To what extent do the texts further our understanding of Nazi Germany?). All students
are expected to access these submissions prior to attending class.
Research paper (30%)
Students will write a research paper on a topic of their choice. Students are encouraged to select a
topic and begin their research as early as possible so they have time to order books through RACER
(if necessary). Topics need to be approved by the instructor as soon as possible, and no later
than Week 6.
Papers must be ten (10) to twelve (12) pages in length (2,500-3,000 words).
Students are encouraged to discuss their essay with the instructor regularly and to submit an outline
and/or rough draft several weeks before the paper is due.
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There is a staggered deadline for the essay. For all students facilitating in Weeks 2-6, essays are due
in class Week 7.
For students facilitating in Weeks 7-12, essays are due in class the week following their seminar.
For example, if you facilitate in Week 7, your essay is due in class in Week 8. If you facilitate in
Week 12, your paper is due at 5pm on Monday, 3 December at 5pm. If you are at all confused about
the due-date of your paper, please talk to the instructor.
Late assignments will be given a penalty of 5% per day. Assignments that are more than 1 week late
will not receive comments. Papers more than 2 weeks late will receive a mark of zero.
Take-home final (20%)
Students are responsible for reading Schlink’s novel The Reader over the course of the term. In the
final seminar we will watch the film The Nasty Girl. On Friday, 30 November the instructor will
post an essay question related to the novel and the film. Students will write an essay of six (6) to
eight (8) pages in length (1,500-2,000 words) answering this question. The take-home is due
Monday, 10 December at 5pm.
Style and Format
Make sure your assignments include a cover page, pagination (ie. page numbers), and a
bibliography. Please use the Chicago style of referencing for footnotes and the bibliography. If you
have any questions about this style, please refer to Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History.
A penalty of up to -5% will be given for assignments that do not meet these requirements. Points
will also be deducted for general sloppiness and typos/ spelling errors.
Academic Dishonesty
Please ensure that all sources that you use in the research paper are thoroughly documented
(including material from websites). If you do not do this, you are guilty of plagiarism. Brock
University’s Academic Misconduct Regulations define plagiarism as ‘…presenting work done (in
whole or in part) by someone else as if it were one’s own.’
If you have any doubts about what practices are characterised as plagiarism, please refer to
http://www.brocku.ca/library/plagiarism.htm or consult the instructor. Penalties for academic
dishonesty will vary according to the particular case, but may be severe. In this course, the penalty
for plagiarism is zero on the assignment.
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Seminars
Week 1 (Mon., 10 Sept.) – Introduction
Readings:
Caplan, ‘Introduction’
Kershaw, chapter 1
Week 2 (Mon., 17 Sept.) – Nazi Ideology
Readings:
Richard J. Evans, ‘The emergence of Nazi ideology,’ in Caplan, pp. 26-47
Kershaw, ch.2
Primary documents:
‘German Fascism before the Nazi Seizure of Power,’ in Fascism, ed. Roger Griffin
(Oxford, 1995), pp.96-115
Excerpt from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, in Inside Hitler’s Germany: A Documentary
History of Life in the Third Reich, ed. Benjamin C. Sax and Dieter Kunz (Lexington
and Toronto, 1992), pp.189-203
Week 3 (Mon., 24 Sept.) – Hitler, the Nazi Party and the seizure of power
Readings:
Peter Fritzsche, ‘The NSDAP 1919-1934: from fringe politics to the seizure of
power,’ in Caplan, pp.48-72.
Richard Bessel, ‘Violence as Propaganda: The Role of the Storm Troopers in the
Rise of National Socialism,’ in The Formation of the Nazi Constituency, 1919-1933,
ed. Thomas Childers (London and Sydney, 1986), pp.131-46.
Helen Boak, ‘“Our Last Hope”: Women’s Votes for Hitler – A Reappraisal’,
German Studies Review 12, 2 (1989): 289-310.
William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power (1966) – excerpt in Nazism, ed.
Neil Gregor (Oxford, 2000), pp.107-112.
Primary sources:
‘Statistics on the Social and Geographical Bases of Nazism,’ in Nazism: A
Documentary Reader, Volume 1, ed. Noakes and Pridham (Exeter, 1999), pp. 81-87
‘Electoral Statistics, 1924-33,’ from Inside Hitler’s Germany: A Documentary
History of Life in the Third Reich, ed. Benjamin C. Sax and Dieter Kunz (Lexington
and Toronto, 1992), p.95
Excerpt from Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom (1942), in Nazism, ed. Neil Gregor
(Oxford, 2000), pp.42-5
Week 4 (Mon., 1 Oct.) – Hitler and the Nazi State
Readings:
Jeremy Noakes, ‘Hitler and the Nazi state: leadership, hierarchy, and power,’ in
Caplan, pp.73-98.
Kershaw, ch.4
Ian Kershaw, ‘“Working towards the Führer”: Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler
Dictatorship,’ Contemporary European History, 2, 2 (1993), 103-18.
Robert Gellately, excerpt from The Gestapo and German Society (1990), in Nazism,
ed. Neil Gregor (Oxford, 2000), pp.253-5
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Claudia Koonz, excerpt from Mothers in the Fatherland (1987), in Nazism, pp.2558.
Primary sources:
Law to Safeguard the Unity of Party and State (December 1, 1933) – available online
at http://www.germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English10.pdf
‘The Hitler State,’ in Inside Hitler’s Germany: A Documentary History of Life in the
Third Reich, ed. Benjamin C. Sax and Dieter Kunz (Lexington and Toronto, 1992),
pp.161-76.
‘The Organizational Structure of the NSDAP’ – Available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=1899
Week 5 (Mon., 8 Oct.) – THANKSGIVING – CLASS CANCELLED
Week 6 (Mon., 15 Oct.) – The Nazi Volksgemeinschaft: Inclusion
Readings:
Jill Stephenson, ‘Inclusion: building the national community in propaganda and
practice,’ in Caplan, pp.99-121.
Kershaw, ch.7
Detlev Peukert, ‘The Führer Myth and Consent in Everyday Life,’ in Inside Nazi
Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life (London, 1989),
pp.67-80.
David Welch, ‘Nazi Propaganda and the Volksgemeinschaft: Constructing a People’s
Community,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 39, 2 (2004), 213-38.
Kristin Semmens, ‘Travel in Merry Germany’: Tourism in the Third Reich,’ in
Histories of Tourism: Representation, Identity and Conflict, ed. John K. Walton
(Cleveland, Buffalo and Toronto, 2005), pp.144-61.
Primary sources:
Correspondence between Wilhelm Furtwängler and Joseph Goebbels about Art and
the State (April 1933) – available online at
http://www.germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English84.pdf
Law on the Hitler Youth (December 1, 1936) – available online at
http://www.germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English74.pdf
"Germany Grows through Strong Mothers and Healthy Children": Propaganda
Poster by the Mother and Child Relief Agency (1935) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/print_document.cfm?document_id=2045
Week 7 (Mon., 22 Oct.) – The Nazi Volksgemeinschaft: Exclusion
Readings:
Nikolaus Wachsmann, ‘The policy of exclusion: repression in the Nazi state, 19331939,’ in Caplan, pp.122-145
Excerpt from Gisela Bock’s work on racial policy and women’s policy, in Nazism,
pp.302-5
Alan E. Steinweis, ‘The Nazi Purge of German Artistic and Cultural Life,’ in Social
Outsiders in Nazi Germany, ed. Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus (Princeton
and Oxford, 2001), pp.99-116.
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Hans-Georg Stümke, ‘From the “People’s Consciousness of Right and Wrong” to
“The Healthy Instincts of the Nation”: The Persecution of Homosexuals in Nazi
Germany,’ in Confronting the Nazi Past: New Debates on Modern German History,
ed. Michael Burleigh (New York, 1996), pp.154-66.
Alf Lüdtke, ‘The Appeal of Exterminating “Others”: German Workers and the
Limits of Resistance,’ in Resistance Against the Third Reich, 1933-1990, ed.
Michael Geyer and John W. Boyer (Chicago and London, 1994), pp.52-74.
Primary sources:
‘Ideology and Racial Biology,’ in Inside Hitler’s Germany: A Documentary History
of Life in the Third Reich, ed. Benjamin C. Sax and Dieter Kunz (Lexington and
Toronto, 1992), pp. 204-17.
Hitler’s Speech at the Opening of the House of German Art in Munich (July 18,
1937) – Available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1577
Guide to the "Degenerate Art" Exhibition (1937) – Available online at:
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1578
Josef Meisinger on “Combating Homosexuality as a Political Task” (April 5-6,
1937) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English68no_pdf.pdf
Table of Colored Classification Symbols for Prisoners in Concentration Camps
(1939-1942) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=3761
Week 8 (Mon., 29 Oct.) – Religion and Resistance
Readings:
Richard Steigmann-Gall, ‘Religion and the churches,’ in Caplan, pp.146-167
Kershaw, ch.8
Christiane Moll, ‘Acts of Resistance: The White Rose in the Light of New Archival
Evidence,’ in Resistance Against the Third Reich, 1933-1990, ed. Michael Geyer and
John W. Boyer (Chicago and London, 1994), pp. 173-200.
Primary sources:
‘Criticism, Opposition, and Active Resistance,’ in Inside Hitler’s Germany, pp.48095.
‘Popular Opinion – Consent, Dissent, Opposition and Resistance,’ in Nazism: A
Documentary Reader, pp.374-95.
Note on the Conversations between Adam von Trott zu Solz and "Mr. Eliot"
(December 1941) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English25_new.pdf
Telex Message by the Conspiratorial Stauffenberg Group to the Holders of
Executive Power (July 20, 1944) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English27_Exeter.pdf
Week 9 (Mon., 5 Nov.) – The Economy
Readings:
Adam Tooze, ‘The economic history of the Nazi regime,’ in Caplan, pp.168-195
Kershaw, ch.3
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Nancy R. Reagin, ‘The Autarkic Household and the Nazi Four-Year Plan,’ in
Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 18701945 (Cambridge, 2007), pp.144-180.
Primary sources:
The Hereditary Farm Law (September 29, 1933) – available online at
http://www.germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English60_new.pdf
The Sopade Report on the Mood among Workers (September 1938) – available
online at http://www.germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English63_Exeter.pdf
Hans Kehrl Describes the Fragmented and Inefficient Management of the German
Economy in the Fall of 1940 (Retrospective account, 1973) – available online at
http://www.germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English64_Exeter.pdf
Fritz Sauckel’s Labour Mobilization Program (April 20, 1942) – available online at
http://www.germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English65.pdf
Martin Bormann’s Circular of May 5, 1943, which included a Memorandum on the
General Principles Governing the Treatment of Foreign Laborers Employed in the
Reich (dated April 15, 1943) – available online at
http://www.germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English66.pdf
Week 10 (Mon., 12 Nov.) – Foreign Policy and War
Readings:
Gerhard L. Weinberg, ‘Foreign policy in peace and war,’ in Caplan, pp.196-218
Kershaw, ch.6
Omer Bartov, ‘From Blitzkrieg to Total War: Controversial Links between Image
and Reality,’ in Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, ed. Ian
Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (Cambridge, 1997), pp.158-84.
Primary sources:
‘Summary of Hitler’s Meeting with the Heads of the Armed Services on November
5, 1937 (Hossbach Protocol of November 10, 1937)’. Available online at:
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1540
‘Werner von Fritsch Reflects on the Relationship between the SS and the
Wehrmacht (February 1, 1938)’. Document available online at:
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1541
The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty (August 23, 1939) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English55.pdf
Directive No. 21 Operation Barbarossa (December 18, 1940) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English57_new.pdf
Week 11 (Mon., 19 Nov.) – Occupation and Genocide
Readings:
Doris L. Bergen, ‘Occupation, imperialism, and genocide, 1939-1945,’ in Caplan,
pp.219-45
Kershaw, ch.5
Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi
Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (2001), excerpt in Death by
Design, pp.251-66.
Elizabeth Harvey, ‘Remembering and Repressing: German Women’s Recollections
of the “Ethnic Struggle” in Occupied Poland during the Second World War,’ in
Home/Front: The Military, War and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany, ed.
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Karen Hagemann and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (Oxford and New York, 2002),
pp. 275-96.
Samson Madievski, ‘The War of Extermination: The Crimes of the Wehrmacht in
1941 to 1944,’ Rethinking History 7, 2 (2003), 243-54
Primary sources:
Martin Bormann’s Minutes of a Meeting at Hitler’s Headquarters (July 16, 1941).
Available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1549
Major General Walter Bruns’s Description of the Execution of Jews outside Riga on
December 1, 1941, Surreptitiously Taped Conversation (April 25, 1945) – available
online at http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English40.pdf
The Wannsee Protocol (January 20, 1942) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English41.pdf
Sworn Statement in which Former Reichsbank Employee Albert Thoms Reports on
the Bank’s Receipt of Valuables Taken from Death Camp Victims (May 26, 1948) –
available online at http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English46.pdf
Week 12 (Mon., 26 Nov.) – Downfall and Denazification
Readings:
Robert G. Moeller, ‘The Third Reich in post-war German memory,’ in Caplan,
pp.246-266.
Kershaw, ch. 9
Christian Goeschel, Suicide in Nazi Germany (Oxford, 2009), pp.149-66
Paul Cooke, ‘The Continually Suffering Nation? Cinematic Representations of
German Victimhood,’ in Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in
Contemporary Germany, ed. Bill Niven (Basingstoke and New York), pp.76-92.
Primary sources:
Eyewitness Götz Bergander Recalls the Bombing of Dresden (Retrospective
Account) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English99.pdf
Report by the American Secret Service about the Attitudes of the German Population
in the American Occupation Zone (August 12, 1945) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Vol.8_Chap.12_Doc.01_ENG.pdf
Report by the Central Administration for German Resettlers [Umsiedler] in the
Soviet Occupation Area (December 23, 1945) – available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Vol.8_Chap.13_Doc.01_ENG.pdf
The Editor-in-Chief of Die Zeit on the Nuremberg Trials (January 22, 1948) and the
American Response (February 12, 1948). Available online at
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=2309
Thursday, 19 Nov. – Conclusion: ‘Coming to Terms with the Past’
Readings:
Kershaw, ch. 10
Film:
The Nasty Girl
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