David Crew

Description: Hitler and the Nazis have given twentieth-century Germany a world-historical significance it would otherwise have lacked. Even from our vantage point, the Nazi regime is still one of the most dramatic and destructive episodes in western European, indeed, in world history. Nazism is synonymous with terror, concentration camps and mass murder. Hitler's war claimed the lives of tens of millions and left Europe in complete ruins. The danger resides in the temptation to view all of German history from the end of the nineteenth-century onwards as merely the pre-history of Nazism, thereby failing to deal with each period on its own terms. And what do we do with the more than half a century of German history since 1945? With the defeat of  Nazi Germany in 1945, the course of German history appears to have experienced a radical break. New political and social systems were imposed upon the two sides of the divided Germany by the victors. The hostilities of the Cold War appeared to ensure a permanent division of Germany, which in 1961 assumed a compelling symbolic form, the Berlin Wall. But in 1989, the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe revolutionized East Germany as well. The Berlin Wall came down, East and West Germany were once again joined together in one nation. What exactly this newest version of the German nation will look like in ten or twenty years is still unclear. 
In the first half of the course, we will begin by discussing the origins and effects of  World War One(1914-1918), then move on to the German Revolution(1918-1919) and the Weimar Republic(l9l8-l933), the Nazi regime (1933-1945) and the Holocaust. The questions we will focus on here are: Was Germany’s first experiment with democracy between 1918 and 1933 doomed to failure? What factors contributed to the rise of Nazism and how did the Nazi regime affect Germany and Europe? Were all vestiges of Nazism destroyed in 1945? In the second half of the semester we will discuss the history of  Germany in the Cold War(1945-1989). We will end by talking about the consequences of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989 to the present). Here, the main questions will be: Did, West and East Germany follow fundamentally new paths? What clues can be found in the histories of the Federal Republic in West Germany and the German Democratic Republic in East Germany since 1949 that may indicate the possibilities for change in the future? How has the unification of East and West Germany affected Germany's role in Europe and the world?

Required Reading:
Mary Fulbrook,The Divided Nation


Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front


Richard Bessel(ed.) Life in the Third Reich


Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz


Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper


We will be working extensively with materials on this site: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/

Assignments/Grading:
(1)Two longer essay assignments (each 6-8 pages typewritten, each worth 30% of your final grade) which ask you to think critically about some of the major issues in twentieth century German history.
(2)In addition to these two longer essay assignments, you will be asked to write one shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten—worth 20% of the final grade) on any one of the books by  Remarque, Bessel, Levi, or Schneider.

This seminar will analyze the effects of Hitler’s dictatorship upon German society, politics, economy and culture. It will explore the consequences of defeat, occupation, the Cold War and the political division of Germany after 1945. It will also compare and contrast the history and development of East and West Germany in the years between 1949 and 1989. Finally, the course will examine some of the consequences and prospects created by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the unification of East and West Germany in 1990.

REQUIRED READINGS:
(Books marked with * are available as electronic resources from the UT-Library system at no charge with your UT-EID. Please feel free to read these materials on-line if you prefer.)
*Doris Bergen, War and Genocide, A Concise History of the Holocaust(Rowman and Littlefield,2016-third edition)
*Edith Sheffer, Burned Bridge.How East and West Germany Made the Iron Curtain(Oxford, 2012)
Hanna Schissler,editor, The Miracle Years. A Cultural History of West Germany 1949-1968(Princeton,2001)
Peter  Schneider, The Wall Jumper. A Berlin Story (Chicago,1983)
We will also be working intensively with documents and images on this Website
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.cfm
COURSE REQUIREMENTS/GRADING
All written assignments for this course are evidence based and must be footnoted according to Chicago Manual of Style guidelines

The assignment are:
(1)You will be required to write one longer analytical essay(6-8 pages).To complete this assignment you will need to respond to the prompt by using the relevant primary source materials from the Website, “German History in Documents and Images” http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ as well as those assigned readings that you consider relevant to the particular prompt you have chosen. This assignment is worth 30% of your final grade (Due date=TBA)

(2)In addition, you are each required to give two in-class reports(details to follow) on images I will select from the Websites of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/ and  from “German History in Documents and Images”
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.  To complete these assignments you will need to do research on the provenance, historical context and use of each image.
Each in-class presentation should be sent to me as an essay (2-3 pages in length)no later than one week after you present in class. (These assignments are each worth 15 % of your final grade)

(3)the final assignment for this class is to construct a Power Point(or alternative program) presentation on a specific theme or period  covered by this course using relevant documents and images you have selected from the Website, “German History in Documents and Images” http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ (20% of your final grade/details to be discussed in class). Due no later than the end of the day in May on which a final exam would be scheduled for this course.

Class attendance and participation count for 20 per cent of your final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Required Readings:
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]
J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work.
Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a Power Point assignment based upon the documents we have red and discussed in class(5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Description: Hitler and the Nazis have given twentieth-century Germany a world-historical significance it would otherwise have lacked. Even from our vantage point, the Nazi regime is still one of the most dramatic and destructive episodes in western European, indeed, in world history. Nazism is synonymous with terror, concentration camps and mass murder. Hitler's war claimed the lives of tens of millions and left Europe in complete ruins. The danger resides in the temptation to view all of German history from the end of the nineteenth-century onwards as merely the pre-history of Nazism, thereby failing to deal with each period on its own terms. And what do we do with the more than half a century of German history since 1945? With the defeat of  Nazi Germany in 1945, the course of German history appears to have experienced a radical break. New political and social systems were imposed upon the two sides of the divided Germany by the victors. The hostilities of the Cold War appeared to ensure a permanent division of Germany, which in 1961 assumed a compelling symbolic form, the Berlin Wall. But in 1989, the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe revolutionized East Germany as well. The Berlin Wall came down, East and West Germany were once again joined together in one nation. What exactly this newest version of the German nation will look like in ten or twenty years is still unclear. 
In the first half of the course, we will begin by discussing the origins and effects of  World War One(1914-1918), then move on to the German Revolution(1918-1919) and the Weimar Republic(l9l8-l933), the Nazi regime (1933-1945) and the Holocaust. The questions we will focus on here are: Was Germany’s first experiment with democracy between 1918 and 1933 doomed to failure? What factors contributed to the rise of Nazism and how did the Nazi regime affect Germany and Europe? Were all vestiges of Nazism destroyed in 1945? In the second half of the semester we will discuss the history of  Germany in the Cold War(1945-1989). We will end by talking about the consequences of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989 to the present). Here, the main questions will be: Did, West and East Germany follow fundamentally new paths? What clues can be found in the histories of the Federal Republic in West Germany and the German Democratic Republic in East Germany since 1949 that may indicate the possibilities for change in the future? How has the unification of East and West Germany affected Germany's role in Europe and the world?

Required Reading:

Mary Fulbrook,The Divided Nation
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Richard Bessel(ed.) Life in the Third Reich
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper
We will be working extensively with materials on this site: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/

Assignments/Grading:

(1)Two longer essay assignments (each 6-8 pages typewritten, each worth 30% of your final grade) which ask you to think critically about some of the major issues in twentieth century German history.

(2)In addition to these two longer essay assignments, you will be asked to write one shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten—worth 20% of the final grade) on any one of the books by  Remarque, Bessel, Levi, or Schneider.

Required Reading:
Mary Fulbrook,The Divided Nation
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Richard Bessel(ed.) Life in the Third Reich
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper
We will be working extensively with materials on this site: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/

Assignments/Grading:
(1)Two longer essay assignments (each 6-8 pages typewritten, each worth 30% of your final grade) which ask you to think critically about some of the major issues in twentieth century German history.
(2)In addition to these two longer essay assignments, you will be asked to write one shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten—worth 20% of the final grade) on any one of the books by  Remarque, Bessel, Levi, or Schneider.

Description:

During the Holocaust, millions of European Jews were murdered by the Nazis, along with hundreds of thousands of physically and mentally handicapped persons, gays and Sinti and Roma.  Millions also died in Hitler’s murderous war in Russia. This course focuses upon the history of the Holocaust and its “afterlife.” We will examine how Germans and their victims, as well as post-war generations of Europeans and North Americans, have reacted to, dealt with, commemorated, and tried to understand these horrific crimes since 1945.  We will be exploring a variety of different “sites of memory”: academic history, personal memoirs, novels, monuments and museums, photography, documentary and fiction films about the Holocaust and also the Internet. Lastly, the course will emphasize the most recent history of the “afterlife” of the Holocaust since 1990.

Texts/Readings:

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide. A Concise History of the Holocaust(2016)

Waitman Wade Beorn, The Holocaust in Eastern Europe. At the Epicenter of the Final Solution(2018)

Primo Levi,Survival in Auschwitz(2013)

Otto Dov Kulka, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death.Reflections on Memory and Imagination(2013)

Lawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies. The Ruins of Memory (1991)

James Young, The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (1993)

Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces(1998)

Jan Gross, Neighbors. The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001)

Assignments:

2 critical essays (6-8 pages each) - 50%

Proposal for a memorial, documentary, or web site (as a Power Point presentation) - 30%

Class participation - 20%

About the Professor:

David Crew holds the title of Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of History. His current research and teaching interests include the history and politics of memory as well as the visual history of Germany in the twentieth century with a specific focus upon the uses of  photography.His most recent book is Bodies and Ruins, Imagining the Bombing of Germany, 1945 to the Present (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2017). Professor Crew received his Ph.D. in 1975 from Cornell University.

This seminar will analyze the effects of Hitler’s dictatorship upon German society, politics, economy and culture. It will explore the consequences of defeat, occupation, the Cold War and the political division of Germany after 1945. It will also compare and contrast the history and development of East and West Germany in the years between 1949 and 1989. Finally, the course will examine some of the consequences and prospects created by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the unification of East and West Germany in 1990.

(Books marked with * are available as electronic resources from the UT-Library system at no charge with your UT-EID. Please feel free to read these materials on-line if you prefer.)
*David F. Crew, editor, Nazism and German Society, 1933-1945(London and New York,1995)
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
*Edit Scheffer, Burned Bridge.How East and West Germany Made the Iron Curtain(Oxford, 2012)
Hanna Schissler,editor, The Miracle Years. A Cultural History of West Germany 1949-1968(Princeton,2001)
Katherine Pence and Paul Betts, editors, Socialist Modern.East German Everyday Culture and Politics(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008).
*David F. Crew, editor, Consuming Germany in the Cold War(Oxford and New York: Berg, 2003)
Peter  Schneider, The Wall Jumper. A Berlin Story (Chicago,1983)
We will also be working intensively with documents and images on this Website
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.cfm

This is a substantial writing component course. You will be required to write three critical essays to write two critical essays  (6-8 pages each) which analyze the problems posed by selected readings from the above assigned reading list (each of these three essays is worth  30% of your final grade). In addition, you are each required to give in-class reports on two different images from the Website, “German History in Documents and Images” http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.cfm . Each of these assignments counts for 10% of your final grade. Class attendance and participation count for 20 per cent of your final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]
J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

    Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Description: Hitler and the Nazis have given twentieth-century Germany a world-historical significance it would otherwise have lacked. Even from our vantage point, the Nazi regime is still one of the most dramatic and destructive episodes in western European, indeed, in world history. Nazism is synonymous with terror, concentration camps and mass murder. Hitler's war claimed the lives of tens of millions and left Europe in complete ruins. The danger resides in the temptation to view all of German history from the end of the nineteenth-century onwards as merely the pre-history of Nazism, thereby failing to deal with each period on its own terms. And what do we do with the more than half a century of German history since 1945? With the defeat of  Nazi Germany in 1945, the course of German history appears to have experienced a radical break. New political and social systems were imposed upon the two halves of the divided Germany by the victors. The hostilities of the Cold War appeared to ensure a permanent division of Germany, which in 1961 assumed a compelling symbolic form, the Berlin Wall. But in 1989, the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe revolutionized East Germany as well. The Berlin Wall came down, East and West Germany were once again joined together in one nation. What exactly this newest version of the German nation will look like in ten or twenty years is still unclear. 

In the first half of the course, we will begin by discussing the origins and effects of  World War One(1914-1918), then move on to the German Revolution(1918-1919) and the Weimar Republic(l9l8-l933), the Nazi regime (1933-1945) and the Holocaust. The questions we will focus on here are: Was Germany’s first experiment with democracy between 1918 and 1933 doomed to failure? What factors contributed to the rise of Nazism and how did the Nazi regime affect Germany and Europe? Were all vestiges of Nazism destroyed in 1945? In the second half of the semester we will discuss the history of  Germany in the Cold War(1945-1989). We will end by talking about the consequences of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989 to the present). Here, the main questions will be: Did, West and East Germany follow fundamentally new paths? What clues can be found in the histories of the Federal Republic in West Germany and the German Democratic Republic in East Germany since 1949 that may indicate the possibilities for change in the future? How does the unification of East and West Germany affect Germany's future role in Europe and the world?

Required Reading:

Mary Fulbrook,The Divided Nation
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Richard Bessel(ed.) Life in the Third Reich
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper
We will be working extensively with materials on this site: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/

Assignments/Grading:

(1)Two longer essay assignments (each 6-8 pages typewritten, each worth 30% of your final grade) which ask you to think critically about some of the major issues in twentieth century German history.

(2)In addition to these two longer essay assignments, you will be asked to write one shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten—worth 20% of the final grade) on any one of the books by  Remarque, Bessel, Levi, or Schneider.

World War Two was one of the most important events in world history. It was enormously destructive, claiming the lives of  up to 80 million people and leaving much of Europe in ruins. The great bulk of this destruction took place in Poland and the German-occupied Soviet Union, parts of which(Ukraine, for example) had already been devastated by Stalin in the 1930s. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and the prolonged and bitter fighting on the Eastern Front which did not end until May 1945 when the Red Army conquered Berlin cost the Soviet Union almost 27 million of its citizens, two-thirds of whom were civilians.  The German Wehrmacht lost almost 5 million men in World War Two, most of them on the Eastern Front. Poland and the occupied Soviet Union became killing fields where the German death squads and extermination centers murdered millions of Jews, Sinti and Roma, Soviet POWs and other “racial enemies” of the Reich, The amazingly brutal “anti-partisan” campaign   conducted by the Germans in the Soviet Union turned some regions, Belarus for example, into “dead zones” by eradicating thousands of villages and murdering their inhabitants. World War Two was,indeed, the first modern war which killed more civilians than  soldiers in uniform and most of these civilian as well as military deaths were concentrated on the Eastern Front. One of the primary aims of this course will be to explain this unprecedented destruction, mass violence and genocide, by placing World War Two in a longer-term historical context that takes us back to World War One paying particular attention to the less well-known Eastern Front in that war. A second major aim of this course will be to show how the German war in the East was a “racial war of annihilation,” fueled by Nazi racial delusions which saw the “ war against the Jews” as an integral component of the war as a whole. Racial delusions also enabled other murderous policies which did not baulk at the starvation of millions of Soviet citizens (civilians as well as POWs). Murder was indeed a prime instrument of German occupation policy in the East.

The war in the West was much less destructive and it will be a third goal of this course to show the reasons for and consequences of this important difference.  It will be important to show that Europeans experienced (and then subsequently remembered) World War Two in quite different ways, even in the West, but that one huge gap separated Eastern from Western European experience(s).

Finally, we want to trace the afterlife of World War Two in post-war Europe.In 1945, the continent was in ruins. In Western Europe at least, the physical landscapes had been rebuilt by the 1960s at the latest. Physical reconstruction took much longer in post-war European. But in both West and East, mental landscapes continued to be scarred by the war, the genocide and their aftermaths for years to come, some would say until the very present. It will be important to explore the ways in which the mental and emotional afterlife of World War Two and the Holocaust have continued to affect post-war Europe and the significant differences between  East and West, as well as within individual nations or regions.

This course introduces students to the most important recent research on and debates about World War Two and the Holocaust in Europe. Readings for this course will include:

Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I

Timothy Snyder, Blood Lands.Europe between Hitler and Stalin

Nicholas Stargardt, The German War. A Nation under Arms,1939-1945

Richard Overy, Russia’s War.A History of the Soviet Effort,1941-1945

Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War. Life and Death in the Red Army

Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews,1939-1945.The Years of Extermination

Jan Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews.Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland

Jan T. Gross, Neighbors.The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne

Anthony Polonsky, ed., The Neighbors Respond. The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland

Christopher Browning, Remembering Survival:Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp

Wendy Lower, ed., The Shoah in Ukraine.History, Testimony, Memorialization

Dietmar Süß, Death from the Skies. How the British and Germans Survived Bombing during World War II

Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945

Assignments:

Participation                           30%

Visual Analysis                      10%

Document Analysis                10%

Book Review                          10%

End of Term Research Paper  40%

This seminar will analyze the effects of Hitler’s dictatorship upon German society, politics, economy and culture. It will explore the consequences of defeat, occupation, the Cold War and the political division of Germany after 1945. It will also compare and contrast the history and development of East and West Germany in the years between 1949 and 1989. Finally, the course will examine some of the consequences and prospects created by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the unification of East and West Germany in 1990.

(Books marked with * are available as electronic resources from the UT-Library system at no charge with your UT-EID. Please feel free to read these materials on-line if you prefer.)

*David F. Crew, editor, Nazism and German Society, 1933-1945(London and New York,1995)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

*Edit Scheffer, Burned Bridge.How East and West Germany Made the Iron Curtain(Oxford, 2012)

Hanna Schissler,editor, The Miracle Years. A Cultural History of West Germany 1949-1968(Princeton,2001)

Katherine Pence and Paul Betts, editors, Socialist Modern.East German Everyday Culture and Politics(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008).

*David F. Crew, editor, Consuming Germany in the Cold War(Oxford and New York: Berg, 2003)

Peter  Schneider, The Wall Jumper. A Berlin Story (Chicago,1983)

We will also be working intensively with documents and images on this Website

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.cfm

This is a substantial writing component course. You will be required to write three critical essays (6-8 pages each) which analyze the problems posed by selected readings from the above assigned reading list (each of these three essays is worth  20% of your final grade). In addition, you are each required to give in-class reports on two different images from the Website, “German History in Documents and Images” http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.cfm . Each of these assignments counts for 10% of your final grade. Class attendance and participation count for 20 per cent of your final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Description: Hitler and the Nazis have given twentieth-century Germany a world-historical significance it would otherwise have lacked. Even from our vantage point, the Nazi regime is still one of the most dramatic and destructive episodes in western European, indeed, in world history. Nazism is synonymous with terror, concentration camps and mass murder. Hitler's war claimed the lives of tens of millions and left Europe in complete ruins. The danger resides in the temptation to view all of German history from the end of the nineteenth-century onwards as merely the pre-history of Nazism, thereby failing to deal with each period on its own terms. And what do we do with the more than half a century of German history since 1945? With the defeat of  Nazi Germany in 1945, the course of German history appears to have experienced a radical break. New political and social systems were imposed upon the two halves of the divided Germany by the victors. The hostilities of the Cold War appeared to ensure a permanent division of Germany, which in 1961 assumed a compelling symbolic form, the Berlin Wall. But in 1989, the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe revolutionized East Germany as well. The Berlin Wall came down, East and West Germany were once again joined together in one nation. What exactly this newest version of the German nation will look like in ten or twenty years is still unclear. 

In the first half of the course, we will begin by discussing the origins and effects of  World War One(1914-1918), then move on to the German Revolution(1918-1919) and the Weimar Republic(l9l8-l933), the Nazi regime (1933-1945) and the Holocaust. The questions we will focus on here are: Was Germany’s first experiment with democracy between 1918 and 1933 doomed to failure? What factors contributed to the rise of Nazism and how did the Nazi regime affect Germany and Europe? Were all vestiges of Nazism destroyed in 1945? In the second half of the semester we will discuss the history of  Germany in the Cold War(1945-1989). We will end by talking about the consequences of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989 to the present). Here, the main questions will be: Did, West and East Germany follow fundamentally new paths? What clues can be found in the histories of the Federal Republic in West Germany and the German Democratic Republic in East Germany since 1949 that may indicate the possibilities for change in the future? How does the unification of East and West Germany affect Germany's future role in Europe and the world?

Required Reading:

Mary Fulbrook,The Divided Nation?Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front?Richard Bessel(ed.) Life in the Third Reich?Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz?Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper?We will be working extensively with materials on this site: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/

Assignments/Grading:

(1)Two longer essay assignments (each 6-8 pages typewritten, each worth 30% of your final grade) which ask you to think critically about some of the major issues in twentieth century German history.

(2)In addition to these two longer essay assignments, you will be asked to write one shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten—worth 20% of the final grade) on any one of the books by  Remarque, Bessel, Levi, or Schneider.

Description:

During the Holocaust, millions of European Jews were murdered by the Nazis, along with hundreds of thousands of physically and mentally handicapped persons, gays and Sinti and Roma.  Millions also died in Hitler’s murderous war in Russia. This course focuses upon the history of the Holocaust and its “afterlife.” We will examine how Germans and their victims, as well as post-war generations of Europeans and North Americans, have reacted to, dealt with, commemorated, and tried to understand these horrific crimes since 1945.  We will be exploring a variety of different “sites of memory”: academic history, personal memoirs, novels, monuments and museums, photography, documentary and fiction films about the Holocaust and also the Internet. Lastly, the course will emphasize the most recent history of the “afterlife” of the Holocaust since 1990.

Texts/Readings:

Saul Friedlander, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945,Volume 2 (New York, 2007) Primo Levi,Survival in AuschwitzLawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies. The Ruins of Memory (1991)

James Young, The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (1993) Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces(1998) Jan Gross, Neighbors. The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001)

Assignments:

3 critical essays (6-8 pages each) - 60%

Proposal for a memorial, documentary, or web site (4-5 pages) - 15%

Holocaust Photograph analysis (2-3 pages) - 10%

Class participation - 15%

About the Professor:

David Crew holds the title of Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of History. His current research and teaching interests include the history of popular culture and consumerism in twentieth-century Germany and Europe, the history and politics of memory, and the visual history of Germany in the twentieth century, with a specific focus upon photographic representations.  Professor Crew received his Ph.D. in 1975 from Cornell University.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Grading:

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

FLAGS:   Wr  |  GC  |  EL

Description: 

Hitler and the Nazis have given twentieth-century Germany a world-historical significance it would otherwise have lacked. Even from our vantage point, the Nazi regime is still one of the most dramatic and destructive episodes in western European, indeed, in world history. Nazism is synonymous with terror, concentration camps and mass murder. Hitler's war claimed the lives of tens of millions and left Europe in complete ruins. The danger resides in the temptation to view all of German history from the end of the nineteenth-century onwards as merely the pre-history of Nazism, thereby failing to deal with each period on its own terms. And what do we do with the more than half a century of German history since 1945? With the defeat of  Nazi Germany in 1945, the course of German history appears to have experienced a radical break. New political and social systems were imposed upon the two halves of the divided Germany by the victors. The hostilities of the Cold War appeared to ensure a permanent division of Germany, which in 1961 assumed a compelling symbolic form, the Berlin Wall. But in 1989, the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe revolutionized East Germany as well. The Berlin Wall came down, East and West Germany were once again joined together in one nation. What exactly this newest version of the German nation will look like in ten or twenty years is still unclear. 

In the first half of the course, we will begin by discussing the origins and effects of  World War One(1914-1918), then move on to the German Revolution(1918-1919) and the Weimar Republic(l9l8-l933), the Nazi regime (1933-1945) and the Holocaust. The questions we will focus on here are: Was Germany’s first experiment with democracy between 1918 and 1933 doomed to failure? What factors contributed to the rise of Nazism and how did the Nazi regime affect Germany and Europe? Were all vestiges of Nazism destroyed in 1945? In the second half of the semester we will discuss the history of  Germany in the Cold War(1945-1989). We will end by talking about the consequences of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989 to the present). Here, the main questions will be: Did, West and East Germany follow fundamentally new paths? What clues can be found in the histories of the Federal Republic in West Germany and the German Democratic Republic in East Germany since 1949 that may indicate the possibilities for change in the future? How does the unification of East and West Germany affect Germany's future role in Europe and the world?

Required Reading:

Mary Fulbrook,The Divided Nation?Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front?Richard Bessel(ed.) Life in the Third Reich?Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz?Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper?We will be working extensively with materials on this site: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/

Assignments/Grading:

(1)Two longer essay assignments (each 6-8 pages typewritten, each worth 30% of your final grade) which ask you to think critically about some of the major issues in twentieth century German history. The first assignment will deal with the period up to 1939. The second will focus on the period from 1939 to the present. Essay 1 will be due in mid-October. Essay 2 is due no later than the official exam date for this course.

(2)In addition to these two longer essay assignments, you will be asked to write one shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten—worth 20% of the final grade) on any one of the books by  Remarque, Bessel, Levi, or Schneider.

(3 Finally, you will be asked to write two short (2-3 page) analyses of  visual evidence (photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) that I will include among the class materials, or  internet sites on twentieth century Germany that you yourself have found(each of these 2 assignments is worth 10% of the final grade).

THE PURPOSE OF THE COURSE:

This seminar will analyze the effects of Hitler’s dictatorship upon German society, politics, economy and culture. It will explore the consequences of defeat, occupation, the Cold War and the political division of Germany after 1945. It will also compare and contrast the history and development of East and West Germany in the years between 1949 and 1989. Finally, the course will examine some of the consequences and prospects created by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the unification of East and West Germany in 1990.

Texts:

(Books marked with * are available as electronic resources from the UT-Library system at no charge with your UT-EID. Please feel free to read these materials on-line if you prefer.)

*David F. Crew, editor, Nazism and German Society, 1933-1945(London and New York,1995)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

*Edit Scheffer, Burned Bridge.How East and West Germany Made the Iron Curtain(Oxford, 2012)

Hanna Schissler,editor, The Miracle Years. A Cultural History of West Germany 1949-1968(Princeton,2001)

Katherine Pence and Paul Betts, editors, Socialist Modern.East German Everyday Culture and Politics(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008).

*David F. Crew, editor, Consuming Germany in the Cold War(Oxford and New York: Berg, 2003)

Peter  Schneider, The Wall Jumper. A Berlin Story (Chicago,1983)

We will also be working intensively with documents and images on this Website

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.cfm

Grading:

This is a substantial writing component course. You will be required to write three critical essays (6-8 pages each) which analyze the problems posed by selected readings from the above assigned reading list (each of these three essays is worth  20% of your final grade). In addition, you are each required to give in-class reports on two different images from the Website, “German History in Documents and Images” http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.cfm . Each of these assignments counts for 10% of your final grade. Class attendance and participation count for 20 per cent of your final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Grading:

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Course carries three flags: WR, GC, and EL.

Even from our vantage point at the end of this century, the Nazi period is still one of the most dramatic and destructive episodes in western European, indeed, in world history.  Nazism is synonymous with terror, concentration camps and mass murder.  Hitler’s war claimed the lives of tens of millions and left Europe in complete ruins.  The Nazis have therefore given twentieth-century germany a world-historical significane it would otherwise have lacked.  Whether we are looking at the Bismarckian, the Wilhelmine, or the Weimar periods, the central question -- the ‘German Problem’, as it has been termed -- is the same:  why was Germany unable to establish a viable, liberal-democratic and parliamentary society which would have prevented the triumph of Nazism?  The danger here resides in the temptation to view all of German history from about 1871 onwards as merely the pre-history of Nazism, thereby failing to deal with each period on its own terms.  And what about the years after 1945?  With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, german history appears to have experienced a radical break.  The hostilities of the Cold War appeared to ensure a permanent division of Germany.  But in the last few years, the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have revolutionized East Germany as well.  The Berlin Wall is down, East and West Germany are once again joined together in one nation.  Economic crisis, unemployment, waves of violence and dramatic changes in immigration policy have begun to conjure up the ghosts of the Nazi past.  Even if Germany’s post-war democratic order is not fundamentally threatened, it is still clear that Germany has already begun to follow a quite different path than the one laid out for it after 1945.  Has the nature of the ‘German Problem’ changed fundamentally since 1945, or do recent events suggest that the old questions may once again be relevant?

Mary Fullbrook,The Divided Nation; Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front; Richard Bessel(ed), Life in the Third Reich; Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, Peter Schneider, The Wall Jumper

This course combines lectures and discussions of secondary readings as well as original historical documents(short selections) and contemporary visual materials such as photographs, newsreels, propaganda and election posters. The course assignments are designed to allow you to think and write about each of these different ways of gaining access to the German past.

There will be no formal mid-term or final exam. The writing requirements are:

(1)Two longer essay assignments (each 6-8 pages typewritten, each worth 30% of your final grade) which ask you to think critically about some of the major issues in twentieth century Germanhistory. The first assignment will deal with the period up to 1939. The second will focus on the period from 1939 to the present. Essay 1 will be due in mid-October. Essay 2 is due no later than the official exam date for this course.

(2)In addition to these two longer essay assignments, you will be asked to write one shorter essay (4-5 pages typewritten-worth 20% of the final grade) on any one of the books by Remarque, Bessel, Levi, or Schneider. This is not a book report. I will hand out specific questions on each of these books which you need to answer in your essays.

(3)Finally, you will be asked to write two  short (2-3 page) analyses of  visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) that I will include among the class materials, or  internet sites on twentieth century Germany that you yourself have found(each of these 2 assignments is worth 10% of the final grade).

Instructor: David F. Crew, Professor, Department of History

Description:

During the Holocaust, millions of European Jews were murdered by the Nazis, along with hundreds of thousands of physically and mentally handicapped persons, gays and Sinti and Roma.  Millions also died in Hitler’s murderous war in Russia. This course focuses upon the history of the Holocaust and its “afterlife.” We will examine how Germans and their victims, as well as post-war generations of Europeans and North Americans, have reacted to, dealt with, commemorated, and tried to understand these horrific crimes since 1945.  We will be exploring a variety of different “sites of memory”: academic history, personal memoirs, novels, monuments and museums, photography, documentary and fiction films about the Holocaust and also the Internet. Lastly, the course will emphasize the most recent history of the “afterlife” of the Holocaust since 1990.

Texts/Readings:

Saul Friedlander, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945,Volume 2 (New York, 2007) Primo Levi, Survival in AuschwitzLawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies. The Ruins of Memory (1991)

James Young, The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (1993) Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces(1998) Jan Gross, Neighbors. The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001)

Assignments:

3 critical essays (6-8 pages each) - 60%

Proposal for a memorial, documentary, or web site (4-5 pages) - 15%

Holocaust Photograph analysis (2-3 pages) - 10%

Class participation - 15%

About the Professor:

David Crew holds the title of Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of History. His current research and teaching interests include the history of popular culture and consumerism in twentieth-century Germany and Europe, the history and politics of memory, and the visual history of Germany in the twentieth century, with a specific focus upon photographic representations.  Professor Crew received his Ph.D. in 1975 from Cornell University.

THE PURPOSE OF THE COURSE:

This seminar will analyze the effects of Hitler’s dictatorship upon German society, politics, economy and culture. It will explore the consequences of defeat, occupation, the Cold War and the political division of Germany after 1945. It will also compare and contrast the history and development of East and West Germany in the years between 1949 and 1989. Finally, the course will examine some of the consequences and prospects created by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the unification of East and West Germany in 1990.

REQUIRED READINGS:

(Books marked with * are available as electronic resources from the UT-Library system at no charge with your UT-EID. Please feel free to read these materials on-line if you prefer.)

*David F. Crew, editor, Nazism and German Society, 1933-1945(London and New York,1995)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

*Edit Scheffer, Burned Bridge.How East and West Germany Made the Iron Curtain(Oxford, 2012)

Hanna Schissler,editor, The Miracle Years. A Cultural History of West Germany 1949-1968(Princeton,2001)

Katherine Pence and Paul Betts, editors, Socialist Modern.East German Everyday Culture and Politics(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008).

*David F. Crew, editor, Consuming Germany in the Cold War(Oxford and New York: Berg, 2003)

Peter  Schneider, The Wall Jumper. A Berlin Story (Chicago,1983)

We will also be working intensively with documents and images on this Website

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.cfm

COURSE REQUIREMENTS/GRADING

This is a substantial writing component course. You will be required to write three critical essays (6-8 pages each) which analyze the problems posed by selected readings from the above assigned reading list (each of these three essays is worth  20% of your final grade). In addition, you are each required to give in-class reports on two different images from the Website, “German History in Documents and Images” http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.cfm . Each of these assignments counts for 10% of your final grade. Class attendance and participation count for 20 per cent of your final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

 REQUIRED BOOKS:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/.

 COURSE REQUIREMENTS/GRADING

            A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

This seminar will analyze the effects of Hitler’s dictatorship upon German society, politics, economy and culture. It will explore the consequences of defeat, occupation, the Cold War and the political division of Germany after 1945. It will also compare and contrast the history and development of East and West Germany in the years between 1949 and 1989. Finally, the course will examine some of the consequences and prospects created by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the unification of East and West Germany in 1990.

Restricted to members of the Normandy Scholars Program

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? 

Texts

Peter Fritzsche, GERMANS INTO NAZIS

Erich Maria Remarque, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), NAZISM. A HISTORY IN DOCUMENTS AND EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3) Primo Levi, SURVIVAL IN AUSCHWITZ

Brian Ladd, THE GHOSTS OF BERLIN.CONFRONTING GERMAN HISTORY IN THE URBAN LANDSCAPE

Description: Despite the many calamities it caused and experienced in the twentieth century, the German state has persisted into our present as a leader in European politics, economy and society and an important international actor. To understand why this would be the case, this course treats the history of Germany in the “long” twentieth century, that is, from the intermediate background of WWI and the establishment of a unified German Empire (1871) to the present. Class time will alternate between lecture and discussion of primary source readings. Topics to be covered include: German economy, geography, and demography; national unification; German colonialism; Wilhelmine society and culture; the social and political status of German Jewry; the background, causes, and experience of WWI; the failed Communist Revolution of 1919; the emergence and decline of the Weimar state; the economic crisis of the interwar years; Weimar culture; National Socialism and the Third Reich; the experience and effects of WWII; the Holocaust; the constitution of East and West German states, societies, and cultures; the “economic miracle”; the Cold War in Germany; 1968 and its social effects; the revolutions of 1989; reunification; the experience of non-Germans in Germany since 1945; and Germany in the European Union. Where possible we will consider these themes in global context. Throughout, emphasis will fall on the reading and interpretation of primary sources in English translation, including text, film, photographs, and music.

Possible readings (selections – please consult the instructor for the final reading list before purchasing any items):

Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday; Ernst Jünger, Storms of Steel; Erich Maria Remarque, The Road Back; Fritz Stern, Five Germanys I Have Known; Kaes et al., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (selections); Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf; Peter Fritzsche,Germans into Nazis; Arthur Koestler, The God that Failed; J.M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace; Filip Müller,Eyewitness Auschwitz; Jana Hensel, After the Wall.

Probable grading scheme:

Map quiz=5%; Midterm 25%; Final exam 25%; Short paper 30%; other quizzes 15%.

During the Holocaust, millions of European Jews were murdered by the Nazis, along with hundreds of thousands of physically and mentally handicapped persons, gays and Sinti and Roma.  Millions also died in Hitler’s murderous war in Russia. This course focuses upon the history of the Holocaust and its “afterlife.” We will examine how Germans and their victims, as well as post-war generations of Europeans and North Americans, have reacted to, dealt with, commemorated, and tried to understand these horrific crimes since 1945.  We will be exploring a variety of different “sites of memory”: academic history, personal memoirs, novels, monuments and museums, photography, documentary and fiction films about the Holocaust and also the Internet. Lastly, the course will emphasize the most recent history of the “afterlife” of the Holocaust since 1990.

Texts/Readings:

Saul Friedlander, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945,Volume 2 (New York, 2007)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

Lawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies. The Ruins of Memory (1991)

James Young, The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (1993)

Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (1998)

Jan Gross, Neighbors. The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001)

Assignments:

3 critical essays (6-8 pages each)                                                        60%

Proposal for a memorial, documentary, or web site (4-5 pages)              15%

Holocaust Photograph analysis (2-3 pages)                                           10%

Class participation                                                                              15%

About the Professor:

David Crew holds the title of Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of History. His current research and teaching interests include the history of popular culture and consumerism in twentieth-century Germany and Europe, the history and politics of memory, and the visual history of Germany in the twentieth century, with a specific focus upon photographic representations.  Professor Crew received his Ph.D. in 1975 from Cornell University.

This seminar will analyze the effects of Hitler’s dictatorship upon German society, politics, economy and culture. It will explore the consequences of defeat, occupation, the Cold War and the political division of Germany after 1945. It will also compare and contrast the history and development of East and West Germany in the years between 1949 and 1989. Finally, the course will examine some of the consequences and prospects created by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the unification of the two Germanies in 1990.

Texts

David Crew, editor, Nazism and German Society, 1933-1945(London and New York,1995)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

Hanna Schissler,editor, The Miracle Years. A Cultural History of West Germany 1949-1968(Princeton,2001)

Katherine Pence and Paul Betts,editors, Socialist Modern.East German Everyday Culture and Politics(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008)

Anna Funder, Stasiland.Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall(London: Granta 2003)

Peter  Schneider, The Wall Jumper. A Berlin Story (Chicago,1983)

Daphne Berdahl, Where the World Ended. Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland((Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1999)

Grading

This is a substantial writing component course. You will be required to write three critical essays(6-8 pages each) which analyze the problems posed by selected readings from the above assigned reading list (each of these three essays is worth  20% of your final grade). You are encouraged to hand in rough drafts of each of these longer essays no less than 10 days before the due date for each assignment. In addition, you are required to write 2 short essays (2-3 pages in length) each of which analyzes examples of the visual materials I will hand out in class or a film relevant to this course(to be approved by the instructor). Each of these assignments counts for 10% of your final grade. Class participation counts for 20 per cent of your final grade.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts

Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis, Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, Noakes and G. Pridham (editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3) Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin. Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape

Grading

Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. The take-home mid-term document test (5-6 pages) is worth 20% of the final grade. There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document test (5-6 pages) which is worth 20% of the final grade.. You will also be asked to write one short review of any one of the books by Remarque, or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) that I will include among the class materials, or of recommended recent films on Nazi Germany. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade.

350L

This seminar will analyze the effects of Hitler’s dictatorship upon German society, politics, economy and culture. It will explore the consequences of defeat, occupation, the Cold War and the political division of Germany after 1945. It will also compare and contrast the history and development of East and West Germany in the years between 1949 and 1989. Finally, the course will examine some of the consequences and prospects created by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the unification of the two Germanies in 1990.

Texts

David Crew, editor, Nazism and German Society, 1933-1945(London and New York,1995)

Omer Bartov, editor, The Holocaust : origins, implementation, aftermath (London and New York:Routledge, 2000)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

Hanna Schissler,editor, The Miracle Years. A Cultural History of West Germany 1949-1968(Princeton,2001)

Katherine Pence and Paul Betts,editors, Socialist Modern.East German Everyday Culture and Politics(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008)

Anna Funder, Stasiland.Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall(London: Granta 2003)

Peter  Schneider, The Wall Jumper. A Berlin Story (Chicago,1983)

Daphne Berdahl, Where the World Ended. Re-Unification and Identity in the German Borderland((Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1999)

Grading

This is a substantial writing component course. You will be required to write three critical essays(6-8 pages each) which analyze the problems posed by selected readings from the above assigned reading list(each of these three essays is worth  20% of your final grade). You are encouraged to hand in rough drafts of each of these longer essays no less than 10 days before the due date for each assignment. In addition, you are required to write 2 short essays(2-3 pages in length)each of which analyzes examples of the visual materials I will hand out in class or a film relevant to this course(to be approved by the instructor). Each of these assignments counts for 10% of your final grade. Class participation counts for 20 per cent of your final grade.

Restricted to students in the Normandy Scholars Program. Application deadline was October 4, 2010; enrollment is closed.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts

• Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front 
• David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
•  J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)
• Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
• [You can find good time-lines for the history of Hitler’s rise to power, for World War II in Europe, and for the Holocaust on the Internet  at http://www.historyplace.com/index.html. Each chronology provides detailed information on selected subjects, and a large number of contemporary photographs.
• We are also going to be working with the documents and images at this web-site: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/. ] 

Grading

Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. The take-home mid-term document test (5-6 pages) is worth 20% of the final grade. There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document test (5-6 pages) which is worth 20% of the final grade.. You will also be asked to write one short review of any one of the books by Remarque, or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) that I will include among the class materials, or of recommended recent films on Nazi Germany. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Grading:

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Please check back for updates.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Grading:

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Please check back for updates.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Grading:

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Grading:

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Grading:

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Please check back for updates.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Grading:

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Grading:

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

How was an obscure, unemployed Austrian, who never rose above the rank of corporal in the German army, able to become the leader of a mass political movement which overthrew the most democratic political system Germany had ever known? Why did Germany begin the most devastating and brutal war in world history just two decades after having lost the First World War? Why did the Nazi state systematically murder 6 million Jews? How did the implementation of Nazi plans for a “racial empire” affect the lives of millions of Europeans during the Second World War? And what is the legacy of the Third Reich, for Germany today? These are the primary questions addressed by this course.

Texts:

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

David F. Crew, Hitler and the Nazis. A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)[also available on-line at the PCL as an e-book]

J. Noakes and G. Pridham(editors), Nazism. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 (University of Exeter Press Edition: Volumes 2 &3)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

We are also going to be working with the images at these two web-sites: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ and http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/

Grading:

A distinctive feature of this course is the fact that we will be working extensively with original documents, in translation. This will give you a more direct and immediate connection to the past, will allow you to experience, at first hand, the language and ideas of the period. It will also allow you to engage directly in the process of interpretation. Rather than simply ingesting the arguments of historians who write about the Nazi period, you  will have the opportunity to analyze the "raw materials" with which historians themselves work. The first and second document essays will ask you to comment on the meaning and significance of several documents(or parts of documents) assigned for the class. You will be given a copy of the document(s) which will be clearly identified for you (i.e. author, date, place). These are, therefore, not identification quizzes; your job is rather to write an essay in which you show why the particular documents are important in terms of the larger history of the period from which they derive and what they tell us about that particular phase in the rise or development of Nazism.

            Your general participation in class discussions (i.e. attendance + involvement) counts for 20% of the overall grade. There will be a take-home mid-term document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade).There is no final exam per se but you will have a second take-home document essay (5-6 pages, 20% of the final grade). You will also be asked to write one short essay on any one of the books by Remarque or Levi (4-5 pages, 20% of final grade). Finally, you will be asked to write two  brief (2-3 page) analyses of the visual evidence(photographs, propaganda, election posters, etc.) discussed in class and/or those that are available on the web-sites listed above. Each of these two assignments is worth 10% of the final grade. I will be using the full range of +/- grades.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.