HISTORY of NAZI GERMANY Dr. Viola Alianov-Rautenberg

HISTORY OF NAZI GERMANY Dr. Viola Alianov-Rautenberg

COURSE DESCRIPTION This course grapples with crucial questions and novel approaches to one of the most intensely researched topics of the 20th century: the history of Nazi Germany. The course provides a broad overview of the history of the National Socialist movement and regime from political, social, and cultural perspectives. We start with the origins and ideological foundations of National Socialism as a political movement against the background of World War 1 and the Weimar Republic. We then discuss the growth and rise to power of the National Socialist Party and Hitler’s role in this process. Following this, we focus on the Nazi state: topics include the SS and the police apparatus, the forging of the “Volksgemeinschaft” and the “racial state”, persecution of Jews and other minorities, as well as the economic policies of Nazi Germany. We will also consider the nature of everyday life, youth and family, entertainment and leisure in the Third Reich and situate Nazi politics in the context of gender and sexuality. Finally, we are concerned with the question of collaboration and resistance in Nazi Germany and with the eventual collapse and defeat of the Third Reich. Throughout the class, we investigate perspectives from “inside” Nazi Germany, focusing on victims, perpetrators, and onlookers. In doing that, we will consider both top-down and bottom-up perspectives, in other words, we investigate not only how power was exercised by the Nazi regime but also how ordinary Germans reacted to this. The proposed course complements the existing offerings of the Weiss-Livnat Program in Holocaust studies, especially the classes on World War 2, the Final Solution, and German Jewish life in Nazi Germany. Students will not only gain a thorough understanding of the history of Nazi Germany. They will also learn about different methodological approaches in the research literature and develop skills in the contextualization of primary sources. Therefore, this class enables the students to either set out on their path in pursuing a Ph.D. in the history of the Holocaust and related fields as well as prepare them for careers or activism in (Holocaust) education through providing a solid base to confront simplistic views as well misconceptions on Nazi Germany in popular culture and debate as well as the internet.

LEARNING GOALS After finishing this course, students will be able to - Identify key developments, themes, concepts, persons, institutions, and events in the history of Nazi Germany - Develop an area of expertise in the scholarship and debates concerning Nazi Germany - Engage with different methodological approaches and competing interpretations in the study of Nazi Germany - Evaluate and contextualize primary sources in the history of Nazi Germany in its historical context - Propose own arguments in the interpretation of primary sources and present them in speaking and writing

COURSE REQUIREMENTS Active participation includes reading all required texts, participation in discussions, summarizing previous lessons (protocols of 3 classes during the semester), short response papers (discussing the required readings for 7 out of 14 meetings), as well as an oral presentation and a seminar paper.

READINGS  Essential Readings Catherine Epstein, Nazi Germany. Confronting the Myths, New York: Wiley-Blackwell 2015. Jane Caplan, ed., Nazi Germany, New York: Oxford University Press 2008.  Further Key Readings (in Excerpts/ Chapters) Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus, Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2001. Susanna Schrafstetter and Alan E. Steinweis, eds., The Germans and the Holocaust: Popular Responses to the Persecution and Murder of the Jews, New York: Berghahn Books 2015. Roderick Stackelberg and Sally A. Winkle, eds., The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts, London: Routledge, 2002. Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto, eds., Visions of Community in Nazi Germany: Social Engineering and Private Lives, New York: Oxford University Press 2014.

Pamela Swett, Corey Ross, Fabrice d’Almeida, eds., Pleasure and Power in Nazi Germany, London: Palgrave Macmillan 2011.

COURSE OUTLINE (including provisional readings and primary sources)

WEEK 1: Introduction. History and Historiography of Nazi Germany  READINGS Catherine Epstein, Nazi Germany: Preface. Jane Caplan, ed., Nazi Germany: Introduction. Richard J. Evans, Why are we obsessed with the Nazis?, The Guardian, February 6, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/06/why-obsessed-nazis-third-reich

WEEK 2: Aftermath of World War 1 and the Emergence of Nazi Ideology  READINGS Epstein, Nazi Germany, Chapter 1. Richard J. Evans, Emergence of Nazi Ideology (in Caplan).  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press 1998, Chapter „November 1918". Thomas Kuehne, Belonging and Genocide, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2010, Chapter 1.  PRIMARY SOURCES Treaty of Versailles (1919) Nazi Party Program (1920) Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (1943)

WEEK 3: The Weimar Republic and the Nazi Rise to Power  READINGS Epstein, Nazi Germany, Chapter 2. Peter Fritzsche, The NSDAP 1919-1934: from fringe politics to the seizure of power (in Caplan).  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power. The experience of a single German town,1922-1945, New York: Franklin Watts 1984 (excerpts).

 PRIMARY SOURCES Vicky Baum, People of Today (1929) Elsa Herrmann, This is the new Woman (1929) Franz von Papen, Speech to Bavarian Industrialists (1932) Lea Grundig, Six Million Unemployed (1964)

WEEK 4: Hitler  READINGS Jeremy Noakes, Hitler and the Nazi State: leadership, hierarchy, and power (in Caplan). Ian Kershaw, “Working Towards the Fuehrer”: Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship, (in Kershaw, Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution, New Haven: Yale University Press 2008, pp. 29-59).  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Ian Kershaw, The Fuehrer Myth: How Hitler won over the German people, Spiegel Online (January 30, 2008).  PRIMARY SOURCES Adolf Hitler, Speech in his own defense (1924) Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1926) Excerpts Adolf Hitler, Reichstag’s Speech (1939) Adolf Hitler, Political Testament (1945)

WEEK 5: Nazi Party State: Consolidation of Power  READINGS Epstein, Nazi Germany, 3. Nikolaus Wachsmann, The policy of exclusion: repression in the Nazi state, 1933-1939 (in Caplan).  PRIMARY SOURCES Horst Wessel Song (1929) Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State, (1933) Melita Maschmann, A German Teenager’s Response to the Nazi Takeover in January 1933 (1969) Viktor Klemperer Diaries (Excerpts)

WEEK 6: “Volksgemeinschaft” and Racial State  READINGS Jill Stephenson, Inclusion: building the national community in propaganda and practice (in Caplan). Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto, Volksgemeinschaft. Writing the Social History of the Nazi Regime (in Steber/Gotto).  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Michael Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft: A Modern Perspective on National Socialist Society (in Steber/Gotto).  PRIMARY SOURCES Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (1933) Reich Citizenship Law and Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, Nuremberg Laws (1935)

WEEK 7: Outcasts in Nazi Germany  READINGS Epstein, Nazi Germany, 4 Richard Evans, Social Outsiders in German History: From the 16th Century to 1933 (in Gellatey and Stoltzfus).  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Friedlander. The Exclusion and Murder of the Disabled (in Gellatey and Stoltzfus).  PRIMARY SOURCES Appeal for the Boycott of all Jewish Enterprises (1933) Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (1933) Hitler’s Authorization of killing the incurably ill (September 1, 1939) Lina Haag, A Handful of Dust (1947) Viktor Klemperer Diaries (Excerpts)

WEEK 8: Ordinary Germans and Nazi Germany  READINGS Epstein, Nazi Germany, Chapter 5. David Bankier, The Germans and the Holocaust: what did they know?, in Yad Vashem Studies 20 (1990).  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Wolf Gruner, Indifference? Participation and Protest as individual responses to the persecution of the Jews as revealed in Berlin police logs and trials, 1933-45 (in Schrafstetter and Steinweis). Peter Fritzsche, Babi Yar, but not Auschwitz: What did Germans know about the Final Solution? (in Schrafstetter and Steinweis).

WEEK 9: Nazi Economy  READINGS Adam Tooze, The economic history of the Nazi regime (in Caplan). Goetz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: How the Nazis bought the German People, New York: Metropolitan 2007 (Excerpts).  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Martin Dean, Seizure of Property and the Social Dynamics of the Holocaust, in Dean, Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust 1933-1945, New York: Cambridge University Press 2008. Nikolaus Wachsmann, Economics and Extermination, in Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux 2015.

WEEK 10: Gender Roles, Family Life, and Sexuality in Nazi Germany  READINGS Elizabeth Heineman, What Difference does a husband make? Women and martial status in Nazi and Postwar Germany, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 2003 (Excerpts). Jane Caplan, Gender and Concentration Camps (in Caplan and Wachsmann). Claudia Koonz, The Swastika in the Heart of the Youth, in idem, The Nazi Conscience, Cambridge 2003.  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998 (Excerpts).  PRIMARY SOURCES Hitler’s Speech to the National Socialist Women’s Organization (1934) Emilie Mueller-Zadow, Mothers who give us the future (1936) Founding of Lebensborn (1936) The Women’s Front and the Women in the Party (1943)

WEEK 11: Everyday Life and Entertainment in Nazi Germany  READINGS Pamela Swett, Corey Ross and Fabrie d’Almeida: Introduction (in Swett). S. Jonathan Wiesen, Driving, Shopping and Smoking (in Swett).  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Pamela E. Swett, Selling Sexual Pleasure in 1903s Germany (in Swett). Karl Christian Fuehrer, Pleasure, Practicality and Propaganda: Popular Magazines in Nazi Germany (in Swett).  PRIMARY SOURCES Jud Suess (1940)

WEEK 12: World War 2, the Holocaust, and the Homefront  READINGS Epstein, Nazi Germany, Chapter 6 and 7. Wolfgang Wette, The Wehrmacht. History, Myth, Reality, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2006 (excerpts).

 ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Hannes Heer, How Amorality became Normality: Reflections on the Mentality of German Soldiers on the Eastern Front in Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, eds., War of Extermination. The German Military in World War II, New York: Berghahn 2000. Thomas Kuehne, The Pleasure of Terror: Belonging through Genocide (in Swett).  PRIMARY SOURCES Oath of officials and soldiers of the Wehrmacht (1934) Adolf Hitler, Speech to Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht (1939)

WEEK 13: Resistance and Collaboration  READINGS Epstein, Nazi Germany, Chapter 8. Mark Roseman, The Pleasures of Opposition: Leisure, Solidarity and Resistance of a life-reform group (in Swett).  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Michael Burleigh, When God Wills it even a Broom can shoot. Resistance in Germany, 1933-1945, in Burleigh, The Third Reich.  PRIMARY SOURCES Leaflets of the White Rose, 1942 and 1943

WEEK 14: Collapse of Nazi Germany and Aftermath  READINGS Epstein, Nazi Germany, Epilogue. Richard Bessel, The End of the Volksgemeinschaft (in Steber/Gotto).  ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READINGS Robert G. Moeller, The Third Reich in post-war German memory (in Caplan).  PRIMARY SOURCES Directive of the Commander-in-Chief of the Unites States Forces of Occupation (1945)