Calendar

SES # TOPICS KEY DATES
Week 1
1 Introduction to Class and Requirements: What is "Fascism"?, What is "Nazism"?
Week 2
2

Imperial Germany and the First World War

Discussion

Fabri, Friedrich. Short excerpt from Does Germany Need Colonies?

3 Total War and Total (?) Defeat
Week 3
4

Revolution and the Weimar Constitution

Discussion

Remarque, Jünger. "Letters from the Front and Home Front"

5

The Treaty of Versailles

Economic Shock

Paramilitary Politics

Week 4
6 Recovery, and Weimar Culture I: Art and the Avant-Garde (Visual Presentation)
7

Weimar Culture II: The New Woman

Discussion

Berghaus, Gunter. "Girlkultur: Feminism, Americanism, and Popular Entertainment in Weimar Germany." Journal of Design History (1988).
Nenno, Nancy. "Feminity, the Primitive, and Modern Urban Space: Josephine Baker in Berlin."

Week 5
8 Film: "The Blue Angel" (Die Blaue Engel) (1930, 107 minutes)
9 Countercurrents: Anti-Semitism, Völkisch Nationalism (and the Origins of the Nazi Party) First paper due 3 days after Session 9 (5-6 pages)
Week 6
10

Discussion

Fallada, Hans. Little Man, What Now? 1933.

Week 7
11 The Great Depression and the Polarization of Politics
12

Discussion

Allen, William S. The Nazi Seizure of Power.

Week 8
13 The Nazi Seizure of Power and Gleichschaltung
14

National Socialist Propaganda and Aesthetics: The New Mass Media

Film: Excerpts from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will and Olympia

Discussion

The films of Leni Riefenstahl
Fest, Joachim. The Face of the Third Reich. (Goebbels)

Week 9
15

Discussion

Allen, William S. The Nazi Seizure of Power.

16 The Racial State
Week 10
17 The Rise of the SS State, and Everyday Life under Nazism Second paper due (5-6 pages)
18 Outbreak of the Second World War
Week 11
19 The Course of the War, and the Eastern Front
20

Origins of the "Final Solution" and the Machinery of Mass Murder

Film: Excerpt from Die Ewige Jüde

Discussion

Report of Einsatzgruppe C (1941)
Minutes of the Wannsee Conference (1942)

Week 12
21

Discussion

Browning. Ordinary Men.

Fest, Joachim. The Face of the Third Reich. (Höss)

22 Meeting with Instructor: Review of "Der Brand" (Strategic Bombing)
Week 13
23

The Defeat of Germany and Götterdammerung

Discussion

Allen, William S. The Nazi Seizure of Power.
Fest, Joachim. The Face of the Third Reich.

24 "Zero Hour" and Denazification Third paper due (5-6 pages)
Week 14
25 Film: Germany Year Zero (1947, 78 minutes) or
Somewhere in Berlin (Irgendwo in Berlin) (1946, DEFA), 79 minutes.
26

Discussion of Film

The Legacy of Nazism in History, Memory and Myth

Week 15
Final Exam