Modern Germany has achieved some of the world’s most impressive successes in economic development, scholarship, the arts, urban planning, and welfare policy, but it also played a major role in causing two world wars and was responsible for the Holocaust.  The Nazi seizure of power may be the most puzzling case in world history of reversion into barbarism by a country that had attained a democratic political constitution and a high level of economic and social development.  Some scholars regard the Nazi seizure of power as an aberration in German history, a dreadful accident that should not detract attention from the many positive developments in Germany before 1933 and after 1945, but others argue that the Third Reich revealed deep-seated and long-lasting authoritarian currents in German society and culture.  This basic problem will underlie our investigation of German history from 1848 until 1991.  We will focus on the tension between the dream of national unity and the realities of division by class, region, gender, and religion, and the tension between old social hierarchies and the new ideal of equality propagated by socialists and feminists.  Our topics will include the failure of the democratic revolution of 1848 and the lessons drawn by Marxists from that failure, Bismarck’s strategy to create a united and prosperous Germany while defending old social hierarchies, the birth of socialism and feminism, the extent to which the Imperial German government was responsible for the outbreak of the First World War, the successes and ultimate failure of Germany's first experiment with democracy in the Weimar Republic, the mentality of the Nazis and nature of the regime which they created, the extent to which the German people supported the criminal policies of the Third Reich, the strategy adopted by the founders of the Federal Republic of Germany for placing democracy on a secure foundation, and the collapse of the Communist East German regime in 1989.  By the end of the semester we should learn some lessons from the German example that can be applied to other regions of the world today where democracy is still an experiment, and people feel tempted to embrace destructive forms of nationalism.

To earn credit for this course you are required to participate actively in class discussion, to take a mid-semester and a final examination, to write two reaction papers of 4-5 pages each on our required readings, and to write a ten-page term paper on a topic of special interest to you. Three reaction paper topics are listed in the syllabus below, from which you should choose two. Reaction papers should include careful citations of the readings to be analyzed but need not include a formal introduction or conclusion; just plunge right into the effort to sort out the strong points from the weak points in the author's argument, and then take some stand as to its overall persuasiveness. The purpose of these papers is to focus and enhance our discussion of the text, so they must be submitted by the beginning of class on the day due.  Your term paper must deal with a disagreement among scholars over the interpretation of a key development or figure in German history. For it you are expected to read at least TWO sources in addition to our required readings, to explain the key issues in the debate reflected in those readings, and to decide which argument you find most persuasive. The syllabus link above contains suggested term paper topics with recommended readings, but feel free to come see me if you are interested in a topic not on that list. If you read German, please utilize that skill in your term paper research; a reading knowledge of German will greatly enhance the variety of readings from which you can choose. In addition to the normal plus-2 option, readers of German are also welcome to take a foreign-language plus-2 that would involve substantial readings in German and analysis of German terminology. This class will include some formal lectures, but over half our class time will be devoted to discussion of the readings, so the value of this class will depend largely on your willingness to do the readings in a timely fashion and converse about them with the rest of us.

A list of required readings, available in the College Bookstore and on closed reserve in Burling, and a schedule of classes follow:

1. David Blackbourn, History of Germany, 1780-1918: The Long Nineteenth Century, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press, 2003)
2. Alfred Kelly, ed., The German Worker: Working-Class Autobiographies from the Age of Industrialization (University of California Press, 1987).
3. A.J. Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler (4th edn, St. Martin's, 2000).
4. William S. Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power, rev. edn (Quadrangle, 1984).
5. Ian Kershaw, Hitler (Longman, 1991).
6. Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men (Harper, 1992).
7. Robert Moeller, Protecting Motherhood: Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany (University of California Press, 1993).
8. Heinrich Böll, Billiards at Half-Past Nine (Penguin, first published in German in 1959).

Discuss Bismarck's SPEECHES, nos. 6-9.

FIRST REACTION PAPER DUE BY NOON ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13. Evaluate the honesty and accuracy of Bismarck's explanation of his policies in light of the evidence presented by Blackbourn. (You need not discuss all of Bismarck's speeches, but please refer to at least three of them.)

Discuss The German Worker, pp. 121-59, 252-68, 351-69.

SECOND REACTION PAPER DUE BY 5:00 P.M. ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23: Which Marxist ideas proved most influential among ordinary German workers, and which the least? Does the evidence in the Kelly anthology support the conclusion that "revolutionary class consciousness" was spreading among German workers on the eve of the First World War?

Discuss William S. Allen, chaps 10-15.

Discuss William S. Allen, chaps 16-20.

THIRD REACTION PAPER DUE BY THE BEGINNING OF CLASS: Compare the strengths and weaknesses of Kershaw's biographical approach to the history of Nazism and the Third Reich with those of William S. Allen's local study. If you could only assign students one of these books, which would it be?

Discuss xeroxes from Uniting Germany, pp. 31-55. TERM PAPERS DUE BY 5:00 P.M. ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9.