HISTORY 640:  GERMAN NATIONAL SOCIALISM

Prof. Jackson

San Francisco State University Fall 2005

Thursday 16:10-18:55.  HSS 152

Office:  Science 224 Hours:  Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:30 Phone:  (415) 338-6184

e-mail address: JACKSONC@SFSU.EDU

web page:  http://bss.sfsu.edu/jacksonc

The enormity of the crimes of the National Socialist regime and the enormous amount of literature on them makes this a challenging topic historiographically.  It will be quite possibly the toughest class you will take as an undergraduate.  I hope it will also be the most rewarding.

One question that might guide the class is how one should write the history of the Nazi regime. How can one approach a historical topic with "sympathy" when it is so morally repugnant?  Can or should the historian write the history of Germany from 1933 to 1945 in the classical Rankean fashion "as it really was," i.e., without moral judgments?  We will trace the evolution of postwar historiography and how it has evolved from treating “the German catastrophe” as being squarely within the continuity of German history,  to other theories that have cast doubt upon the ease with which some social scientists have treated the German people as having trod a “special path” (Sonderweg).  We will also examine the functionalist/intentionalist debate that has dominated study of the Third Reich for the last twenty years, as well as the limitations of those approaches.  The powerful moral questions that this topic raises should not be shirked in discussion, but a strong background in the facts should precede such a discussion.

Requirements:  reading, participation, two critical book reviews (each worth 10%), a written outline and critical bibliography, an oral presentation (worth 10%) and a research paper, approximately 20 pages in length (worth 70%).  One of the two critical book reviews will be on a monograph related to your research; the other will be on another book not related to your research, and not one of the common readings.  Please consult with the instructor regarding both reviews. (See the following guidelines for writing a book review.)

Graduate students will be required to produce one additional book review on a topic not directly related to your research.

Required reading:

Blackbourn, David and Eley, Geoff, The Peculiarities of German History

Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men:  Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution

Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler

John Lukacs, The Hitler of History

Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past

Jackson Spielvogel, Hitler and Nazi Germany 5^th ed.

Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., Thirty Days to Power (Addison-Wesley)

Additional materials will be photocopied to available electronically.

The following two-volume collection of documents is on reserve in the library; if you wish to purchase it, there is now a four-volume version, available most easily through on-line bookstores.  Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds. Nazism:  A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945, 2 vols. (New York:  Shocken, 1988).  For further suggestions on historical literature, consult with the instructor and consult Helen Kehr and Janet Langmaid, comps., The Nazi Era, 1919-1945 (London:  Mansell, 1982), which is also on reserve.  More recently, Paul Madden, comp., Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Epoch (Lanham, 1998) Z8409.6 .M33 1998.  For an excellent overview of the historiography of the Third Reich, see Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, 4^th ed. (London:  Arnold, 2000).

Discussion Topics:

Week 1 (8/25):  Introduction

Week 2 (9/1):  Origins of Nazism

Reading:  Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn, The Peculiarities of German History, entire

 Spielvogel, Introduction

Optional:  George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology
Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York:  Norton, 1967), chaps.1-4, 8, 9, 12, 13, 21, 23, 24, 25.

Week 3 (9/8):  Library session

Week 4:  Weimar Germany and the Machtgreifung

Reading: Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power, entire

              Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler, entire

                Spielvogel, chaps.2-3