Spring 2008

SOCS 639
Inside Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

Grimmer-Solem,Erik

01/28/2008 - 05/10/2008
Thursday 06:30 PM - 09:00 PM

Public Affairs Center 004

This course analyzes the processes that led to Hitler's rise to power, the nature of the National Socialist regime, and the origins and implementation of its policies of aggression and genocide. The basic premise of this course is that National Socialism was from the outset driven by a belligerent and genocidal logic. The course will therefore critically analyze the racial, eugenic and geopolitical ideology of National Socialism and the policies of discrimination, conquest, economic exploitation and extermination that followed. At the same time, the role of structural factors in explaining these outcomes will also be explored in great depth from the perspective of everyday life. We will analyze how German society was shaped by Nazism, considering conformity and opposition in the lives of ordinary people in both peacetime and war. The course seeks to impart an awareness of the complex factors that produced a regime of unprecedented destructiveness, and it aims to develop a critical understanding of the ongoing problems of interpretation that accompany its history.

Sources to be studied include William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922-1945; Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History; Eric Johnson, Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans; Detlev Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life.

Course assignments are two response papers, a midterm exam and a final exam.

A syllabus for this course is available at:
http://www.wesleyan.edu/masters/courses/Spring_2008/spring08_syllabi/syb_socs639.html


Erik Grimmer-Solem (B.A. Brigham Young University; M.Sc. London School of Economics and Political Science; M.Phil. Cambridge University; D.Phil. University of Oxford) is associate professor of history and author of The Rise of Historical Economics and Social Reform in Germany, 1864-1894 (Oxford University Press, 2003). Click here for more information about Erik Grimmer-Solem.

ENROLLMENT INFORMATION

Consent of Instructor Required: No

Format: Seminar

Level: GLSP Credits: 3 Enrollment Limit: 18

Texts to purchase for this course:
William Allen, NAZI SEIZURE (Franklin Watts), Paperback

Omer Bartov, THE HOLOCAUST (Routledge), Paperback

Michael Burleigh, THE THIRD REICH (Hill and Wang), Paperback

Eric Johnson, NAZI TERROR (Basic Books), Paperback

Detley Peukert, INSIDE NAZI GERMANY (Yale University Press), Paperback

READING MATERIALS ARE AVAILABLE AT BROAD STREET BOOKS, 45 BROAD STREET, MIDDLETOWN, 860-685-7323 Order your books online

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