Germany Since 1900

3 Credits

Course places Nazism in context of German and European history. Topics include collapse of German democracy and the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship; the role of Hitler; the response of political, military, economic, diplomatic, legal, media, theological elites and the broader population; the mix of terror, consent and coercion; propaganda and Nazi culture; contours of Nazi racial ideology and anti-Semitism and their impact on domestic and foreign racial policy; the economic history of the Nazi regime; foreign policy from rearmament to launching World War II to expansion and defeat; Jewish policy from the years of persecution to those of extermination; Nazi policy in Eastern and Western Europe, towards the United States, and towards North Africa and the Middle East; why the Allies won World War II and why and how Nazi Germany was defeated; the nature of the Allied occupation after 1945; the Nuremberg war crime trials; aftermath of facing and avoiding the crimes of the Nazi regime in West and East Germany.