SPECIAL FEATURE SYLLABUS ISSUE 10

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1 Course: Nazi Germany SPECIAL FEATURE SYLLABUS ISSUE 10 History 448-U015: Nazi Germany The University of South Dakota Department of History Dr. David Burrow Course description: History 448 focuses on the Weimar era and the period of Nazi rule prior to WWII, the twenty eventful years from 1919 to 1939 in Germany.* In order to more fully understand the Nazi era we must look at the events that flank those twenty years: the creation and collapse of the First Reich; and the period of division that followed the collapse of the Nazi regime, the rebuilding of West Germany under capitalism and the repression of the East under Communism. Throughout the course we engage the ongoing debate over the meaning of the Nazi era for Germany, Germans, and European history. * History 448 does not extensively cover Nazi Germany during WWII (WWII is the focus of History 470) or the Holocaust (History 449). History 448 is designed to complement, not overlap, these two courses. Course texts Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy Princeton University Press, paperback ISBN Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, Penguin, paperback ISBN George Mosse, Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN Timothy Garton Ash, The File: A Personal History Random House, ISBN

2 Grading and evaluation procedures Class participation 10% Weitz paper 25% Mosse paper 1 20% Mosse paper 2 20% Final paper 25% I do not offer extra credit or make-up work Specific guidelines for papers will be handed out and discussed in advance Your grade will be anchored in four papers due over the course of the semester. The first five-page paper will focus on Weitz s Weimar Germany. The second two papers will require you to base your analysis on documents from Mosse s Nazi Culture reader. One paper will be submitted during week 8, 9, or 10, and the second during week 11, 12, or 13. You may be going back and using documents from chapters of Mosse we considered earlier in the semester. You should be able to write on themes or aspects of Nazi Germany you find most interesting. The due dates of the papers will not correspond exactly with the dates we explore the Mosse documents in class. [Again, we will discuss the details of these assignments later in the semester.] In the final paper you will reflect on Ash s The File. I will consider allowing senior History majors to substitute a limited research paper for their final paper. You should plan on writing approximately twenty pages total for History 448 this semester. USD College of Arts and Sciences Policy on Academic Dishonesty The College of Arts and Sciences considers plagiarism, cheating, and other forms of academic dishonesty inimical to the objectives of higher education. The College supports the imposition of penalties on students who engage in academic dishonesty, as defined in the Conduct section of the University of South Dakota Student Handbook. The Student Conduct Code defines cheating as intentionally using or attempting to use unauthorized materials, information, or study aids in any academic exercise The Student Conduct Code defines plagiarism as intentionally or knowingly representing the words or ideas of another as one's own in any academic exercise No credit can be given for a dishonest assignment. At the discretion of the instructor, a student caught engaging in any form of academic dishonesty may be: a. Given a zero for that assignment. b. Allowed to rewrite and resubmit the assignment for credit. c. Assigned a reduced grade for the course. d. Dropped from the course.

3 e. Failed in the course. Class participation Students are expected to attend all classes. You are rewarded for contributing to class discussions, and for asking questions and making observations in class. In order for an absence to be excused, you must notify me and provide verification (a doctor s note, etc.), as per BOR policy. Each student is permitted two unexcused absences during the semester; more than two unexcused absences, and your attendance grade will drop. If you have more than three unexcused absences in a row (i.e., more than an entire week) I will drop you from the course (or fail you, if these consecutive absences come after the drop deadline). Course schedule There is no textbook for History 448. The texts used in the course are organized thematically, not chronologically. Lectures will present chronologies to ground our analysis, but recognize that Weitz, Evans, and Mosse proceed thematically and as you will see the course reflects their thematic approach. One of the most valuable strategies you can adopt early on is to read ahead in Weimar Germany. Week One: introduction; the challenges of modern German history September 3: Prussia and the conundrum of German identity Week Two: the First Reich No class Monday, September 6 (Labor Day holiday) Reading: Weitz, Weimar Germany, chapter 1 and 2 (Walking the City) + Conclusion Week Three: WWI and the birth of Weimar Reading: Weitz, Weimar Germany, chapters 3 (Political Worlds) and 4 (A Turbulent Economy and an Anxious Society) Week Four: Weimar culture Reading: Weitz, Weimar Germany, chapters 5 (Building a New Germany), 6 (Sound and Image), 7 (Culture and Mass Society), and 8 (Bodies and Sex). We will focus on chapters 6 and 8. Week Five: Nazi ideology and belief systems Reading: Mosse, chapters 1 (Hitler Sets the Tone), 3 (The Foundation: Racism), and 4 (Building Myths and Heroes) Week Six: Hitler s ascent to power Reading: Weitz, Weimar Germany, chapter 9 (Revolution and Counterrevolution from the Right); Evans, Prologue; Mosse, chapter 2 (What Sort of A Revolution?)

4 Week Seven: Gleichschaltung and repression Reading: Evans, chapter 1 (The Police State); Mosse, chapter 11 (The Assumption of Power) Week Eight: The revolution we have made is a total one Reading: Evans, chapter 2 (The Mobilization of the Spirit); Mosse, chapter 5 (Toward a Total Culture) Week Nine: the Nazi conscience Reading: Evans, chapters 3 (Converting the Soul); Mosse, chapters 7 (Christianity) and 8 (The Key: Education of Youth) Week Ten: the Nazi state Reading: Evans, chapters 4 (Prosperity and Plunder) and 5 (Building the People s Community); Mosse, chapters 9 (What is the State) and 10 (Workers and Shopkeepers) Week Eleven: the Nazi perversion of science Reading: Evans, chapter 6 (Towards the Racial Utopia); Mosse, chapter 6 (Science and National Socialism) Week Twelve: preparation for war Reading: Evans, chapter 7 (The Road to War) Week Thirteen: WWII and its aftermath Week Fourteen: divided Germany Reading: Elaine Kelly, Imagining Richard Wagner: The Janus Head of a Divided Nation, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 9 #4 Fall 2008 (New Series), pp Available online at Weeks Library through Project Muse in the research gateway Week Fifteen: the experience of Communist East Germany Reading: Ash, The File Final paper

5 The University of South Dakota Department of History History 449: The Holocaust Spring Semester 2011 Dr. David Burrow Course: Holocaust Course description: History 449 focuses on the period from and the effort to utterly annihilate Europe s Jewish population as well as other populations deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime a period known generally as the Holocaust or Shoah ( catastrophe or destruction ). History 449 considers in depth the motivations and actions of perpetrators of the Holocaust (Neighbors and War of Annihilation), the account of one victim (The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak), and one survivor (Inside the Gas Chambers). The course incorporates and reflects on current scholarly debates about the nature of the killing during the Holocaust, particularly new information on the extent of shooting deaths in 1941, the extensive killing in Eastern Europe prior to WWII (specifically Timothy Snyder s 2010 book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin), and the role of the Wehrmacht in the Holocaust. The structure and content of the course also reflect Dr. Burrow s participation in the 2009 Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Course goals: for students to understand the historical contexts, and the means and methods by which the Holocaust was brought about; for students to explore the historical and moral dilemmas raised by the Holocaust; for students to consider how the Holocaust serves as a model for other twentieth-century genocides; and for students to encounter some of the individual lives ended and transformed by these events. Required texts Doris L. Bergen, War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, Second Edition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009) ISBN Geoffrey Megargee, War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 (Rowman & Littlefield) ISBN Jan T. Gross, Neighbors (Penguin edition, 2002) ISBN The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak (Oxford, 1998 edition) ISBN Shlomo Venezia, Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz (Polity Books and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

6 ISBN Several readings for the course are in PDF form on the course web site on D2L. A number of the other readings assigned for the course are online. Two Web sites useful for the course are and particularly the home site for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Class attendance Students are expected to attend every class. Excused absences will be granted in accordance with University policy ( In order for an illness or funeral absence to count as excused, you must provide verification (a doctor s note, funeral program, etc.). Students can generally accumulate two unexcused absences without penalty. Multiple unexcused absences will lower your overall grade. If you have four unexcused absences in a row, and I am not contacted in advance about the reasons for your absence, I will drop you from the course. While it will be difficult to hold discussions in such a large class (discussion is not a formal graded component), participation in class will certainly be rewarded. Grading and evaluation procedures Exam 20% First paper 20% Second paper 20% Third paper 20% Final exam 20% Grading for the course is divided among five equally weighted assignments, two exams and three five-page papers. The February 4 exam will be in-class; the final may be a take-home or sit-down exam. Specific topics and guidelines for the papers will be handed out in advance. All of the assigned work must be submitted in order for you to pass the course. Graduate students (History 549) There is no separate graduate syllabus. The graduate students will meet with Dr. Burrow to discuss my expectations about appropriate graduate-level work. You will be expected to attend class, discuss the readings, and write a substantial 20-page research paper. You will not otherwise do the same assignments as the undergraduates. USD College of Arts and Sciences: Policy on Academic Dishonesty The College of Arts and Sciences considers plagiarism, cheating, and other forms of academic dishonesty inimical to the objectives of higher education. The College supports the imposition of penalties on students who engage in academic dishonesty, as defined in the Conduct section of the University of South Dakota Student Handbook.

7 The Student Conduct Code defines cheating as intentionally using or attempting to use unauthorized materials, information, or study aids in any academic exercise. The Student Conduct Code defines plagiarism as intentionally or knowingly representing the words or ideas of another as one's own in any academic exercise. No credit can be given for a dishonest assignment. At the discretion of the instructor, a student caught engaging in any form of academic dishonesty may be: a. Given a zero for that assignment. b. Allowed to rewrite and resubmit the assignment for credit. c. Assigned a reduced grade for the course. d. Dropped from the course. e. Failed in the course. If you have any questions as to what constitutes plagiarism, please contact me or raise the issue in class. It is much better to ask than to commit plagiarism. Class schedule: lectures and readings Be sure to bring the assigned books to class on the days indicated. Week One: introduction to the course Studying the Holocaust, defining genocide, imagining the unknowable Week Two: survey of Jewish life in Europe Monday, January 17: no class (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) Online readings: a brief account of the massacre at York in Read section 21 below on emancipation, and tour Life in the Pale of Settlement and Week Three: understanding religious anti-judaism and antisemitism Readings: Bergen, chapter one What s in a Hyphen? at Philip Graves on the infamous antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion Hitler speech of 12 April One of the most notorious sections of Hitler s Mein Kampf

8 A different interpretation of antisemitism than that used by Dr. Burrow, but interesting nonetheless, particularly pp on contemporary antisemitic myths. Week Four: Jewish life in Nazi Germany, Readings: Bergen, chapters two and three; as an example of Nazi antisemitic propaganda, read The Toadstool (Die Giftpilz) from the examples available at the site below Exam Week Five: Open Aggression Reading: Bergen, chapters four and five [in particular notice pp , covering ghettoization, the Lodz ghetto, and Polish-Jewish relations] Week Six: ghettoization and preparation for war Readings: The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak, notebooks 1 and 2; Megargee, chapter 1 Week Seven: Vernichtungskrieg Monday, February 21: no class (Presidents Day holiday) Readings: Bergen, chapter 6; Megargee, chapters 2-3 Week Eight: Poland between Hitler and Stalin Readings: Neighbors First paper due Spring break Week Nine: Wehrmacht and genocide Reading: Megargee, chapters 4-6; Klaus Naumann, The Unblemished Wehrmacht (pdf) Week Ten: death and life in occupied Europe Reading: Dawid Sierakowiak, notebooks 3-5; Alexandra Garbarini, A Tale of Two Diarists, pages of Ghettos, : New Research and Perspectives Week Eleven: the Holocaust at its peak Reading: Bergen, chapter 7; Minutes from the Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942) Second paper due Week Twelve: the death camps Reading: Venezia, chapters 1-3; Auschwitz through the lens of the SS

9 Week Thirteen: death marches and survival Reading: Venezia, chapters 4-6 Week Fourteen: interpreting the Holocaust Third paper due Reading: Omer Bartov, Whose History Is It, Anyway? (pdf); Robert Ericksen, Christian Complicity? Changing Views on German Churches and the Holocaust Week Fifteen: the search for meaning Reading: Bergen, Conclusion; John K. Roth, In the Shadow of Birkenau Sunday, May 1: Holocaust Remembrance Day Final exam