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   History Home

Department of History  

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Professor: Michael Burleigh
e-mail burleighm@wlu.edu.
Office Hours: W 11-12.30 and 3-4.30, and by prior appointment with Jennifer Ashworth.
[in the week beginning 15th October I will be in Europe, so alternative arrangements will be made]

THE COURSE.

The history of Germany from the First World War to the present. Students will be expected to familiarise themselves with the impact of WWI and its aftermath of defeat, revolution, occupation and inflation; the reasons for the ultimate non-viability of the Weimar Republic; the fortunes of the major political parties, including the NSDAP; Nazi domestic and foreign policy, including the perspective of the other major powers; the Holocaust and issues of comparability between barbarisms; Allied occupation; the foundation and early history of the Federal Republic of Germany; the German Democratic Republic and the Soviet bloc; Ostpolitik; the unification of Germany 1989-90; contemporary German society and politics, and the position of Germany within an evolving European Union and vis a vis the non-European world.

There will be approximately twelve lectures of 50 minutes duration, with follow-on seminars for which student preparation and a willingness to contribute are essential. Students will be expected to have read the relevant source extracts/ passages or articles from a COURSE MANUAL (to be acquired from Jennifer Ashworth) and the relevant CHAPTER(S) from various textbooks or the more advanced scholarly literature. The materials in the COURSE MANUAL are designed to stimulate a wider discussion about historical reasoning; the nature of evidence; the human condition and so forth, rather than to precisely cover every aspect of the course. The ability to contextualise a document and to extract useful content (i.e not merely facts) from it is one of the skills we hope to develop during the course; the ability to construct a coherent historical argument, the writing of correct and elegant English, moral awareness and sensitivity to other peoples in other places and times, and some sense of the issues which divide historians being among the others we shall strive to cultivate within the limits of our abilities. The lectures will be on: World War One and its immediate aftermath; the German revolution and the founding of the Weimar Republic; society, the political parties and the rise of the NSDAP; The Third Reich at home; the Third Reich and the road to war; ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust; Allied occupation; the creation of the Federal Republic and the GDR; the Adenauer years; Ostpolitik; the two Germany’s in the 1960s and 1970s; the unification of Germany; Germany, the European Union, Russia and the USA.

EXAMINATIONS

There will be TWO 90 minute exams. One in class on 15th October (or thereabouts) and the other towards the end of term. You will be expected to comment critically on TWO out of eight documentary extracts in Section A (30 minutes), all of which you will already be familiarised with, and to write TWO short essays in answer to specific questions, of which there will be twelve in total in Sections B and C. It will be compulsory to answer questions each drawn from Sections A,B and C. 
 

PAPERS

You are invited to write two papers, not exceeding 8 pages in length. These must be typed or word-processed in double spacing, and be numbered together with footnotes and a bibliography. Essay questions will be circulated in advance, together with a required reading list; it is essential that you answer the question set, rather than indulging in impromptu self-expression on a theme of your own choosing. Essays which simply recycle a textbook are of no account; the aim is to read as deeply and critically as possible. Studying history is an intellectual discipline with formal rules. Students are advised to choose subjects from across the full range of the course.

GRADES

The examinations and essays will each comprise 50% of your final grade for this course. There are no extra marks for the degree of participation in class discussions.

BOOKS

There are something like 55,000 books published on Nazi Germany alone. You are advised to acquire some or all of the following:

Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, Edward Dimendberg (eds.) The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (University of California Press 1994)
Jeremy Noakes, Geoffrey Pridham (eds.) Nazism 1919-1945. A Documentary Reader (Exeter University Press 1999- four volumes)
Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (FSG, New York 2000)
Lothar Kettenacker, Germany since 1945 (Oxford University Press 1997)
Timothy Garton Ash, History of the Present. Essays, Sketches and Despatches from Europe in the 1990s (Allen Lane, London/New York 1999)

Students will be given the titles of two or three reliable textbooks towards the END of the course- whose purpose will be to tie together what they have learned in a more coherent analytical narrative.