Second and third year undergraduate courses

Germany since 1870: Nationalism Versus Democracy

HT520 / HT530

This course covers the political, social and to a lesser extent, economic history of Germany from 1870 to the present. In thematic terms it will centre around the debate between those who argue that Germany followed a special developmental path (sonderweg) as a result of its belated unification and those who make countervailing claims that Germany’s development reflected, albeit sometimes in rather extreme forms, more general European trends including industrialisation, urbanisation and the growth of a working class. Questions of continuity and rupture will be addressed in relation to the transitions between Bismarckian and Wilhelmine Germany, the Second Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and the divided state of the post war years. Particular attention will be paid to the Weimar republic and the extent to which it represented a viable democratic alternative to the tradition of authoritarian nationalism that had dominated German political culture since unification. The nature and limitations of the German Revolution of November 1918, the respective roles of the Social Democratic and Communist parties between 1918 and 1933 and the extent to which this division on the left paved the way for Hitler will all be investigated. The social basis of Nazism will be examined in terms of both its electorate and the membership of the NSDAP and SA. The nature of the Nazi state and the debates over the relative importance of the party, the state bureaucracy, the armed forces, big business, the SS and Hitler himself in determining the policies of the Third Reich will also be addressed. The relative merits of internationalist and structuralist accounts of the Holocaust and the degree of the German people’s involvement and knowledge will be discussed. The impact of defeat in the Second World War and the outbreak of the Cold War necessitate an evaluation of the extent to which both the German Federal Republic (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) were moulded by external rather than internal factors. The course will conclude by posing the question as to whether the course of German history since 1989 makes the notion of a sonderweg redundant.

Mode of assessment

Three hour written examination.

Learning outcomes

LEVEL 2

Students will be introduced to a broad range of approaches to recent German political and social history. They will engage with wider issues concerning the impact of social, economic and political change in the 19th and 20th centuries. They will also gain an understanding both of the role of political ideologies and of the contested nature of national identity in an historical context. They will be introduced to some of the primary sources in translation, and to an appropriate analytical approach to these.

In addition to the learning outcomes for level 2 students, level three students will gain an advanced knowledge of the historiography of 19th and 20th century Germany. They will attain a greater knowledge of and capacity to deploy those primary sources available in English translation and develop the capacity for independent historical analysis.

Introductory reading list
V R Berghahn, Modern Germany
William Carr, A History of Germany 1858-1990
Gordon Craig, Germany 1866-1945
Mary Fulbrook, A History of Germany 1918-1990: The Divided Nation
Mary Fulbrook (ed) Twentieth Century Germany
Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship
Hans Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire 1871-1918