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Sylabus

Prof. Dr. Boris Barth

Mittwoch, 14.10 Uhr the seminar will be taught online

During the last decades National Socialism has become one of the best researched, but still highly controversial historical topics. As a complete presentation of all aspects is impossible, this course will focus on specific and selected issues (see list below). It will concenrate on the form of the state (the so called polycratic chaos), as functionalists have described it, the emergence of a murderous racial state, the war of annihilation in the East, and the long and difficult German attempts to come to terms with the past. Knowledge of the German language is welcome but not necessary.

- 17th of February: Introduction, program, presentations

- 24th of February: Structure of the Weimar Republic, the rise of the NSDAP

- 3rd of March: The so-called „Machtergreifung“ (grab for power), the establishment of the dictatorship

- 10th of March: The polycratic structure of the state, the emergence of a racial dictatorship, the Hitler Myth

- 17th of March: National Socialist foreign policy (until 1939)

- 24th of March: Politics of autarky and re-armament programs (Adam Tooze and the Tim Mason controversy)

- 31st of March: The War in Europe 1939-41 and the occupation policy (case studies)

- 7th of April: „Fall Barbarossa“ – the war against the Soviet Union

- 14th of April: The Shoah, the „realization of the racial utopia (H. Mommsen)

- 21st of April: The End of the „Third Reich“

- 28th of April: Coming to terms with the past – the German example

- 5th of May: Final debate, conclusion

- 12th of May: No class – Czech day of the president

Literature will be given during the course; a very good introduction is: Richard Evans, The Third Reich.