Twentieth-Century Germany
Infographic - Course Overview (Spring 2024)
Syllabus Details (updated 24 January 2024)
Calendar of all Learning and Assessment Activities (updated 24 Janary 2024)
Recorded Lectures
Wilhelmine Germany: Part 1: Essential Questions And System of Government (3:50); Part 2: Society and Economy (4:51); Part 3: Centrifugal Forces (14:17); Part 4: Centripetal Forces (12:40)
Germany and Responsibility for WWI: Part 1: Long-Term Causes, Militarism, Nationalism, Imperialism (11:23); Part 2: Entangling Politics and Realpolitik (10:39); Part 3: The July Crisis (13:51); Part 4: The Treaty of Versailles and Victors' Justice (12:51)
Weimar Germany: Part 1: The Great War’s Homefront in the Rearview Mirror and Civic Engagement (13:47); Part 2: Political Revolutions and the Potential Weaknesses (24:00)
Nazi Seizure of Power: Part 1: What is Nazism? (6:52); Part 2: Hitler's Movement (14:44); Part 3: Becoming Chancellor (9:20); Part 4: Gleichschaltung (11:20)
The Role of Racism in Shaping Identity in the Third Reich: Part 1: What is Racism? (6:49); Part 2: Racism and Group Prejudice (11:06)
German Responsibility for World War II: Part 1: Weimar Foreign Policy (14:36); Part 2: Centrality of Hitler (13:20); Part 3: Road to War, 1933-1937 (21;33); Part 4: Road to War, 1938-1939 (25:45); Part 5:The Invasion of the USSR (9:53)
Dividing Germany: Part 1: Framing (10:05); Part 2: Cold War Politics (7:04); Part 3: Allied Occupation Policies (19:46)
East Germany, 1949-1989: Part 1: Political Parties (4:01); Part 2: Power of the State (11:08); Part 3: Berlin Wall (5:09); Part 4: Dissent & Opposition (4:53)
West Germany, 1949-1989: Part 1: Political Parties and Civil Society (7:03); Part 2: Adenauer’s “Chancellor Democracy” (14:21); Part 3: Testing Civil Society (17:49); Part 4: 1970s-1980s (9:54)
The “Gentle Revolution” and German Reunification: Part 1, Civil Society (2:52); Part 2, International Context (4:36); Part 3, Building a Civil Society in the 1980s (10:27); Part 4, The Revolution (9:56)
News Stories
Dismantling a German Myth (DW, 24 November 2014)
"Paintings by Adolf Hitler 'Unremarkable,' So Why Forge Them?" (Opinion, Scott Simon, NPR, 9 February 2019)
Author Says Hitler was 'Blitzed' on Cocaine and Opiates during the War (NPR Fresh Air, 7 March 2017)
A novelist explores the Wilhelm Gustloff tragedy and talks about it in this story: More died on this WWII Ship than on the Titainic and Lusitania Combined (NPR, 17 February 2016)
Guenter Schabowski, the Man Who Opened the Wall (Opinion, The New York Times, 6 November 2015)
Berlin Wall blunderer Guenter Schabowski dies at 86 (BBC, 1 November 2015)
In what contexts, if any, is humor about the Holocaust or Nazis appropriate? Check out this episode of Back in Black from Daily Show (aired on 14 May 2015).
Searing Memories of Nazi Germany's First Concentration Camp (NPR, 29 April 2015)
Berlin's 'Palace of Tears,' A Reminder of Divided Families, Despair (NPR, 10 November 2014)
Germany's Merkel: Fall of Berlin Wall Shows Dreams Come True (NPR, 9 November 2014)
How Mr. Hasselhoff Tore Down this Wall (NPR, 9 November 2014)
In Berlin, A Beat that Bloomed from Rubble (NPR, 9 november 2014)
25 Years Later: Looking Back on the Fall of the Berlin Wall (NPR, 9 November 2014)