History of Germany-
Paper Assignment
I. Introduction - The paper assignment is research based, but because I do not expect undergraduate students to possess the skills required to do detailed historical research, I have done the research for you. The readings listed below are all that you will need to write the paper. All of them are available on Blackboard in pdf format.
II. Focus of the Paper - All students will write papers that examine the principal arguments concerning the question of whether Germany had a unique historical development (commonly called the Sonderweg, or "special path") or not. All papers will address these two questions:
1. What are the main ideas and what has been the history of the historical school known as Sonderweg? In other words, what is the historiography of this idea?
2. How was the Nazi era different than the eras that came before it, particularly the period of the Kaiserreich (1871-1918)? How were Hitler's actions and ideas a radical break with the German historical past?
Remember, this is not really a history paper; it is a paper that examines historiography, or how historians' understanding of the past has changed over time. Therefore, you are really examining historical arguments in this paper. When writing this paper, you must first develop a thesis statement that consists of one or possibly two sentences that address both questions. Your thesis should be declarative, and it should be in the introductory paragraph of your paper. In order to answer the first question, read the following two articles:
Question 1 Readings (Required)
Hinde, John R. "Sonderweg (Special Path)." In Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture: 1871-1990. Dieter Buse&JuergenDoerr, eds. Vol. 2, pp. 934-935. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.
Feuchtwanger, Edgar. "The Peculiar Course of German History." History Review 43 (September 2002): 49-54.
Preston, Paul. "Were the Nazis an Inevitable Legacy to the Kaiser's Germany?" History Today 35 (October 985): 58-59.
Read the essays above in the order they are shown; this will give you a better grasp on the material and a good, general overview of what is meant by the Sonderweg Thesis and the main ideas that it has encompassed. The goal of reading these three works is to help you to understand that historians today generally do not accept the idea that the Nazi regime was an historical inevitability, and that Germany under the Nazis was far different than it had been under earlier regimes. Thus, they generally reject the Sonderweg Thesis.
Question 1 Readings (Optional)
Kocka, Jürgen. "Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg." History and Theory 38 (February 1999): 40-50.
Fried, Hans. "German Militarism: Substitute for Revolution." Political Science Quarterly 58 (December 1943): 481-513.
For students who want to do a more in-depth job on this paper, I will make additional resources available to you. These optional works tend to be quite a bit more challenging than the required works. The first article by Kocka provides a much more detailed examination of the Sonderweg Thesis and current status of this theory among historians today. I suggest reading the required readings first and then tackling the Kocka article. The second essay by Fried is an older work that is a typical example of the works produced by historians who support the Sonderweg Thesis. This article provides an excellent example of the older scholarship produced during the World War II era that stressed that the Nazis were simply another in a long line of non-democratic German political regimes.
Question 2 Readings (Required)
Evans, Richard. "The Coming of the Third Reich." History Review 50 (December 2004): 12-17.
Kershaw, Ian. "1933: Continuity or Break in German History?" History Today 33 (January 1983): 13-18
Evans, Richard. "Hitler's Dictatorship." History Review 50 (March 2005): 20-25.
These three required articles will help you to understand some of the key arguments of those historians who reject the Sonderweg Thesis. In particular, they argue that much of what constituted Hitler's Third Reich was based not upon older German institutions and practices but newer and rather detestable ideas that had previously only attracted small minorities of people within Germany. In other words, they argue that the Nazi regime was not a continuation of earlier German political forms, particularly the Kaiserreich. Read the essays above in the order they are presented in order to gain a firm understanding of these arguments.
Question 2 Readings (Optional)
Ian Kershaw. "Hitler and the Uniqueness of Nazism." Journal of Contemporary History 39 (April 2004): 239-254.
Bessel, Richard. "The Nazi Capture of Power." Journal of Contemporary History 39 (April 2004): 169-188.
Griffin, Roger. "Party Time: The Temporal Revolution of the Third Reich." History Today 49 (April 1999): 43-49.
Pearson, Clive. "Hitler and the Law, 1920-1945." History Review 60 (March 2008): 28-33.