Syllabus
1. Organisation and Introduction – 22 February 2.
German Peculiarities (2-22) – 29 February 3. The Weaknesses of Weimar (78-103) – 7 March 4.
Bohemian Revolutionaries (156-176) – 14 March 5. The Beer Hall Putsch (176-195) – 21 March 6.
The Roots of Commitment (217-231) – 28 March 7. The Victory of Violence (266-289) – 4 April 8.
The Terror Begins (310-328) – 11 April 9. Bringing Germany into Line (375-391) – 25 April 10.
A „Revolution of Destruction“? (441-462) – 2 May 11. Final Discussion – 9 May 12.
Topics for Essays – 16 May
Annotation
Seminar The History of National Socialism: The Coming of the Third Reich 1918-1933
Email: Norman.Domeier@ff.cuni.cz
Time Thursday, 15:55-17:30
Location C 144 (Celetna)
Starting 22 February 2024
Moodle Tba in the first session
In this lecture we are going to tackle the question how the Nazis managed to destroy democracy and finally seize power in Germany between the early 1920s and 1933. We will explore how the First World War, the Weimar Republic with its political turmoils and the Great Depression paved the way for Nazi rule, first in Germany, then in broad parts of Europe. What started as “little more than a gang of extremists and thugs” (Richard Evans) turned, following Mussolini’s role model of Italian Fascism, within a few years into a political, social and cultural movement of millions of supporters. However, the rise of the National Socialist movement in Germany and its political messiah Adolf Hitler was certainly not inevitable or a teleological necessity. Hence we will discuss critically, based on international research literature, how we are to understand and an-alyse the rise of Nazism.