HHIK06751U CANCELLED HIS HK 2 og HB “Ordinary Germans” and National Socialism 1919-1945 (30 ECTS)

CANCELLED
HK 2 og HB “Ordinary Germans” and National Socialism 1919-1945 (30 ECTS)

HK 2 [HHIK03741E]
Seventy years after the demise of the “Third Reich”, National Socialism still stands as the ultimate evil, as a “…negative ethical norm against which the standards of civilized society could be defined” (Gregor). The extermination of millions of human beings merely for their belonging to certain “races” abundantly justifies this status. Yet it also underlines the challenge of explaining the attraction of Nazism. Why did more Germans in 1932 and 1933 vote for the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) than for any other party? What accounts for Hitler’s popularity throughout the 1930s? And what enabled the regime to carry on with its war as well as its systematic mass killings until its total defeat in 1945?

Rather than the development of Nazi organizations or the complexities of the war, the course focuses on the nature and amount of support for Nazism. Drawing on primary sources as well as research literature, we will discuss to what extent the Nazi regime succeeded in creating their so-called peoples community (Volksgemeinschaft), or whether this remained an empty propaganda parole. We will analyze the role of consensus and coercion, respectively, for the functioning of the regime. Did support and acceptance reflect the – perceived or real – “welfare” side of the regime? To what degree support reflect ideological themes such as antisemitism and the self-flattering paroles of racial superiority and inferiority?

Assessing and explaining the attitudes towards the Nazi regime is a huge challenge, given the absence of free elections and free speech on the one hand, and the standing threat of persecution including internment in concentration camps on the other. These difficulties are even bigger for the question of knowledge about and support for the mass murder of “life unworthy of life” and the systematic extermination of Jews since 1941. What did different groups of Germans know about what the regime termed the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”? To what extent did “ordinary Germans” even – more or less actively – support it?

We will also discuss the premises and problems of a narrow focus on National Socialism and try to point to “roads not taken” that could have led in other directions than to Hitler’s seizure of power and ultimately the Holocaust.

Course objectives (on completion of this course students are expected to be able to):
• demonstrate knowledge of contemporary patterns of interpretation
• place primary sources in the relevant historical context
• pose relevant questions to the history of National Socialism and use primary sources as well as research literature to give a coherent answer to these question

The Uses of History (HHIK03751E)
How have Germans after 1945 coped with the Nazi past? How were Nazism and the 12 years in the “Third Reich” remembered, interpreted and used after 1945? Did repression of memory of the atrocities in the young Federal Republic constitute a “second guilt” (Giordano) and a re-marginalization of the marginalized? Alternatively, should the years of silence about Nazi atrocities be seen as “the social-psychological and political necessary medium” (Lübbe) for turning the earlier national comrades (Volksgenossen) into citizens of the Federal Republic? To what extent does the conventional picture of silence about the Nazi past capture the reality of the young Federal Republic, the main successor state to Hitler’s “Third Reich”? How did the context of the Cold War, the ascent of the Federal Republic to the economic powerhouse of the continent, the ongoing integration of national states into the European Community, and the coming of new generations condition and reflect the way, life in the “Third Reich” was remembered?

Germany after 1945 has been termed a “difficult fatherland”. Its citizens had 12 years as national comrades (Volksgenossen) in the “Third Reich” as part of their personal history, and descendants would have to cope with the fact that Germans had played the leading role in the Holocaust, probably the greatest crime ever committed against humanity. This was particularly obvious for Germans in the Federal Republic of Germany established in 1949, which in contrast to the smaller East German State never claimed, that the (former) Nazis had ended up in the other state.

The theoretical starting point is an understanding of collective memory as a very present and on-going activity of great importance for (collective) identity as well as for the legitimacy of political and social claims. Consequently the past may be gone, but memory is an extremely fought-over field in a modern society. Drawing on more general reflections on the usefulness or uselessness of history from Nietzsche to Maurice Halbwachs we will look at the “search for a usable past” (Moeller) in the Federal Republic to see what is remembered, what is forgotten or suppressed and what is invented. Not just the existence of a substantial part of the population denoting National Socialism as “a good idea badly carried out” indicates, that took on much more strange and contradictory forms than usually thought – that neither sweeping moral condemnations or the story of the Federal Republic as the exemplary coming to terms with the past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) does justice to postwar reality.

In the course some attention will be given to the lessons drawn on a state level from the collapse of the Weimar Republic. The decision for a Wehrhafte Demokratie – a democracy ready to defend itself – as expressed in the banning of the „Socialist Reichs-Party” in 1952. However, the main focus will be on cases in the sphere of popular culture – from books and movies to exhibitions and memorials – where identity and the legitimacy of demands were articulated, negotiated and framed in new narratives.

Participation
The student is expected to engage actively in the individual and collective learning process, among other things through a small presentation in class.

Course objectives (on completion of this course students are expected to be able to):
• have insight into different theories about history and memory in society
• apply theories to different cases
• demonstrate insight into the most important phenomena, incidents, and developments in the post war period on the topic of collective memory