NEW COURSE
GENED 1203 – How the Germans Embraced Hitler: Politics, Culture & the Death of Democracy in Germany, 1918-1945
Semester: Fall
Offered: 2025
Instructor: David Spreen
Meeting Time: T, Th 10:30am – 11:45am
In a time where modern democracies across the world face challenges, what can (and can’t) we learn from the collapse of German democracy and the rise of Hitler between the two World Wars?
Comparisons with fascism are yet again en vogue. Whether from the Left or the Right of the political spectrum, if statements about political opponents are to be believed, there are Nazis everywhere. Leaving aside such facile comparisons and analogies, this course offers an in-depth case study of Germany’s path from a democracy full of promise and possibility to that democracy’s collapse into tyranny, war, and the Holocaust. We will work extensively with primary sources including contemporary eye witness accounts, political and economic commentary, art, and literature to explore the rise of National Socialism in the context of the politics, culture, and economics of Germany after the First World War before turning to the way the Nazis managed to seize the state, remake German society after 1933, and plunge Europe into war and genocide by the end of the decade. The course will debunk the many myths about the roots of Nazism and work towards an explanation of its rise that does justice to the complexities of lived experience between the two World Wars. With an eye towards the active nature of democratic citizenship, the course will emphasize the many junctures at which the ascend of National Socialism could have been prevented by people from the various corners of interwar Germany’s political spectrum.
Related Sections: Discussion Th, 12:00pm – 1:15pm; Discussion Th, 1:30pm – 2:45pm; Discussion Th, 3:00pm – 4:15pm; TBA
For more details please visit the Harvard Course Catalog.