Wider Reading

The History Association has produced a topic guide for Alevel students. Along with articles and information pages, it has videos and podcasts of historians debating the key themes and interpretations of the period. These resources link well to the course and are also excellent for coursework questions.

You will need the following username and password to access the resources:

Username: 12259

Password: student123

Simon Constantine examines the clashes between the Left and Right of Germany’s new Republic that helped to create the environment for future extremism and hatred.

A. Lentin takes you through the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the 'German Question', peacemaking and the Treaty of Versailles, Europe and the German question after Versailles. Most of all, he looks at the main objectives of 'The Big Three' delegates at Versailles.

W.N. Medlicott in 1963 examines the legacy of the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler’s preparations for war, how the British and French forces reacted to his offensive and the last days of peace before the Polish invasion

Ian Kershaw examines how and why certain political events and issues are attributed to being the responsibility of those in power. The early tendency to blame the war squarely on Hitler and his mad, undefiable will eventually produced a backlash that reflected both a rejection of his personality cult and a rejection of the idea of him as a 'great man' with the power to shape history all on his own.

Andrew Kirkby recalls the last days of the Weimar Republic as he saw and remembered them as a young boy.

R.A.H.Robinson : The importance of fascism in twentieth-century Europe is beyond question. But what was - or is - fascism? Is it synonymous with authoritarian rule or the totalitarian state, or with both? In political terms, is fascism ‘right-wing' or ‘left-wing', revolutionary or reactionary? Why did it develop? Was it truly only a phenomenon of Mussolini's Italy? Who were the fascists? Should we explain the movement in psychological terms?

Edward Acton's 1998 essay compares Soviet and German society on the eve of their dictator's takeover, their ideologies, and their reconfiguring of the suitable deeds and attitudes of the state. Some of their most prominent similarities include a radical official ideology, a single party headed by a cult dictator, terrorist police control, the party's monopoly of mass communication and weapons, and central control of the entire economy.

Hendrik Karsten Hogrefe considers the extent to which Mein Kampf and the Hossbach Memorandum have been used by historians as evidence of a Hitler blueprint, and how valuable these sources may be in studying German foreign policy in this period. Hitler clearly states in Mein Kampf that he wants to expand German borders and gain Lebensraum ('living space' through eastward expansion), but while the reliability of that book is in theory unquestionable it would be another decade before he had the power to turn his vision into reality. This temporal distance adds fuel to the fire of 'opportunist'-leaning historians who believe that Hitler had no master plan for foreign aggression.

Sarah Newman, an experienced secondary-level teacher, looks at the roots of anti-Semitism in German culture and what the aim of the Holocaust was. She draws on Daniel Goldhagen's definition of the term as ‘negative beliefs and emotions about Jews qua Jews', and how Nazis believed that, because Jews supposedly were responsible for their country's misfortunes, they must be denied German citizenship and removed from German society. Hitler never compromised on the need to settle what he regarded as the 'Jewish question'.

Wulf Kansteiner of the State University of New York takes a lengthy examination of Saul Friedlander’s 2007 book The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945 two years after its release. He explains how Friedlander’s writing is manipulative but highly effective, warping chronology and causalities of events 'in such a way that his readers experience a faint echo of the radical sense of alienation and displacement that the victims felt as they were expelled from society and deported to the death camps from all over Europe'.

Sarah Newman explains the historical context preceding the infamous Kristallnacht, or 'Night of Broken Glass' as well as the damages, arrests and reactions that followed it. A new wave of anti-Semitic violence was instigated due to the 1937 Nuremberg Rally, mounting economic problems facing the Four Year Plan and the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland.