History 341     Germany Since Bismarck      Schedule        Spring 2024


(The assignments for a given week mean that you should read them for that week; that is to say, in advance of the classes dealing with that material. "TEXT" indicates our online compact "textbook," by the German Historical Institute: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/index.cfm )

Introduction

Jan 31--Introduction. Start today (or tomorrow) reading Effi Briest, by Theodor Fontane.

Feb 2--Deutschland Über Was??  Constitutions and Territory. 
    Read this short "Primer" on the Habsburg Empire (by me!)
    http://artemis.austincollege.edu/acad/history/htooley/HabsburgPrimer.html


Feb 5--Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein
    Be reading ahead, both regular and "outside" novel, Effi Briest.

Feb 7--Bismarck and German Unification I: From Zollverein to 1848 and Beyond!
    Read the Wikipedia entry on the German revolutions of 1848, down to and not including "The Rhineland or Rhenish     Prussia:  
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_revolutions_of_1848%E2%80%931849
    And read this fairly short description of the Danish/Schleswig-Holstein Battle of Idstedt (German)/Isted (Danish)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isted

Feb 9--Bismarck and German Unification II: To the Franco-Prussian War and Beyond
    Read the Text section "Overview: Forging an Empire: Bismarckian Germany, 1866-1890"
    https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/subpage.cfm?subpage_id=86
    (this is print version, pages 1-4)
    And read the famous versions of the Ems Telegram
    https://www.firstworldwar.com/source/emstelegram.htm


Feb 12--The Habsburg Empire and German Unification
    Read pp. 1-20 of this book on Ludwig von Mises, The Last Knight of Liberalism.  You have to download the whole book on pdf (kindly made available by the Ludwig von Mises Institute--about 5.5 MB), then read pp. 3 to 59.  It goes pretty fast.

Feb 14--Kaiserreich, Depression, Migration, Education
    Read Text print version, pages 5-13; online https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/subpage.cfm?subpage_id=86

Feb 16--Discussion of Effi Briest: Eine kleine Sozialmusik
    Read all of the novel before class. 4x reading quiz and discussion

   
Feb 19--Germany and the Coming of the War: Schlieffen Plan, Naval Bills, and German Weltmacht 
    Read Text, print version, 13-22. Online https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/subpage.cfm?subpage_id=86
    And  on the Kaiser and the Boxer Rebellion  http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Kaiser_Wilhelm_II_on_German_Interests_in_China
    And the Daily Telegraph Affair http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Daily_Telegraph_Affair
 
Feb 21--The Outbreak of War.
    Read this very good reconstruction of the murder of the Archduke:
    https://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/comment/sarajevo.html
And the famous Blank Check:  http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_%27Blank_Check%27

Feb 23--Fighting the World.
    Read Tooley, The Great War: Western Front and Home Front, pp. 41 to 106.


Feb 26--Battleground and Home Front.
    Read Tooley, The Great War: Western Front and Home Front, pp. 107-145.

Feb 28--Collapse and Revolution in Central Europe. 
    Read Tooley, The Great War: Western Front and Home Front, pp. 259-281.
 
Mar 1--Weimar: Revolution, the Treaty, Early Life
    Read Wikipedia on The Weimar Republic, down to and not including "The Golden Era (1924-1929)"
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic

Mar 4--Weimar Culture: Focus on the Bauhaus
    Read the Wikipedia entry on the Bauhaus:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus

Mar 6--Hitler and the early Nazi Party
    Read the Spartacus-Eductional article on the young Hitler, up the section on World War I
    https://spartacus-educational.com/GERhitlerTest.htm
    (about 19 pages worth of reading.

Mar 8--Depression and Political Gridlock

Spring Break
 Mar 18--Machtergreifung.  Look thoughly through Randall Bytwerk's page on pre-1933 Nazi propaganda:  http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/pre1933.htm
also read the short OSS interview with Arnold Brecht:
    http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/oss-sb-brecht.html


Mar 20--Midterm Exam

Mar 22--The Third Reich I. 
and the USHMM article on Nazi "Gleichschaltung":
    https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gleichschaltung-coordinating-the-nazi-state

Mar 25-- The Third Reich II
Watch a Hitler speech from 1935. In German, but watch it anyway. What do you take from his "style"?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQKq-ti1CSs
and read an excerpt from Alfons Hecht's memoir of his time in the Hitler Youth.
Mar 27--From Poland to Operation Barbarossa

Mar 29--The Holocaust. 
    Read Browning articles TBA
    And US Holocaust Museum, on mass shootings:
    https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mass-shootings-of-jews-during-the-holocaust
    

Apr 1--Holocaust and Terror Regime, continued.
    Himmler Speech

Apr 3--Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg? The Third Reich and Total War

Apr 5--The German Resistance to Hitler
    Read von Meding, Courageous Hearts.
and a section of Letters to Freya


Apr 8--Some Other Costs of War I.  Read de Zayas,  A Terrible Revenge. 

Apr 10--Das Jahr Null.  Look carefully over the Berlin Airlift site at the Truman Presidential Library site:
    http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/berlin_airlift/large/docs.php
    and read Richard Wiggers's article on Allied food policy

Apr 12--Patterns of Occupation
    Tooley on the Cigarette Economy
    https://mises.org/library/smoke-or-not-smoke-cigarette-economy-postwar-germany-1945-48

Apr 15--Economic Miracle.  Read the excellent short encyclopedia entry by David Henderson in the Encyclopedia of Economics:  
    http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GermanEconomicMiracle.html
and the Wikipedia entries on Adenauer and Erhard:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Adenauer
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Erhard

Apr 17--The Cold War
    Read Wikipedia on Operation Paperclip:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip


Apr 19--East and West.  Spend an hour browsing, looking at pictures, and reading on the website "Berlin Wall Online"
     http://www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/index.html
plus TBA

Apr 22--The Bonn Republic.  Text ch. 10.  Read:  the Wikipedia entries  on Franz Josef Strauss: 
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Strauß
and Willi Brandt
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Brandt


Apr 24--Communist Germany.  Text ch. 11.
    Read:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Demokratische_Republik
     And watch JFK's Berlin Wall Speech:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK1ol_IG77c

Apr 26--West Germany in the Sixties and Seventies
       
Apr 29--International Politics in the Age of Gorbachev
Read also this article on Ronald Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" Speech.  
Helmut Kohl wik

May 1--Die Wende:  The Fall of the Berlin Wall.  Text ch. 12 and conclusion.
  
May 3--Aftermath: 
    Read Funder, Stasiland. 
Also, the Wikipedia entries on Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel.


May 6--Germany in the 2000s

May 8--Some Loose Ends and Some Conclusions.