Seminar Questions:

• How did the complex chain of events between 1929 and 1933 lead to the failure of Weimar republic?

• Why was the economic crisis so important?

• What role did the parties of the Left play?

• Characteristics and development of the NSDAP?

• How did the old Wilhelmine elites influence the last four years of the Weimar republic?

Reading List:

Required Reading:

• Peter Fritzsche, ‘Did Weimar fail?’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 68, No. 3 (1996), pp. 629-56
• Stephen Fritz, "The NSDAP as Volkspartei? A Look at the Social Basis of the Nazi Voter," History Teacher, 20,3 (1987), pp. 379-399

Further Reading:

• Ben Carter Hett, The Death of Democracy (William Heinemann, 2018)
• Rudiger Barth and Hauke Friederichs, The Gravediggers: 1932, The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic (Profile Books, 2019)
• Jane Caplan, 'The Rise of National Socialism 1919-1933' in G. Martel (ed.), Modern Germany reconsidered, 1870-1945 (London: Routledge, 1992), pp.117-139
• 'New Perspectives on the Nazi Storm Troopers', Special Issue of Central European History, Vol. 46, No. 2 (2013)
• William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town (F. Watts, 1984). (Original edition, 1965.)
• Helmut Anheier and Thomas Ohlemacher, “Aktivisten, Netzwerke und Bewegungserfolg. Die Einzelmitglieder der NSDAP, 1925-1930.” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 48 (1996), pp. 677-703.
• Richard Bessell, ‘Germany from War to Dictatorship’, in Mary Fulbrook (ed.), German History since 1800 (1997), pp. 235-57. (Also in Mary Fulbrook (ed.), Twentieth-Century Germany: Politics, Culture and Society, 1918-1990 (2001)).
• Martin Blinkhorn, Fascism and the right in Europe, 1919-1945 (2000) - A good comparative look at the rise of Fascism in Germany and elsewhere.
• Thomas Childers and Jane Caplan, ‘Introduction’, in Childers and Caplan (eds.), Reevaluating the Third Reich (Holmes & Meier, 1993): 1-19.
• Thomas Childers, The Formation of the Nazi Constituency, 1919-1933 (Routledge, 1986)
• ______________, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill, 1983).
• Geoff Eley, 'Review Essay: The German Right From Weimar to Hitler: Fragmentation and Coalescance', Central European History, Volume 48, Issue 02 (2015), pp 199-224
• Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London, 2003).
• _____________, 'The Emergence of Nazi Ideology' in Jane Caplan (ed.), Nazi Germany (OUP, 2008)
• Jürgen W. Falter, ‘The Two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions’, Central European History, Vol. 23, No, 2–3 (1990), pp. 225–241.
• Conan Fischer, The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism (Routledge, 1991)
• ___________, The rise of national socialism and the working classes in Weimar Germany (Berghahn, 1996)
• ___________, Stormtroopers: a social, economic and ideological analysis, 1929-35 (Routledge, 1983)
• Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis. Cambridge, (MA: Harvard UP, 1998).
• ____________, Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany (Oxford UP, 1990).
• ____________, 'The NSDAP, 1919-34: From Fringe Politics to the Seizure of Power' in Jane Caplan (ed.) Nazi Germany (OUP, 2008)
• Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth and the Rise of the Nazis (Oxford, 2009).
• Peter Hayes, ‘“A Question Mark with Epaulettes”? Kurt von Schleicher and Weimar Politics’, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 52, No. 1 (1980)
• Ruth Henig, The Weimar Republic, 1919-1933 (Routledge, 2003), Chapter 4
• Larry Eugene Jones, ‘Franz von Papen, the German Centre Party, and the Failure of Catholic Conservatism in the Weimar Republic’,
  Central European History, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2005)
• _______________, The German right in the Weimar Republic : studies in the history of German conservatism, nationalism, and antisemitism (Berghahn Books, 2014)
• ________________, Hitler versus Hindenburg: the 1932 presidential elections and the end of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 2016)
• _______________, ‘Nationalists, Nazis, and the Assault against Weimar: Revisiting the Harzburg Rally of October 1931’, German Studies Review, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2006), pp. 483–494.
• Edgar J. Jung, "Germany and the Conservative Revolution" (1932) Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg (eds.), The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Univ. of California Press, 1994), pp. 352-4
• Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936 (London, 1998)
• __________ (ed.), Weimar: Why Did German Democracy Fail (1990)
• Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic (2nd edition) (2004), pp. 101-135
• Stephen J. Lee, The European Dictatorships, 1918-1945 (2008) - Good for putting Weimar's collapse in context
• Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, "The Third Empire" (1923) in Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg (eds.), The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Univ. of California Press, 1994), pp. 332-4
• Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy (1989), p. 270 onwards
• George Mosse, "Introduction: The Genesis of Fascism," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1966), pp. 14-26.
• A. J. Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler (4th edition) (2000), Chapters 6, 10 and 11.
• William L. Patch, Heinrich Brüning and the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 1998), pp.
• Dirk Schumann, Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918–1933 (Thomas Dunlap, trans.) (New York, 2009)
• Colin Storer, A Short History of Weimar Germany (2013), Chapter 6
• Peter D. Stachura, Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism (Routledge, 1983)
• Henry Ashby Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power (London, 1996)