Spring 2010

Poli 315: Topics in Politics

Sammy Basu

 

TTH 12:50-2:20

Democracy and Nazism

 

SMU 317

 

Syllabus

 

 

Why did the Weimar Republic fail to achieve democratic consolidation?  What are the competing explanations?  How did Hitler and the anti-democratic NSDAP flourish under the ailing democracy?  How was the Nazi Third Reich able to consolidate its authoritarianism? What are the competing explanations?  What can we learn from the German experience about the constitutive elements of democracy at the institutional, cultural, and cognitive levels?

 

 

 

 

 

Two contemporaneous accounts as well as other primary texts including documents, posters, and films will be read in conjunction with secondary scholarship.

 

 

 

 

 

Exams and Term Paper

 

 

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Joseph Roth.

What I Saw: Reports from Berlin, 1920-1933.  

[1920-33] (2003)

Sebastian Haffner.

Germany Jekyll & Hyde: A Contemporary Account of Nazi Germany [1939] (2008)

 

 

Stephen J. Lee.

The Weimar Republic (2010)

Stephen J. Lee.

Hitler and Nazi Germany (2010)