PDF file: History - Advanced Higher - Germany - Education Scotland

THEME 4: THE TRANSFORMATION OF POST-WEIMAR SOCIETY
The last main area of the course requires the study of:
• Nazi consolidation of power in Germany
• Nazi economic policy
• Nazi social and racial policies
• The impact of foreign policy on domestic circumstances.
The means used to assert power and the use made of power mean that all three key
concepts are of relevance i.e.
• Ideology
• Authority
• Revolution.
Issues to consider / investigate / discuss
The nature of Nazi rule and Hitler’s own intentions have been the
subject of much debate among historians. As you build up notes
consider the following issues:
• Is Hitler’s role absolutely central to all that happened in these
years?
• What difference did Nazi rule make to the lines of ordinary
Germans?
• What opposition did the Nazis face inside Germany?
• How do you explain the German economic recovery? Was it due
to Nazi policies?
• Is it possible, in any way, to see Nazi policies as a continuation of
what had been happening before 1933?
The historian Ian Kershaw notes:
‘More than half a century after the destruction of the Third Reich,
leading historians are far from agreement on some of the most
fundamental problems of interpreting and explaining Nazism.’
Ian Kershaw, ‘Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of
Interpretation’, Arnold, 2000
History: Germany: Versailles to the Outbreak of World War II - 1918-1939 (AH) 33