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

PART TWO: CURRENT RESEARCH
SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION
Twentieth century German history in general and the history of Germany between
1933 and 1945 specifically continue to hold a collective fascination for many people.
Indeed at school level in Scotland the Advanced Higher the German history context is
by far the most popular option. The out-pouring of literature, most notably on the
Third Reich, makes it a difficult and time consuming exercise for even the most
conscientious of classroom teachers to keep pace with and assimilate the available
literature.
Any student of the Advanced Higher German history course will quickly become
aware that in the last three decades there has been a massive outpouring of
historiographical material on Germany between 1918 and 1939. It is no longer
sufficient, if it ever was, for any student of the period to simply explain and analyse
what happened. Anyone looking at the German past must have a historiographical
understanding of what has happened in the twentieth century. Three excellent
historiograpical essays which collectively deal with the period 1918 to 1939 have
been written by Eberhard Kolb, John Hiden and John Farquharson as well as Ian
Kershaw. The historiography of the Weimar Republic is well-documented by
Eberhard Kolb (The Weimar Republic, 1990) in a book in which the author gives a
relatively up-to-date detailed explanation of the state of research on the period from
1918 to 1933. John Hiden and John Farquharson (Explaining Hitler’s Germany,
1983) have written a thorough and detailed guide of what historians have said about
the Third Reich in the last fifty years. An excellent guide to recent debates on the
Third Reich is by Ian Kershaw (The Nazi Dictatorship, 1993). Even at the school
textbook level an author like Jane Jenkins (Hitler and Nazism, 1998, p.49, p.51 and
pp.100-101) makes reference to key historiographical debates and arguments.
SECTION 2: HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC – 1970s-
2000
Even with the passage of time, many books published in the last thirty years on the
Weimar Republic continue to be implicitly as well as explicitly influenced by the
darkening shadow of the Third Reich. As recently as 1993 E. J. Feuchtwanger (From
Weimar to Hitler: Germany, 1918-33, 1993), in the Preface to his general history of
the Weimar Republic, states ‘The history of the Weimar Republic is overshadowed by
the catastrophic consequences of its collapse’. Feuchtwanger goes on to admit it is
difficult ‘to prevent the question of ultimate failure from being too dominant.’ And
yet it is worth remembering that, in simple arithmetic, the Weimar Republic lasted for
fifteen years whilst the Third Reich lasted for only twelve years. A wide variety of
books are available, especially in German, on the history and the historiography of the
Weimar Republic. The 1980s and 1990s saw a significant growth in the number of
English language books on the history of Germany between 1918 and 1933.
The history of the Weimar Republic can be conveniently divided into three distinct
periods. Firstly came the establishment of the Republic between 1918 and 1923. This
was a relatively neglected period of study until the late 1960s and early 1970s which
saw a growth of research on the Republic’s early years and re-examined the political
History: Germany: Versailles to the Outbreak of World War II - 1918-1939 (AH) 39