Most of the questions below are wide-open and general; they are meant to inspire thought, not to yield a single "right answer." In other words, your task is to develop a compelling argument, sustained with relevant evidence. This is not an exercise in "guess what Spang is thinking." In writing your paper, you will want to focus on a specific example or two. Support your analysis with reference to secondary sources and make sure to develop your own argument through interpretation of primary-source material.(Bold-faced text below is a link to relevant bibliographical suggestions.)

Your paper should be approximately seven pages long, double-spaced, in 11- or 12-point font, with one-inch margins. Papers that are less than six full pages or more than ten will be severely penalized. Late papers will lose 1/3 of a grade for each day they are late. In addition to your lecture notes and Merriman's History of Modern Europe, you should consult at least some of the works listed as "Further Reading." If you are writing about one of the primary sources (texts from the time) that we discussed in class, remember to look at the full version of it, rather than simply the selections we discussed. Where appropriate, you should also use some of the recommended on-line resources. For further guidance on paper writing, see:

          • Dr. Spang's guidelines for paper writing
            • Indiana University's Writing Tutorial Service (html-version of the "pamphlets" opens in a web browser)
             • William Strunk, Jr., The Elements of Style (1918)—a classic

1. In his 1915 "Thoughts for the Time on War and Death," Sigmund Freud suggested that war somehow breaks through people's "civilized" exterior and reveals them to be what they "really" are. To what degree does your reading of EITHER Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men OR Slavenka Drakulic's Balkan Express and They Would Never Hurt a Fly support Freud's analysis?

 Inflation and Anxiety        Ordinary people, Extraordinary Acts           Bosnia

2. How would you account for the growth of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in the 1920s and 1930s?

William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945 (1985).
Robert Gerwarth, "The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria, and Hungary after the Great War," Past and Present 200 (2008), 175-209 [available in the library or via the library website's On-line Full-text Journals page].
Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (1988).
Rudy Koshar, "From Stammtisch to Party: Contradictions of Grass-Root Fascism in Weimar Germany," Journal of Modern History 59: 1 (March 1987), 2-24 [available in the library or on-line via JSTOR].
Michael Mann, Fascists (2004).
German History Documents and Images, 1918-1933      German History Documents and Images, 1933-1945      Nazi Propaganda


3.Compare and contrast the depiction of war in British children's books from World War One (see link below) to the training that German young people received in the Hitler Youth.

Andrew Donson, "Models for Young Nationalists and Militarists: German Youth Literature in the First World War," German Studies Review 27:3 (2004), 579-598.
Michael H. Kater, Hitler Youth (2004).
Tammy Proctor, "On my Honour: Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series 92:2 (2002), available via JSTOR.
Children's Books of the Great War         Nazi Propaganda          Posters and Postcards of the World Wars

Though not directly pertinent, you may also want to look at::
Tara Zahra, "Reclaiming Children for the Nation: Germanization, National Ascription and Democracy in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1945," Central European History 37: 4 (2004), 501-543 [available in the library or on-line via JSTOR].
 
4. From the 1860s to the 1940s, France and Germany/Prussia fought three bloody wars (two of which involved the entire continent). Yet since World War Two, they have together played central roles in the development of European integration. How do you account for this transformation?

Konrad Adenauer, Memoirs, 1945-1953 (1963).
Desmond Dinan, Europe Recast: A History of the European Union (2004).
Mary Fulbrook, Germany, 1918-1990: the Divided Nation (1991).
Charles de Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope (1971).
John Gillingham, Coal, Steel, and the Rebirth of Europe, 1945-1955 (1991).
Walter Lipgens, Documents on the History of European Unification, 5 volumes [in library--a collection of primary sources].
Haig Simonian, The Privileged Partnership: Franco-German Relations in the European Union (1984).

German History Documents and Images, 1961-1989            European Union official website