Explores debates over the origins and role of Nazi Germany. Issues will include its roots in German history; the driving force of the regime; Hitler's role and Nazi Germany's war aims. Sixty years after its defeat in World War II, Nazi Germany continues to fascinate and to leave questions hotly debated by historians. Discusses whether the Nazis were modernisers or backward-looking romantics, and why there was so little opposition. Considers Nazi Germany's war aims and if the Holocaust was the inevitable outcome of Nazi ideology or a bureaucratic response to impending defeat. These issues will be explored in lectures and student-led seminar discussions of primary and secondary texts.

At the end of the course, students who seriously engage with the material presented in classes and readings will have a throrough understanding of the main explanations put forward by historians and social scientists of the phenomenon of German fascism and the controversies between them.