AIP 341 Culture and Politics of Nazi Germany (CP, IP)
This course will explore the rise and the fall of Nazi Germany not only through the lens of history but through art, theatre, cinema, and literature. It will examine the historical circumstances that led to the establishment of a totalitarian system in Germany. Topics to be reviewed will include: the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the role of Hitler and his cult of personality, the Nazi legal system, anti-Semitism, World War
II and the Holocaust, and the criminal and moral issues related to Nazi totalitarianism. One of the aspects of this tragic period which has always aroused dismay and disbelief is the fact that a nation with an intellectual and artistic heritage as rich as Germany’s could have submitted so totally to neo-barbarism. What elements in German art and literature, however admirable, may have helped pave the way for certain aspects of Nazi ideology. How were Goethe’s Faust and Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung appropriated by extremists? How did some artists and intellectuals find the means to resist or undergo “inner emigration” during this darkest chapter of recent history?