Reflect a different perspective on the history of imperial Germany
To complete the lesson, you will choose a book from the titles listed below to read and evaluate it. All the titles listed reflect a different perspective on the history of imperial Germany and/or the Weimar Republic but continuing to develop the themes reflected in this lesson. The purpose of the book review is to broaden and deepen your knowledge of the themes and issues of the lesson while helping you develop your critical thinking-reading-writing skills as an advanced learner.
The book review must be 1000 – 1100 words in length. Book reviews provide a concise analysis of the content and argument of the book and an evaluation of the book’s contribution to the field. The point is not to write more, but to write concisely. This is a crucial element to keep in mind.
A book review is NOT a book report in which you summarize the content of the book. A book review IS a critical assessment of the contributions that the author of the reviewed work has made to the field of scholarship. To do this, you must critically evaluate the author’s intentions and purpose, thesis, contentions, and methods of analysis. The majority of your book review will be devoted to demonstrating that you understand the author’s argument and how well the author made the case for her argument.You must read and think before your begin writing your review.
According to historian Jacques Barzun, “The beginning, we know is important. The first [paragraph] should present an idea of interest to the readers . . . . If your first words are “This book . . .” they will not be able to distinguish your review from twenty others, and they will be entitled to conclude that you have not expended much thought on enlisting their attention. The opening statement takes the readers from where they presumably stand in point of knowledge and brings them to the book under review. The briefest possible description of its aim, scope, and place in the world therefore follows the baited opening sentence and completes the first paragraph. [Jacques Barzun, The Modern Researcher, 4th ed. (New York, 1985), 290.]
Your book review should include the following:
A bibliographic entry that identifies the author and full title, the author and full title, and the imprint (city, publisher, date of publication), your name, and course information
A thesis that explains the significance of this work to the history of Nazi Germany framed by a strong introduction
A brief summary of:
Who is the author?
What are the qualifications of the author?
What are the author’s reasons for writing the work?
A description of the overall scope of the work
A brief summary of the content and structure of the work
An explanation of the types of sources the author used.
An assessment of the quality of the evidence the author uses to support her/his arguments
An assessment/evaluation of the author’s thesis, arguments and conclusions [hint: this is not simply a summary of what you liked or disliked about the book, but explanations, analysis, and implications about your assessment of the work]
An analysis of the significance and importance of the author’s conclusions to our understanding of themes of the lesson
An assessment of what contribution the author makes to our understanding into the broader scope of the history of Nazi Germany.
If you are reviewing a memoir or an eyewitness account, address as many of the above questions as are applicable. A work of fiction must be summarized (plot, characters, setting) and analyzed for its historical value.
Remember, the above set of criteria for your review is not a laundry list of points that you simply jot down answers to and submit, but a guide to help you organize your thoughts into words. A book review, like all other historical contributions, is a crafted analysis that tells a story about the contributions and significance of the work to our understanding of the history of Nazi Germany.
Choose one of the titles below to review:
Allen, William S. 1984. The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945. New York: F. Watts. A thorough detailed account of the rise of the Nazi party from the perspective of an average German town.
Baranowski, Shelly. 1995. The Sanctity of Rural Life: Nobility, Protestantism, and Nobility. New York: Oxford University Press.
Beck, Hermann. 2008. The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and the Nazi Party in 1933. New York: Berghahn Books.
Bessel, Richard. 1984. Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: the StormTroopers in eastern Germany, 1925-1934. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Broszat, Martin. 1987. Hitler and the Collapse of Weimar Germany. New York: Berg.
Burstein, William. 1996. The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1924-1933. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Childers, Thomas. 1983. The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919 – 1933. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina University Press. An analysis of who voted for the Nazis.
Douglas, Donald M. 1976. The Nazi Party in Hannover, 1921-1923: Problems and Contradictions in the Early Party Local Groups. Wichita, Kan: Wichita State University.
Fest, Joachim. 1974. Hitler. New York: Harcourt. Fest is one of the preeminent biographers of Adolf Hitler.
Fischer, Conan. 2002. The Rise of the Nazis. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford University Press.
Grill, Johnpeter Horst. 1983. The Nazi Movement in Baden, 1920-1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
Haffner, Sebastian. 2002. Defying Hitler. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. This German journalist’s provocative, nicely written, interpretative essay is not a narrative history, but an opinion piece with plausible but speculative theses
Hett, Benjamin Carter. 2014. Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich’s Enduring Mystery. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kater, Michael. 1983. The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members, 1919 – 1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kershaw, Ian. 2008. Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton. Like Fest, Kershaw is among the best of the Hitler biographers. This title is a combined volume of his previous two works, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis.
Koshar, Rudy. 1986. Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Kubizek, August, and Geoffrey Brooks. 2011. The Young Hitler I Knew: The Memoirs of Hitler’s Childhood Friend. Barnsley: Frontline.
Jones, Larry Eugene. 2016. Hitler versus Hindenburg: the 1932 presidential elections and the end of the Weimar Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Merkel, Peter. 1980. The Making of a Stormtrooper. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mühlberger, Detlev. 2003. The Social Bases of Nazism, 1919-1933. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Noakes, Jeremy. 1971. The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony. London: Oxford University pRess.
Nyomarkay, Joseph. 1967. Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Pridham, Geoffrey. 1973. Hitler’s Rise to Power: The Nazi Movement in Bavaria, 1923-1933. New York: Harper & Row.
Rinderle, Walter, and Bernard Norling. 1993. The Nazi Impact on a German Village. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Szejnmann, Claus-Christian W. 1999. Nazism in central Germany: The Brownshirts in ‘Red’ Saxony. New York: Berghahn Books.
Turner, Henry A. 1985, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler. New York: Oxford University Press.
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