Return to Evaluation Page

E-Mail Mr. Zarwell

PART I

IDENTIFICATIONS: You will receive four Identifications. Answer two of them and then go on to the essay. (These should be short and sweet. No more than three sentences).

PART II

 (You will write on ONE of the following essays)

You may bring the Kershaw book to the test, as well as any notes you may have or work you have already done on the essay.

1. Ian Kershaw argues that Hitler emerged as a 'conviction politician' early in his career. How does Claudia Koonz's work serve to support or challenge Kershaw's thesis?
2. Ian Kershaw writes that Hitler's success was not only due to the Nazi repressive apparatus, but that he also benefited from the support of an "extensive underlying consensus" within the German population (87-88). How do the articles by Detlev Peukert or Matthew Stibbe support or challenge his thesis?
3. In chapter 6, Kershaw writes that "Hitler himself had done little in a direct sense to bring about the dramatic sharpening of the persecution of the Jews". To what degree does Kershaw believe the evolution of the Holocaust was a function of Hitler's explicit intentions, and to what degree was it the result of others who were "working toward" him? Would William Carr agree with him? Why or why not?
4. Kershaw points out that Hitler's power "remained paramount and incontestable" until his suicide in May, 1945. How does Kershaw explain Hitler's ability to maintain his dominance until Germany was utterly destroyed?
5. Counterfactual Essay: If Germany had managed to win the war, what would have been the fate of the Nazi regime? What do you believe Kershaw would say? Why?

The larger questions. Power and the exercise of power. The complicity of all Germans in Hitler's accumulation of power. The power of Ideas.

This will be an in-class essay. We will work on it in the computer lab. You may bring your book with you.

If you paraphrase or directly quote from an author, you must CITE YOUR SOURCE. MLA style parenthetical citation will do. For example:

Direct citation from author's text:

According to Zarwell, fascism and National Socialism were fundamentally different due to the "centrality of Nazi racism as distinct from Fascism ultranationalism" (Zarwell 80).

Paraphrase of somebody else's idea:

In fact, the intense anti-Semitism of Hitler's Nazi regime distinguishes it from all other fascist movements of the interwar period (Zarwell 80).

You may only make reference to sources we've read in class!

We used the following sources in this second unit