Announcements (old announcements move to bottom, where there are also visitor statistics)

• Mar. 28, 2007: Here is the distribution of grades for the Winter 2007 Hist 133b course according to the final point distribution (if you want to contact me, read my note on grading, below):

  # students	79-82pts=B+   6	74 pts=C+  1	42-59pts=D    2
  87-91pts=A   12	77-78pts=B      2	70-73pts =C    4	F    0
  83-86pts=A-   8	75-76pts=B-    0	65-69pts =C-   0	incomplete:      0	total:  35

• March 22, 2007, 1:30pm: Student Essay index page now complete; 27 essays uploaded.
  [28th essay added on 3/27/07]

Course Overview (back to top)

• This lecture course examines central aspects of German history from the eve of World War I to the end of World War II, including:
  • Germany prior to and during World War I
  • the German revolution of 1918 and the Versailles Treaty
  • the inflationary, stable and depression phases of the Weimar Republic
  • Hitler's life and the Nazi rise to power
  • aspects of the Third Reich in the 1930s
  • the phases of World War II and the Holocaust

• L11:
• L12:
• L13:
• L14:
• L15:
• L16:
• Hist 133B Web option handout
• L17:
• L18:
• L19: Transition to Postwar
• L20: Final Overview

Some useful sites and interesting links (back to top)

• German News--daily translations of news shorts from Germany that you can have e-mailed to yourself
  (The Germany Embassy in Washington's This Week in Germany is similar, but weekly.)
• German-English dictionaries: LEO and TU-Chemnitz; babelfish gives rough translations
• The German Historical Museum (DHM) in Berlin has lots of images and documents in its collection.
• Germany-Info.org, maintained by the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., has fact sheets, a timeline, a historical overview (3 parts about 1945-present on right), and some historical features, such as on unification.
  Not to miss: the newsletter archive, cultural archive, archives of speeches since 1996-- it's endless!
• The US Embassy in Germany has a "History of German-American Relations" site with great documents from 1683 to the present, easily navigable with great e-texts (some are in my Hist 133c course reader) and links.
• German History in Documents and Images by the German Historical Institute in D.C.
  • 1890-1918
  • 1918-1933 (Jan. 2007: not yet available)
  • 1933-1945 (Jan. 2007: so far only documents)
• Some other courses on early 20th Century Germany:

Materials from Prof. Marcuse's previous Hist 133b courses (back to top)

• 1995 syllabus

Grading policies (back to top)

Grades can serve many purposes. Among them are: motivating students to engage with the material (by providing feedback and rewarding effort), assessing how well students have done the assigned work, and ranking students relative to each other.
I personally dislike assigning grades. I'm interested in what you have to say, and want you to put in the effort to develop interesting thoughts and express them well. I hope you will be motivated to learn enough factual material to have a solid basis from which you can develop your thoughts. If you need the prospect of a better grade to do the learning and thinking, fine. For various reasons, I have to grade to assess your work anyway (if I write letters of recommendation, for instance, I need some data on relative strengths and weaknesses, and effort expended). The grade distributions I give my courses are also monitored by the department and the University. (see grade distributions for some of my other lecture courses: 33d-02, 33d-03)
My bottom line: I want the grades I give to be a FAIR reflection of the effort (attendance, doing assignments, meeting deadlines) and learning (content of submitted work) you show, and to give a rough indication of where you stand on those factors relative to others in the class.

• Dec. 20, 2006: Here is the distribution of grades for the Fall 2006 Hist 133a course according to the final point distribution (before you contact me, read my note on grading, below):

  # students	85-86pts=B+    6	75 pts=C+  1	62pts=D    1
  90-94pts=A    7	79-82pts=B      7	69pts =C    1	F    2
  87-88pts=A-  5	77     pts= B-    3	67pts =C-   1	incomplete: 1	total:  35

• Mar. 23, 2004: Here is the distribution of grades for my 2004 Hist 133c course according to the raw point score without the participation grade (95 possible points [well 101, if you count the double extra credit for the outside events]):

  # students	86-85pts=B+     2	75-71pts=C+   4	D   0
  94-90pts=A    5	84-80pts=B      10	70-62pts=C     2	D-  0	grad. student: 1
  89-87pts=A-   5	79-76pts=B-      4	pts=C-   0	F    0	total:   33

• Mar. 29, 2006: Here is the distribution of grades for my spring 2006 Hist 133c course according to the raw point scores (see note on grading, below):

  # students	87-89pts=B+   6	77-78pts=C+   2	62-67pts=D   2
  93-100pts=A    6	83-86pts=B     2	71-76pts=C     3	F    1
  90-91pts=A-    2	79-82pts=B-    5	68-70pts=C-   1	incomplete:     1	total:  31

• Interested in grade inflation since the 1970s, all across the USA?
  Check out this website: www.gradeinflation.com. On the second-to-last graph, the one with the scattered points, you'll find UCSB below the blue line at the 10-year time span. The researcher got data from UCSB's Office of Budget and Planning showing that our campus GPA went from 2.84 in 1994 to 2.93 in 1999.

If you are think your grade does not reflect your work and effort:

• First, please note that I grade YOUR WORK, not you.
• If you feel that the grade you received on your paper or exam does not correspond to the quality of work that you submitted, or the effort you put into it, you have two options:
  1. Print out, complete, and submit the following Grade Change Application Form ;-),
     OR:
  2. Write a page (or paragraph, whatever it takes) explaining WHY you think your work is better than the grade assigned to it. Please refer to the appropriate assignment sheet (for book essays and web projects), and make sure you did the assignment.
     • Then resubmit the work in question with your explanation, and I will regrade it and get back to you.
     • Be sure to put some contact address on your explanation sheet, so that I can be in touch with you.
     • Note that I reserve the right to lower your grade, if I feel that is warranted by closer examination

Picking up your work

I keep all student work for at least one quarter after the course is over. If you would like to pick up your work, please come to my office. During my office hours is usually best for me, but if you would like your work left in an envelope in the envelope outside my door, or to arrange a different pick-up time, send me an e-mail or leave a note.

Old Announcements (back to top)

• Dec. 21, 2006: My office hours in Winter 2007 will be Tuesdays, 12:30--2:30pm
  And obviously, this web site is under construction.
• Jan. 13, 2007: 2007 syllabus and Reich-Prussian gov't diagram now available.
  I don't think I'm going to be able to put lecture notes online this quarter--I have too many other obligations that don't leave me the "extra" time.
• Jan. 23, 2007: In class today (L5) I announced Q2, due at the start of class on Thursday:
  • No more than *1* page total (5 bullet points). I vastly prefer a typed version, but this time (only) I'll accept handwritten ones as well.
  • Name the 5 Chancellors from 1926 to 1932 (W. Marx to von Schleicher), and give 2 important features of each of their governments, e.g. "character," important issues, and/or party coalition supporting them.
  • Correction to syllabus: on the front under "grading" the total value of the 8 questions should be 30%. Each is worth 4 points, so you can actually get 2 bonus points.
• Jan. 28, 2007: A student pointed out that the topic lists are due this Thursday ONLY for students who want to try for the no-final-exam option. If you prefer the take-home final, your topic list is not due until Thu., Feb. 8. Sorry about my mix-up.
  • Also, if you are a good note-taker, you can earn an easy $100 from the Disabled Students Office for photocopies of your lecture notes.
    If you are interested in this position, please see me after class on Tuesday. If several students are interested, I will recommend you based on your notes from last Thursday, so you may want to bring a photocopy of those notes with you.
• Jan. 31, 2007: links to last quarter's (Hist 133a) book essay and web option handouts are fixed.
• Feb. 2, 2007: today in class I passed out the new book essay handout, as well as a glossary and timeline of the Nazi seizure and consolidation of power. Q3 is due Tuesday. It is based on the first four essays in Bessel (ed.), and has 4 short parts:
1. Name 2 paradoxes about the Nazi use of violence.
2. Name 2 ways that Nazism changed family and/or village life.
3. What changes in the Hitler Youth gave rise to alternative movements by the late 1930s? Describe 2 such movements (1 sentence each).
4. List 4 of the 7 bases of the Hitler Myth. What one event did most to deflate it?
• Feb. 8, 2007: Q4 is due Tuesday (2/13). It is based on the assigned reading (Bessel, pp. 57-96), and has three parts:
1. List 4 main players in the "racist" social contract as described by Geyer, and briefly describe the role of each. (1 paragraph)
2. Explain why the Madagascar resettlement plan supports or undermines the "structuralist" interpretation of the Nazi state. (2 sentences)
3. How did Himmler's plans for Gypsies differ from his plans for Jews? (1 sentence)
• Feb. 15, 2007, 8am: I didn't hear about it early enough to plan any alternative activity for our class during the anti-war strike today, but since I think this is one of the most urgent contemporary political issues facing us today, I don't think it would be appropriate to hold "class as usual."
  • Thus, although I will be in class, it will be devoted to a discussion of the German populace and the anti-war movement, and I'll show another documentary film clip about Germany's politics and World War II. (A fortuitous coincidence of topics, I must admit.)
  • So: no attendance taken today; Q5 for next week will be announced on e-mail, and I'll make a web page to cover the lecture material. And anyone who wants can borrow the video I show.
  • I encourage everyone to attend the central rally at 1pm at the Pardall entrance and express your opinion about our wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
• Feb. 19, 2007, 9pm: I'm sorry to be sending this out with such short notice, but things just kept coming up that prevented me from reviewing the readings sooner. I hope the questions will be easy enough--again, you're just supposed to show that you've done the assigned reading (Reader essays 2 & 3). Q5:
  • 1. What offer did Major Trapp make to his men on July 13, 1942?
  • 2. Name TWO reasons some of the men who did not accept that offer gave to explain why they did not accept it.
  • 3. What choice did Sarah make? (in the feminist rewriting of a well-known story)
  • 4. What aspect of the Milgram experiments did sociologist Barrington Moore think was most important?
• Feb. 21, 2007: You are all invited to attend a talk next Monday at 4pm in HSSB 6020. Dr. Steven Beller, an internationally recognized authority on Austrian, Jewish and Central
  European history, will present "Island of the Blessed/Island of the Damned: Jews and Austrians in Modern History."
• Feb. 21, 2007: For those of you who didn't do the reading in time to write up Q5, I offered Q5b. If I remember correctly, this was it, based on reader essays 4, 5, 6 & 2:
  • For the following four people, say which box in the power/agency table on the class handout you would put them in, and write a brief statement explaining why:
    Chaim Rumkowski
    Dawid Sierakowiak
    Calel Perechodnik
  • Major Trapp (I forgot to write this down at the end of class--is this what I said?)
  • Here is a copy of the WW2, Genocide & Perpetrators handout.
• Feb. 26, 2007, 11pm: As I announced in class last Thursday, we will have Q6 written in class on Tuesday, Feb. 27. It will be based on reader essays 2-6, which were assigned for last week. Be sure to read them! [Q6 turned out to be the anonymous midterm evaluation, with full credit for attendance.]
• March 5, 2007: Q7 is based on Reader essay 7: Laurence Rees' chapter "Factories of Death." It is due Tuesday at the start of class. There are, as usual, 4 parts:
  1. What reason does Rees give why, after Aug. 31, French authorities sent children to Auschwitz only with their parents? What reason did/do French gendarmes give?
  2. Give two reasons why Oskar Groening joined the Waffen-SS.
     OR
     Name the three locations Annette and Michel Muller were imprisoned, with the type of place each was (e.g. abandoned factory, WWI fort).
  3. What was the advantage of locating a "normal" concentration camp like Dachau in a suburb, as opposed to in a remote forest, like Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka?
  4. In what program did Wirth and Stangl first gain their murder experience?
  • Ultimately, what I really want you to do is read this essay carefully and think about it. We will take a fair amount of time in class to discuss it. It would be wonderful if you listed some issues and questions in your notes that you would like to discuss. Here are some of my interests:
    • Why were males aged 16-40 the first ones to be deported? Why could at most 10% of them be unfit for work?
    • Should we think of French gendarmes (such as Bousquet) as protectors of Jews, or assistants in their murder?
    • How can we assess Else Abt's and Oskar Groening's behavior in Auschwitz?
    • What does the story of the Muller children's survival tell us about the Holocaust?
  • Finally, I've been asked to announce that there will be a planning meeting for Holocaust Remembrance week, on Tuesday 3/6 at 5pm at UCSB Hillel (the hour+ before I show Escape from Sobibor at 6:20 in HSSB 4020).
• March 9, 2007: Q8 is due Tuesday. It is based on the last chapter of the Bessel book, and is on the L18 "Legacies" handout (with link to a webpage on the "special paths"), as well as in this announcement (part of the text was cut off on the handout). I've also uploaded the 133b Web Option handout.
  1. Q8: Date and briefly characterize the 3 "narrative turning points" in Ernst Bromberg's life story. Which "special path" model would best fit with Bromberg's narrative?
  2. Oral presentations: I didn't discuss these and won't be available to meet with potential presenters before Tuesday's class, so I'm going to suggest that we do them on Thursday instead. If you are interested in making a short (5-7 minute) presentation about what you learned from your essay book, please e-mail me by Monday 8pm . We can meet Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday for further discussion. I'd like to underscore again that the overall quality of the essays this quarter is truly excellent, better than I've ever seen before.
  3. Paper pick-up. All papers that haven't been picked up yet (except: Samantha R's, Andre's, and Josh's) will be available in the envelope outside my office door by noon today (Friday).
• March 16, 2007: L19: Postwar and L20: Overview and Summary handouts now available.
  The L20 handout has the final exam instructions, IDs, and 8 essays questions to choose from.
  Note that there is a "semi-web option:" if you received an A or A- on your book essay, you can still publish it on the course web site instead of answering the ID portion of the final. See the L20 handout for details.
• March 20, 2007: starting to upload papers: essay index page; template;