Write an essay on ordinary Germans and their experience in Nazi Germany. Some questions to reflect on are: What was the situation of ordinary Germans? Were they bystanders, perpetrators, or victims? What led them to remain silent and indifferent? Why did some become rescuers? Do not write on the subject of your first essay.
Among the approaches you may want to focus on in your essay are:
• motives
• indifference
• the role of antisemitism
• propaganda
• the transformation into perpetrators or rescuers
There are many good sources to be found in assigned reading, journals, books, and reliable online sites like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Here are just a few suggestions:
Victoria Barnett, “Bystanders”
Doris Bergen, War and Genocide
Christopher Browning, “Ordinary Men”
Mary Fulbrook, A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust
Daniel Goldhagen, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”
“How Did Ordinary Germans Become Mass Murderers?” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92UfAJr7790&t=3196s
“From Ordinary German to Mass Murderer”
“From Prewar to Postwar: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the 20th Century”
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