Responding to World-Building: The problem of teaching Nazi Germany in the current GCSE History specifications

We had a really useful department meeting this evening where we watched Mike Hill’s fantastic presentations on World-Building and Emplotment from the Curricularium project put together last year. It was absolutely brilliant and I certainly learned a lot both from the ‘theory’ and the ‘exemplification’ presentations. As we teach Weimar and Nazi Germany at GCSE level, I am sure that some of the ideas, particularly around how to introduce characters like Rosa Luxemburg and Paul von Hindenburg will prove influential in our delivery of this unit.

I had a few random thoughts following on from this presentation that I wanted to share, perhaps in a series of blogs, linked to History curriculum. I’d particularly like to share how I’m going to take on board Mike’s ideas for my teaching of the American West (where I’ve done some work on this already), Mao’s China (where I’m getting up to speed with it) and England 1399–1509 (definitely some work needed here).

But first I wanted to tackle one of my bugbears about teaching the Germany course that Mike’s presentation reminded me of, which is the problem of teaching the bit after 1933, rather than before.

I found Mike’s presentation regarding how the idea of emplotment can strengthen teaching of the more challenging Weimar period very helpful. It also strengthened my view that a big weakness of Germany units covering the inter-war period actually emerge when covering the bit after 1933. The way these units are designed really loses the plot (pun intended), with the exception of the consolidation of power narrative between 1933 and 1934. After this, it descends into a ‘describe key features’ unit. Describe the key features of the Police State. Describe the key features of propaganda. Describe the key features of the role of women. Describe the key features of the role of young people. Perhaps this criticism does not apply to discussion of racial policy where an obvious narrative thread does emerge.

No obvious narrative account of the Nazi period really emerges in a very obvious way, which is unfortunate. Unless you know what you are doing with this topic, you might neglect the following aspects of how Germany changes over this period, to the detriment of the achievement of your students when it crops up in exam questions.

· The strengthening of the Police State and the increasing dominance of the SS, with the key turning points of 1936, when Himmler is placed in charge of the ordinary police, and 1939 when he then becomes head of the RHSA and arguably the most important Nazi in the entire government other than Hitler himself.

· The declining enthusiasm of the German people for Nazi rule — the extent of popularity of the regime is clearly reduced by 1939. The level of grumbling or Resistenz increases. There’s clear weariness about the prospect of war in 1939. Eagle-eyed observers will have noted the welcome inclusion of the line about ‘the extent of support for the regime’ in the 2016 Edexcel specification, which invites excellent discussion opportunities and historical analysis linked to a live (and lively) scholarly debate, typified by the classic Gellately v Evans interpretation question of A-level specifications past.

· The changing role of women, again caused by the impact of war build-up, with more women in work by 1939 than there are in 1933, even if the type of work maybe lower paid or more menial than the opportunities that existed prior to 1933.

· The changing nature of economic policy — 1936 again a key year here as Goring becomes ascendant over Schacht and autarky and war preparation becomes paramount. This links clearly to the second bullet point above, with the increasing demands on workers, who were already often sceptical of the Nazis dating back to the pre-1933 period, in terms of hours and suppressed wages having an impact on morale. We also don’t tease out the story of Germany’s relative economic weakness vis-à-vis Britain in 1939, therefore missing an opportunity to slay the national myth of the plucky British underdog fighting the mighty German war machine, so effectively tackled by the works of Adam Tooze and David Edgerton in recent years.

· The impact of the escalation of foreign policy, which is strangely neglected in the Edexcel unit (I get that it will be a size issue) even though Stresemann’s foreign policy is included. In fact a real missed opportunity to point out the continuities in Nazi policy compared to Stresemann’s.

The specification content for Key Topic 4 (below) on the Edexcel unit highlights the problem. Simple things like the lack of dates or events, apart from in the racial policy section, stand out to me as an oddity.

Of course the big issue is the stop date — 1939 is chosen, again, to meet OFQUAL requirements, rather than it being a logical place to stop a unit. It is bizarre that this unit does not include 1945. I have said before that I think that a course that is something like c.1929–1949 would make more sense as a 20 year period, to cover the war and the formal denazification and partition period. Holocaust aside, you can then, for example, extend the story of opposition to the regime to include the mass execution of Edelweiss Pirates and the turning of the might of the terror state against the wider German population at large, described by Ian Kershaw in his book on the period between 1944 and 1945 in The End. You can see Germany’s economic weakness manifest itself during the war. You can look at the ever-increasing demands on women to play both domestic and work-based roles and the obvious contradictions of Nazi values in this area.

This issue links to the point Mike makes in his presentation, that the specification is merely a list of content rather than a curriculum. Of course it is up to teachers to then provide more of the ‘analysis’ of the period such as that seen above and to help our students understand this. It would, therefore, be useful, if the textbook materials provided this sort of insight as well, but increasingly textbooks are becoming ‘lists of content’ too in this era of people wanting exam board-endorsed material, usually rushed out to meet the demands of new courses, and the decline of the general textbook for topics, like the SHP classics of yore.

This issue is even more pronounced in relatively newer topics like Mao’s China, where there is not the ‘history’ of classic materials designed to be used in schools like there are for topics like Germany or the Russian Revolution period. It is to this that I shall turn in my next post on this topic.