Midterm Study Questions and Terms

History 340: Germany from Bismarck to Hitler
Fall 1998

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Week 8

1. How do the social backgrounds and behaviors of Brecht's characters convey a political message?
   • Mackie Messer
   • Berthold Brecht

Week 9

1. How could The Threepenny Opera be both revolutionary and popular?
   • socialist art





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2. What effects did the Great Depression have on the Weimar welfare state?
   • "misdevelopment" vs. "normal" modernity
   • "social reproduction crisis"
   • social insurance vs. welfare
   • means testing

Week 10

1. How might Weimar Germany have overcome its political instability?
   • Friedrich Ebert
   • Weimar Constitution
   • Freikorps
   • Communist Party (KPD)
   • Spartakus League
   • Kapp putsch
   • assassinations
   • Versailles Diktat

   
   
   

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2. How did Adolf Hitler stabilize the German economy and at what cost?
   • reparations
   • Occupation of the Ruhr
   • hyperinflation
   • deflation
   • rearmament
   • John Maynard Keynes
   • unemployment

Week 11

1. How did the "new objectivity" neue Sachlichkeit embody the tensions of Weimar society?
   • cultural pessimism
   • neue Sachlichkeit
   • voelkish art
   • crisis of the bourgeoisie

   
   
   

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2. How did Weimar culture reflect the rise of mass consumption?
   • mass culture
   • new woman
   • neo-conservatism
   • Heimatvereine
   • Kampfbund fuer deutsche Kultur

Week 12

1. How much is German popular support responsible for Hitler's assumption of power?
   • DNVP (German National Peoples' Party)
   • NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party)
   • SA (storm troopers)
   • Fuehrerprinzip
   • Enabling Law

   
   
   

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2. To what extent did the NSDAP's racism/anti-Semitism win German votes?
   • Pan-Germanism
   • Social Darminism
   • Mein Kampf
   • "sub-humans"

Week 13

1. Why did the Nazi state become increasingly aggressive and violent?
   • "cumulative radicalization"
   • Fuehrer cult
   • Hermann Goering
   • Josef Goebbels
   • S.S.
   • Nuremburg laws
   • Czechoslavakian crisis
   • Operation Barbarossa
   • Einsatzgruppen
   • Wannsee Conference

   
   
   

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2. How did the Nazis attempt to create a totally Nazified society?
   • "total state"
   • Voelksgemeinschaft
   • Strength through Joy

     
     

Week 14

1. Among those still living, who, if anyone, do you think should bear historical responsibility for the Holocaust?
   • concentration camps
   • extermination camps/death camps
   • intentionalism vs functionalism
   • euthanasia
   • Kristallnacht
   • "collective guilt"

     
     

   
   

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2. What historical importance, if any, do cases of resistance against the Nazis possess?
   • Occupation
   • Resistance
   • White Rose
   • July 20 plot

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