GRU22142: With reference to a range of materials encountered on the module and found in the bibliography: HITLER ESSAY, TCD, Ireland

1. With reference to a range of materials encountered on the module and found in the bibliography, as well as any other materials you may have consulted, write an essay exploring one of the following topics:
• Hitler’s Anti-Semitism
• Hitler and Nationalism
• Hitler and Race
• Hitler and Communism
• Hitler and Modernity
• Hitler and Power
• Hitler and Architecture
• Hitler and Wagner
cta_questions_1

2. Does Hitler’s family background and youth hold significant clues to explain the Hitler phenomenon?

3. Discuss the origins of Hitler’s Weltanschauung in his formative years in Vienna and during the First World War.

4. Discuss Mein Kampf as a piece of autobiography, political programme and political propaganda.

5. What made Hitler’s rise to power possible and what explained the attractiveness of his politics?

6. What might it mean to ‘explain Hitler’? Discuss with reference to a range of materials encountered on the module, looking at Hitler ‘the man’ as well as the political circumstances of his time.
7. Explore the propagandistic representation of Hitler and the German Volk in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willens (The Triumph of the Will) (1935).

8. How adequate a response to the Hitler phenomenon is Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940)?

9. ‘Any filmic attempt to humanise Hitler is highly problematical.’ Discuss with reference to Der Untergang (Downfall) (2004).

10. Discuss the potential as well as the limits of satire in representing Hitler with reference to Er ist wieder das (Look whose back) (2015).

11. How might the case study of Hitler serve as a ‘warning to history’? Discuss with reference to a range of materials encountered on the module and by referring to current political trends and phenomena.

12. Originate your own essay topic. (Please note: This topic must be formally signed off by me in advance: please email [to jbrkhoff@tcd.ie] your suggested title along with a short paragraph outlining your idea— no later than noon Friday 5 April.)
cta_questions_2