Berlin

On 12 April 1945 an audience sat attempting to enjoy an evening of opera. Amongst that audience were many high-ranking Nazis, of whom the most prominent was Albert Speer, Hitler’s trusted armaments minister. Despite the presence of such an important member of the Government the theatre was lit without electricity and the heating had failed. As the orchestra played it almost drowned out the rumble of distant guns

This enquiry explores a range of attitudes to the Nazi regime before the war. Its aim is to help students appreciate the complexity of human reactions to a given situation and gain some understanding of the interaction of factors that can shape such reactions. The Nazi regime worked energetically and ruthlessly to gain universal approval for its existence and actions, but despite this, attitudes towards the regime remained diverse among both Germans and foreign nationals. Students will be asked to draw inference from sources to investigate why this diversity of attitude existed. A study in attitudes and beliefs.

This enquiry will explore the remarkable persistence and passivity of Berliners in the face of extreme hardship caused by air raids and ground assault on their city. Why did the people of a city once far from committed to Nazism continue to work and fight for the Nazi regime in the face of appalling suffering between 1943 and 1945? Students will be asked to balance the influence of fear of the regime with factors such as national loyalty and the sheer survival instinct and form an hypothesis of their own. A study in causation.

Students will explore conditions in the Sachsenhausen camp from the testimonies of inmates and other evidence. They will then move on to examine the way in which the suffering of prisoners has been remembered since 1945. Finally they will begin to explore what each commemoration tells about the commemorators as well as the events and individuals being commemorated. A study in interpretations.