teacher laempel from Max and Moritz
Teacher Laempel from Wilhelm Busch's Max and Moritz (1865)

Teaching German History:
Books, Web Sites and Course syllabi

compiled for UCSB Hist 133c: "Germany after 1945"

by Professor Harold Marcuse (homepage)
contact: marcuse@history.ucsb.edu
links compiled Dec. 16, 2003; last update: Mar. 2, 2006; 1/2/11

Sect 1

Topics and links for web projects
Courses on post-1945 German History

Section 1 (back to top)

Topics and Links for Web Projects (back to top)
(in rough chronological order; links last checked: 1/29/06)

  • Marshall Plan:
    • The Library of Congress put its 1997 (50th Anniv.) exhibition on-line (link).
    • The US Embassy in Germany has an informative site with the text of Marshall's Harvard speech. The core of the site is a text by Ohio State Univ. professor Michael Hogan (link).
    • The UCSB library has a copy of Documentary History of the Truman Presidency (Dennis Merrill, ed); vol. 3 is entitled " United States policy in occupied Germany after World War II: denazification, decartelization, demilitarization, and democratization." UCSB call no. Main Library E813 .D56 1995.
  • 1948 Berlin Blockade and airlift
    • The British National Archives offers a teaching site with six documents (link).
    • The Truman Library has a resource site (link) with a student activity portion (link), it also "chunked" the book Airbridge to Berlin and put it online (link).
    • The online supplement to Hyde Flippo's book The German Way has a summary illustrated with present-day photos (link).
    • Prof. Rempel's lecture text "The Berlin Airlift of 1948"
    • The US Embassy in Germany offers a July 23, 1998 speech by Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. John Hamre on "The 50th Anniversary of the Berlin Airlift" (link).
    • Willy Brandt.org has a short page with definitions (link).
    • PBS's site on their "Race for the Superbomb" film has a page (link).
    • Houghton-Mifflin textbook page with a short synopsis (link).
  • 1953 uprising
    • In 1999 one of Prof. Marcuse's proseminar students did a research paper on international aspects: Int'l Effects of June 17, 1953 Uprising (link)
    • Prof. Gerhard Rempel's lecture text (link)
    • 3-page summary of a June 2003 lecture at the German Historical Institute in Washington, a "50 years later" assessment (pdf)
    • German Gov't Political Education Center site (in German) has lots of multimedia documents (link)
  • 1950s Politics
    • E. German booklet celebrating Khrushchev's Aug. 7, 1957 visit to East Berlin, on Randall Bytwerk's German propaganda site at Calvin College (link).
    • Woodrow Wilson Center: Hope M. Harrison, Translation and Commentary "New Evidence on Khrushchev's 1958 Berlin Ultimatum" (link).
  • Berlin Wall
    • Washington, DC Newseum site has four features: news reporting East vs. West, historical story, Stalin manipulates a photo, essay on censorship (link)
    • Chris DeWitt maintains a regularly updated Berlin Wall site with some short essays he wrote since his first visit in 1979, lots of pictures, and a short, annotated list of links (link).
    • Burkhard Kirste at the Free University of Berlin maintains a site with a short history of the wall, some facts, and a set of links (link).
    • Paper by one of Prof. Marcuse's proseminar students, with bibliography: Politics, People and the Berlin Crisis: June-August, 1961 (link)
    • Yahoo's page of links
    • The British National Archives offers a teaching site with six documents (link).
  • Willy Brandt
  • JFK's June 1963 speech in Berlin:
    • The JFK library has a page with notes and audio
    • Joe Knapp (no info on who he is) maintains a comprehensive JFK site with the full text of the Berlin speech (link) and press reactions to it (link), as well as a discussion of the "jelly doughnut" reproach (link)
    • Philipp Huning, a student at Tubingen University, has a site with primary materials, including JFK's diary entries about his 1945 travels through Germany (overview [webarchive.org copy]). He created the site for a summer semester 2000 internet seminar about JFK (hyperlinked seminar syllabus). He also has the complete text of the speech (link).
  • Cold War:
    • CNN has a site based on its award-winning 24-episode 1998 TV series (link).
      TurnerLearning.com made a site for educators based on the CNN series (link).
  • Red Army Faction (1970s left-wing terrorism)
    • Richard Huffman, author of This is Baader-Meinhof, maintains Baader-Meinhof.com (link)
    • Wikipedia has a detailed, well-hyperlinked page (link)
    • The Israeli Institute for Counter-Terrorism has a short page (link)
  • 1985 commemoration at Bitburg
    • Thesis paper by one of Prof. Marcuse's students in 1999 (link)
    • UTexas has the texts of Reagan's speeches in Belsen (link) and Bitburg (link)
    • The military newspaper Stars & Stripes posted its May 1985 news reports on Belsen (link) and Bitburg (link).
    • Joey Ramone wrote a protest song about it (link to article)
  • The Fall of the Wall in 1989
    • Web-Multimedia-Pictures
      Wir waren so frei ... Momentaufnahmen 1989/1990 (Deutschland)
      http://www.wir-waren-so-frei.de
      Private photographs and films of 1989/1990 in Germany, esp. personal impressions and "atmosphere." How did the events affect everyday life?
      Weitere Informationen: http://www.clio-online.de/Web=25591
    • 1989-1990 Wendezeiten--Multimedia from DDR Television. http://1989.dra.de/
      Pictures, video, audio, and commentary arranged on topical pages, chronicles and documents, from early 1989 to Oct. 3, 1990. (From the German Rundfunk Archive)
      See also: http://www.clio-online.de/Web=25728.
  • Issues of German Unification in 1990
  • Holocaust-era Assets: Compensation and Restitution
    • US Dept. of State has a collection of documents relating to compensating victims and restoring assets (link).

Courses/Resources about 20th century/post-1945 Germany (back to top)
(link updated 1/2/11)
Explore some of these on-line courses to see how other instructors structure their courses, and what readings they use.


Page created Nov. 9, 2004 from a Jan. 2004 section of the Hist 133c course homepage; updated see header
back to top, to Hist 133c homepage, to Prof. Marcuse's homepage