Resisting the Nazis: Fascism and its Opponents

• • Defintions of fascism
  • Fascist Italy
  • Nazi Germany
  • Other Fascisms
  • Resistance to Fascism
  • Totalitarianism
  • The Future of Fascism

Others

130cp at 1000 level or above

Special requirements

• OtherDetails -

  Students who have an Academic Standing of Suspension or Exclusion under Macquarie University's Academic Progression Policy are not permitted to enrol in OUA units offered by Macquarie University. Students with an Academic Standing of Suspension or Exclusion who have enrolled in units through OUA will be withdrawn.

More than seventy years after the end of the Second World War, fascism and Nazism continue to fascinate. In this course, we will explore Italian fascism and German Nazism as broadly understood in Europe and globally to better understand the appeal of their conservative, reactionary, and militaristic ideology. We will read the key literature on definitions of fascism in order to understand the concept as more than a pejorative. Through a close examination of the governments of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany we will investigate how fascist regimes controlled everyday life, mobilised political support, shaped men and women's bodies, built cults of personality around their leaders, silenced the press, defeated leftist student organisations and unions, and organised repressive systems of militaristic expansion. We will also concentrate on the way that people learned to resist, survive, and even thrive under fascism through the formation of armed bands, clandestine intellectual networks, and organisations for non-violent struggle.

• Online Participation (20%)
• Project Proposal/Annotated Bibliography (15%)
• Class Blog Submissions (20%)
• Secondary Source Analysis (10%)
• Final Research Project (35%)