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Changing Leadership and Society in Germany c.1871-1989

Change and continuity in Germany 1871 to 1989

  • 3 things to know
  • A2 Unit 3

Overview

Sonderweg thesis and basic Law.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Key term

How many distinct regimes governed Germany between 1871 and 1989?

Key term

What is the Sonderweg thesis?

Numbers

How did German economic strength change across the period?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    How many distinct regimes governed Germany between 1871 and 1989?

    Model answer

    Five: the Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and then the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic side by side.

  2. 2

    What continuity connects the Empire and the Third Reich?

    Model answer

    Both concentrated real power outside an elected chamber, cultivated nationalism, and relied on the army and bureaucracy rather than on popular consent.

  3. 3

    What is the Sonderweg thesis?

    Model answer

    The argument that Germany followed a special path to modernity, industrialising economically while failing to modernise politically, which made dictatorship more likely.

  4. 4

    Give one criticism of the Sonderweg thesis.

    Model answer

    It assumes a normal western path from which Germany deviated, and it can read 1933 backwards into everything that preceded it.

  5. 5

    How did the position of the army change across the period?

    Model answer

    From a state within the state under the Empire, through its role as arbiter under Weimar and its oath to Hitler, to firm civilian control under the Federal Republic.

  6. 6

    How did German economic strength change across the period?

    Model answer

    Europe's leading industrial power by 1914, ruined by war and inflation, rebuilt for war under the Nazis, and rebuilt again as western Europe's largest economy after 1949.

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NottinghamOxfordYork

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AUniversal male suffrage was kept.
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