Germany’s first experiment with democracy, the Weimar Republic, began in 1918 and ended, tragically, in 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power. The Weimar Republic faced significant challenges, but its collapse was not inevitable – and nor was the Nazi takeover. The failure of democracy and the rise, in its place, of a racist, expansionistic dictatorship were the results of conscious decisions made by politicians and millions of ordinary voters. Responding to defeat in war and economic crises, Germans assigned blame to scapegoats and shunned political compromise, ultimately succumbing to their impatience with what they perceived as the messiness of democracy.

Join Professor Alan E. Steinweis from the University of Vermont as he launches our professional development series "The Holocaust: One Year at a Time" with an in-depth examination of 1933.

Alan E. Steinweis is Professor of History and Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont, where he has been teaching since 2009. He has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Hannover, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Munich, and Augsburg, and has long been affiliated with the Institute for Contemporary History, Munich-Berlin. His books include Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany (1993); Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany (2006); Kristallnacht 1938 (2009); and, most recently, The People’s Dictatorship: A History of Nazi Germany (2023). He is currently writing a book titled The Lone Assassin: Georg Elser’s Attempt to Assassinate Hitler and the Memory of Anti-Nazi Resistance.

Currently active schoolteachers and paraprofessionals are eligible to apply. This program has a one-time tax-deductible fee of $18.00. Scholarships to cover the fee are available. To apply for a scholarship, please email: education@mjhnyc.org.

Participants will be eligible to receive CTLE credit.