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These are essay topics for my Nazi Germany Politics class. Frankly, I have no idea how to answer them.

1. Using the concepts of Widerstand, Resistenz, and at least two secondary and two primary sources, argue whether the Catholics or Protestants were more accommodating towards the Nazi regime? Support your answer with evidence.

2. Compare German youth to German women under the Third Reich. Were German youth more or less likely to resist? Which group was more likely to employ outright Widerstand vs. Resistenz or Verweigerung? Why? Use at least two secondary and two primary sources to defend your answer.

3. Employing at least two secondary and two primary sources, argue whether women experienced a social revolution during the Third Reich? If so, what kind of revolution was it?

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You're ever welcome, Valerie...

Your lecturers know how to pick the hard ones, anyway! I'd say the best place to start getting some ideas would be the Wikipedia - I know it's dug me out of some essay-writing holes before.



Some ideas:
I can only give my own opinion, but I'd say that both Catholics and Protestants resisted the Nazis almost equally - because of the human atrocities, naturally, but also because they both had a common enemy in the atheist Nazi regime. You can talk about Hitler's especial aim to "crush the Catholic Church like a toad", as he said himself once, and that religion was a obsticle to the Nazis that they were eager to get rid of.

And I remember hearing somewhere that Martin Bormann – who was himself fond of extra-marital cavorting – said that marriage was irrelevant in an Arian state, because an Arian child is superior whether it’s conceived inside or out of marriage. He believed then that the Catholic Church would try to resist this, and that he was instrumental in beginning the persecution especially against Catholic dissenters.

In terms of Widerstand, you can talk about people like Rev Martin Niemoller and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the Protestant side, and Fr Alfred Delf, Bishop Graf von Galen and Joseph Mueller on the Catholic side. And Resistenz, then, refers to Martin Broszat's idea that the Catholic Church should be immune to Nazi claims to absolute power, because of his belief that there should be some continuation between the Nazi regime and the old traditions.

And then you can compare the contrasting reviews on Pope Pius XII – you can ask whether Pius was really was "Hitler's Pope" like John Cornwell claims, or whether he actually did his best to save Jews from persecution, like some Israeli rabbis have argued. There's some good stuff on Wikipedia about this – look up "Pius XII".

Er... hope that helps. I’ll throw out some ideas for the other two questions another time maybe.