When you ask how JK Rowling used “historical aspects to plot” the Harry Potter series, I assume you are asking what aspects of real-world history show up in that series. I will base my answer on that assumption. The story line in the Harry Potter series is meant to remind us of Nazi Germany and the treatment of Jews.
In real-life Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933. They based...
When you ask how JK Rowling used “historical aspects to plot” the Harry Potter series, I assume you are asking what aspects of real-world history show up in that series. I will base my answer on that assumption. The story line in the Harry Potter series is meant to remind us of Nazi Germany and the treatment of Jews.
In real-life Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933. They based their rise on the idea that Germany was a country of superior people who were being dragged down by inferior enemies. They believed that the Jews were their main enemy. They got this belief largely from Europe’s long history of anti-Semitism. When they came to power they gradually eroded the rights of the Jews, taking Jewish freedoms away in order to promote the good of the Germany people as a whole. Later, they started to kill the Jews and eventually moved from sporadic killings to the mass effort to exterminate the Jews that we now call the Holocaust.
The story of Voldemort and his Death Eaters (as well as the story of Grindelwald) is based to some degree on this history. Voldemort believes that Muggles are inferior beings and wizards are superior. He has decided that Muggles as well as Mudbloods are the enemies of pure wizards. He wants to rid the wizarding world of Mudbloods and then use the power of magic to subjugate the Muggles as well as “lesser” magical creatures (think of the fountain in the Ministry of Magic). Voldemort’s ideas come down from people like Salazar Slytherin, who wanted to limit Hogwarts to purebloods, and Grindelwald who (along with Dumbledore) wanted to enslave the Muggles. (Note that Dumbledore turned on Grindelwald and defeated him in 1945, the same year that Hitler died and Nazi Germany was destroyed.) Voldemort and his followers are happy to torment and even kill Muggles. They start in on a process of purging Mudbloods, though they never manage to hold on to power long enough to do anything like the Holocaust. In these ways, we can see clear parallels between real-world history and the plot line of the Harry Potter series.
Given this, it is possible to argue that teachers should use the Harry Potter books in other classes, particularly in history. However, I (as a history teacher) would not do so. You can argue that these books would be good in a history class because they would help students understand the Holocaust. Students would be more interested in the books than in nonfiction about the Holocaust so they would learn more effectively through the books. I, personally, would not do this, though, because not all of my students would have read the books. I would not want to require them to read the books because they are very long (particularly Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, where we see the main purging of Mudbloods). I would not want to make them read such long books when there are other books that would have a greater emphasis on the Holocaust.
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