Without controversy, history would be as dry as dust: its ability to inflame passions and generate debate proves its relevance. Yet these same qualities present teachers with immense challenges.

Visitors to my website, www.activehistory.co.uk, have suggested my teaching is too judgmental on the Middle East but not judgmental enough on Nazi Germany. How do I defend myself against such criticism without turning our subject into a pallid shadow?

A topic such as Nazi Germany presents us with such superficially simple moral lessons that there is a danger that students could be left feeling they have been denied real debate. In contrast, other subjects - the Middle East and Northern Ireland, for example - are so surrounded by conflicting judgments that teachers might choose to sidestep them.

It makes sense to start such topics by standing back from questions of blame and responsibility, focusing instead on the tragic impact on ordinary people (sites such as www.timesonline.co.uk and www.guardian.co.uk can be searched for current examples).

When looking at the Middle East, the case of Mohammed al-Durrah - an Arab schoolboy shot dead by Israeli security forces in the full glare of the world’s media - can be contrasted with that of Vadim Norzich, a young Israeli conscript brutally lynched by Arabs shortly afterwards. Is such violence likely to hinder or accelerate peace in the region?

With this background established, students will easily appreciate that hatred and recrimination have resulted in some very partisan reporting. With textbooks so sensitively edited this can easily be overlooked, so students should use the internet to locate a relevant website (by typing the topic title into www.google.com), judge which side - if any - it sympathises with, and then explain how it reached this judgment. Then ask students to produce deliberately biased reports about the causes, course and consequences of the conflict, which can be compared. Although these reports are biased, are there some things they still agree about? Although unreliable, how are they still useful?

At this point, broaden the debate by looking at responsibility for the conflict not merely in terms of the two obvious belligerents but also by considering the role of the international community. Does the British government, for example, which controlled Palestine before the creation of Israel, have a responsibility for the area? What position has the US taken on Northern Ireland, and why?

This leads the class towards considering ways in which the conflict could be resolved, with students investigating heartening examples of people working together in the region. The United Nations has an excellent site for schoolchildren (www.un.orgcyberschoolbus) outlining the role of peacekeeping forces. Raising concepts such as international law leads to important questions of citizenship: what crimes can a country, or a government, commit? What can the rest of the world do about them? Who has the right to intervene to stop a government behaving badly?

Nazi Germany is unique among classroom topics in that it produces a dangerously one-sided treatment: teachers are under such pressure to emphasise the evil of the regime that, counterproductively, classes could become contemptuous of those millions of ordinary Germans who supported it.

But we can start by pointing to the devastating impact of the 1930s Depression on Germany and adding that Hitler’s success lay in an ability to hide his plans for world domination from his people. We can also make classes aware that many prominent intellectuals in Britain, not just Germany, saw real merit in communism and fascism during the Depression. Able students should read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which is wonderfully ambiguous on issues such as propaganda, eugenics and dictatorship, and then debate whether it is (in Huxley’s words) “A satire, a prophecy or a blueprint”.

Students could be told that many other ideas we associate with European dictatorships - medals for fertile mothers, compulsory sterilisation of the mentally defective and concentration camps, for example - had their roots in the democracies of France, the US and Britain. This approach places Nazism in a European, rather than German, context and makes students much less dismissive than they might otherwise have been.

One particular lesson is worth mentioning. When discussing the propaganda-filled Nazi national curriculum in my first year of teaching, students shook their heads in disbelief at the gullibility of their counterparts in 1930s Germany. So the following year I tried a different tack. Asking the class to take notes, I delivered a spurious lecture which outlined the differences between races and nations. I mentioned the “fact” that some races have traits which others do not (focusing on superficially complimentary ones, such as black men excelling at boxing and dancing, and Jewish people having a talent for business); and that these variations added vitality and diversity to society. Nevertheless, I continued, there are two sides to every coin. Differences breed conflict, so it is best that each race keeps to itself to maintain its identity and purity: multicultural societies are weak and divided. So far, not a single student protested.

I then went further: “justifying” first euthanasia, then eugenics and eventually genocide - at which point, of course, students were left in no doubt they had been led up the garden path.

A fruitful discussion then took place on when students realised that they were being “had”. Some claimed they knew all along - so why didn’t they speak out rather than sit in silence? (Apathy and intimidation can be mentioned here.) Others argued that they didn’t realise it was a wind-up until the very end, which raised questions about their susceptibility to indoctrination. I then rounded off the activity by getting the class to produce a summary of the flaws in my argument.

In adopting such an approach, some people might think I was promoting Nazism. Earlier this year, I launched a “virtual Hitler” on the internet who could be interviewed through an online interface. Although this won the Becta Guardian website award for secondary teaching resources, one particularly vitriolic American denounced me as a neo-Nazi.

In reply, it is crucial to reiterate that dismissing Hitler as “pure evil” ignores the fact that millions of ordinary, supposedly decent people supported him. Empathising with people who supported Hitler does not mean sympathising with them, but it does help us reach a better understanding of how easily democratic institutions can be eroded.

Russel Tarr teaches history and politics at Wolverhampton Grammar School and is the author of the website www.activehistory.co.uk