When Rainer Wegner, a populer high school teacher, finds himself relegated to teaching autocracy as part of the schools project week, hes less than enthusiastic. So are his students, who greet the prospect of studying fascism yet again with apathetic grumbling: The Nazis sucked. We get it. Struck oleh the teenagers complacency and unwitting arrogance, Rainer devises an unorthodox experiment. But his hastily conceived lesson in social orders and the power of unity soon grows a life of its own.

In probing the underpinnings of fascism, The Wave is far from a social-studies lesson. As with his previous...