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Martin Kitchen is Professor Emeritus of History at Simon Fraser University, Canada. His books include Nazi Germany at War, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany, The German Offensives of 1918, The Third Reich: Charisma and Community, and Rommel's Desert War: Waging World War II in North Africa, 1941-1943. Internationally recognized as a key author in the study of contemporary history, Professor Kitchen has served on the editorial boards of International History Review, Canadian Journal of History, and International Affairs.
Lauren Faulkner Rossi is Assistant Professor of History at Simon Fraser University, where she teaches courses on World War II and modern German history. She is the author of Wehrmacht Priests and has published articles in journals such as Contemporary European History, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Journal of Modern History.
List of Illustrations x
Maps xii
Introduction to the Second Edition 1
A Note on the Third Edition 7
1 Germany Under Napoleon 9
The Continental System 11
Resistance to Napoleon 12
The Prussian Reform Movement 13
Prussian Military Reforms 17
Educational Reform 18
The Confederation of the Rhine 20
Germany and the Defeat of Napoleon 21
The Congress of Vienna 22
2 German Society in Transition 24
Women and Children 27
The Household 29
Town and Country 30
Agriculture 31
Industrialization 33
Class Structure 36
Jews 40
Social Change 41
3 Restoration and Reform 1815-1840 43
Demagogues and Radicals 44
Bourgeois Discontent 47
Nationalism 48
The Zollverein 50
Germany Under Metternich 52
Catholicism 55
Liberalism 56
Radicalism 57
4 The Revolutions of 1848 59
Revolution 62
The Frankfurt Parliament 64
Olmütz 70
5 The Struggle for Mastery 1850-1866 72
Austro-Prussian Rivalry 73
The "New Era" 75
Changes in the Social Structure 76
Liberalism and Conservatism 78
Social Democracy 79
Prussian Army Reforms 82
Bismarck 83
The German Question 84
The Schleswig- Holstein Question 86
The Austro-Prussian War 87
6 The Unification of Germany 1866-1871 90
Liberalism, Nationalism, and Particularism 93
The Franco-Prussian War 94
The German Empire 96
Bonapartism 99
The Military and Militarism 101
Nationalism 104
The German Jewish Community 105
7 Bismarck's Germany 111
The Kulturkampf 112
Bismarck and the Liberals 115
Social Democracy 116
From Free Trade to Protectionism 116
The Anti-Socialist Laws 118
Bismarck's New Course 119
Social Policy 121
The Social Structure of Imperial Germany 122
Food and Drink 124
Fashion 125
Women 126
Attitudes Toward Sexuality 128
8 Germany and Europe 1871-1890 132
The Congress of Berlin 134
The Dual and Triple Alliances 135
German Imperialism: Bismarck's Colonialism 136
The Collapse of Bismarck's System of Alliances 138
9 Wilhelmine Germany 1890-1914 141
William II's System of Government 143
The Reichstag 145
Caprivi and the "New Course" 146
Hohenlohe 149
Tirpitz, the Navy, and "World Politics" 150
German Imperialism: Navalism and Overseas Colonization 151
Criticisms of the Naval Building Program 153
Bülow 154
Anglo-German Rivalry 155
The Bülow Bloc 156
Scandals and Crises 157
Bethmann Hollweg 159
The Challenge from Social Democracy 160
Armaments 161
The Balkan Crisis of 1912 162
10 The First World War 165
Attitudes Toward the War 167
War Aims 168
German Society in Wartime 168
Women and the Family 171
Mounting Opposition to the War 173
The Peace Resolution 174
The Impact of the Bolshevik Revolution 176
The Failure of the March Offensive 177
Armistice Negotiations 179
11 The Weimar Republic 1919-1933 181
The Treaty of Versailles 182
The Weimar Constitution 184
The Kapp Putsch 184
Reparations 185
Rapallo 187
Hyperinflation and the "Struggle for the Ruhr" 188
Hindenburg Elected President 192
Locarno 193
The Depression 194
Cultural Effervescence: Cinema, Music, Visual Arts 195
The Middle Class 196
The Working Class 199
Rural Society 202
The Demise of Parliamentary Democracy 203
Gender and Sexuality 204
Brüning 205
Papen 208
Schleicher 210
Hitler Appointed Chancellor 211
12 The Nazi Dictatorship to 1939: Politics, Society, Culture 214
The Reichstag Fire 216
Gleichschaltung 218
The SA and the Röhm Putsch 221
Hitler Becomes Head of State 223
The National Socialist Dictatorship 224
The SS 229
Salvaging the Economy 231
German Society in the Third Reich 234
Labor 236
Peasants 237
Small Business 240
Gender, Women, and the Family 241
National Socialism and Modernity 244
13 Nazi Germany and the Jews 1933-1945: Persecution, War, Genocide 250
The Persecution of the Jews Before the War 252
First Steps in Foreign Policy 255
The Anschluss 258
Munich 259
War 260
Poland 262
The War in the West 263
Barbarossa 264
The Wartime Persecution of the Jews: The "Final Solution" 267
The Turn of the Tide 273
The Shortage of Labor 274
The End 276
14 The Adenauer Era 1945-1963 280
The Occupation Zones 282
From Bizonia to Trizonia 284
The Formation of the Federal Republic of Germany 286
Rearmament 289
From the "Economic Miracle" to "Eurosclerosis" 292
Culture and Society under Adenauer 295
The Heyday of Adenauer's Germany 297
The Berlin Wall 298
The End of the Adenauer Era 299
15 The German Democratic Republic 303
"The First Workers' and Peasants' State on German Soil" 308
June 17, 1953 311
The GDR after Stalin 313
The Berlin Wall 315
The New Economic System 316
The GDR and Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik 318
The Honecker Era 319
Social Structure of the GDR 320
Dissent 323
Relations between the Two Germanys 324
The Collapse of the GDR 325
16 The Federal Republic 1963-1982 332
The Great Coalition: 1966-1969 333
Confrontations with the Past 335
The Extra- Parliamentary Opposition (APO) 336
The Chancellorship of Willy Brandt 338
Terrorism 341
Willy Brandt's Second Term: 1972-1974 341
Helmut Schmidt's First Term: 1974-1976 343
Helmut Schmidt's Second Term: 1976-1980 344
The Changing Nature of Dissent 345
The Debate on Atomic Weapons 346
Helmut Schmidt's Third Term: 1980-1982 347
The Historikerstreit: Debating Germany's Past 349
Class and Consumption 351
Gender, Sexuality, and the Erosion of the Family Unit 356
Immigration and German Identity 358
17 The Reunification of Germany and Beyond 360
The United States, the Soviet Union, and the German Question 361
The New Germany's First Decade 363
9/11 and the Iraq War 372
Gerhard Schröder's Second Term 375
Angela Merkel's First Three Terms 376
The Refugee Crisis, the Re-emergence of the Far Right, and Merkel's Final Term 379
Remembering and Forgetting in Reunified Germany 381
Problems and Perspectives 384
Bibliography 386
Index 396
In 1800 Germany was a ramshackle empire, made up of hundreds of petty principalities, free cities, and ecclesiastical and aristocratic estates, which ever since 1512 had borne the impressive title of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Voltaire caustically remarked that it was neither holy nor Roman, and certainly not much of an empire. As for German - the word really did not mean much at that time.
Among the German states only Austria and Brandenburg-Prussia counted for much, and Prussia was not even part of the empire. The empire nonetheless had many virtues, its federal structure providing a model for the founding fathers of the United States, but it was in a state of relentless decline and was impervious to reform. It was overrun by the armies of revolutionary France and reorganized under Napoleon. The historian Thomas Nipperdey begins his monumental history of nineteenth-century Germany with the catchy phrase: "In the beginning was Napoleon." Like most such aphorisms it is a half-truth. This was no second creation, but it did mark the end of the empire and a significant transformation of Germany's political geography. Napoleon forced sixteen of what the great reformer Baron vom Stein contemptuously called "petty sultanates" into the Confederation of the Rhine, thereby greatly enhancing Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden in the hope of creating a third Germany to offset Austria and Prussia. The Confederation was reformed along French lines, adopting the progressive Napoleonic code of law, whereas in Prussia the reforms were designed to strengthen the state so as eventually to free those provinces that were under French occupation. These reforms and the struggle against France were to lay the foundations of Prussian strength in the new century, and to lead to the formation of a new Germany in 1871. In the process, the progressive liberalism of the early decades of the century was gradually transformed into an increasingly reactionary nationalism.
A somewhat vague notion of a German national identity was first articulated in the eighteenth century. It was centered on the linguistic and cultural peculiarities of the German-speaking world. It was abstract, humanistic, cosmopolitan, philosophically rarefied and apolitical. The intense hatred of the French, caused by the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, along with the unacceptable behavior of the French occupying troops soured this early nationalism. Cosmopolitanism turned into an arrogant feeling of cultural superiority. The apolitical became a reactionary obsession with a mythological German past. The rarefied was distilled into an impenetrable but intoxicating obscurity. The new nationalists hoped that when the wars were over a powerful and united Germany would emerge, but their hopes were dashed at the Congress of Vienna, where they were overridden by the imperatives of the great European powers.
Britain and France preferred to accept the changes made by Napoleon and completed his work by creating a German Confederation comprising the 39 remaining states. There was neither a head of state nor a government, but simply a federal assembly to which the member states sent their representatives, with Austria providing the chairman. The solution was acceptable to the Austrians, for they were the senior partners, and Metternich appeared to be firmly in charge as he imposed his reactionary and repressive policies on the Confederation.
Outward appearances were deceptive. Whereas Austria failed to set its house in order by tackling the serious problems of a multinational empire at a time when national sentiments were becoming inflamed, Prussia was laying the foundations of its future economic strength. The Rhineland, which Prussia had been awarded at the Congress of Vienna much against its will, since it was a backward and Catholic area, became the center of Germany's industrial might. The Customs Union (Zollverein), founded in 1834 under Prussian leadership, made many of the German states economically dependent on Prussia, and created a market that was soon to challenge British supremacy. Capital moved northwards as Austria declined. All that was needed was some form of unification for Germany to be the most powerful nation on the Continent. But what form was this unification to take? Would it be a Greater Germany that included Austria, or a Little Germany under Prussian domination?
Metternich introduced a number of repressive measures, but he was unable to contain the various groups that clamored for constitutional reform, liberal nationalism, and radical change. Following the example of the French there was revolutionary upheaval in Germany in 1848. A national assembly met in Frankfurt that was immediately confronted with the fundamental and perplexing questions, "Who is a German?" and "Where is Germany?" There was at first general agreement that Germans were people who spoke German and, in the words of the patriotic poet and historian Ernst Moritz Arndt, who was born a serf and was thus a personification of the fundamental changes in the social fabric, Germany was "Wherever German is spoken." On second thoughts, this raised more questions than it solved. Were the proudly independent German-speaking Swiss really Germans? What about the Alsatians who spoke German but had French citizenship? Then there were the hundreds of thousands of Polish-speaking Prussians. Were they honorary Germans simply because there was no Polish state? A similar question was raised about the Czechs in the Austrian provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. Then there was some discussion whether Jews should be treated as equal citizens, or whether the German people needed to be protected against these threatening outsiders.
Most of the delegates to the Prussian parliament wanted a greater German solution that would include Austria. Such a Germany would, they hoped, be strong enough to protect and later absorb the German minorities on its borders in Holland, Luxembourg, Schleswig, Switzerland, and Alsace-Lorraine. Such ideas came up against the national aspirations of Poles and Czechs in the east, and were hastily dropped in the west for fear of confronting France. Whereas German liberals had traditionally championed the Polish struggle against Russian autocracy, they suddenly changed their tune, denouncing any suggestion that the German minority in Poland should be absorbed in a backward and uncultured nation. Similar accusations of treason were levied during the discussions over the Czech lands, northern Italy, and Schleswig. Healthy national egotism triumphed over any concern for other peoples' rights to national self-determination. Precious few liberals realized that the denial of the rights of others undermined their own claims, and that victory over insurgents in Italy, Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland greatly strengthened the forces of reaction. It was a fatal flaw of this new form of nationalism that it was based on ethnicity rather than the acceptance of a shared set of values and respect for a common legal system. One hundred and fifty years after the revolution of 1848 a Russian who could not speak a word of German, but who was born of parents who claimed to be of German descent, had an automatic right to German citizenship, whereas a German-speaking child born of Turkish parents in Germany had no such claim. In spite of recent reforms of the immigration laws a residue of this heritage is still painfully apparent.
The men of 1848 were only free to deliberate and decide by majority vote as long as Austria and Prussia were busy dealing with their own immediate problems. Once the reaction had triumphed in both states the parliamentarians were ordered to pack their bags and returned to their respective states. In the years that followed, Austria and Prussia jockeyed for position within the Confederation, until Bismarck was appointed its chancellor in 1867. He immediately set about settling the German question with "blood and iron."
Very few people realized the dangers of national unification by such violent means; prominent among them was Friedrich Nietzsche. After all, Greece, Serbia, and Italy were all founded in violence, while most nations were forged in civil wars. Later historians were to endorse Nietzsche's reservations, claiming that German history traveled down a unique path (Sonderweg), but this was soon shown to be an exaggerated case of self-immolation and an inadequate explanation for the phenomenon of National Socialism. The German empire of 1871 had a parliament elected by universal manhood suffrage, which was much more than the "fig-leaf of absolutism" that the socialist leader, August Bebel, claimed. Bismarck, its founding father, pronounced Germany to be "saturated." Once his great gambling streak was over, knowing full well that the other European powers were ever watchful of this prosperous and powerful newcomer, he was anxious to keep the peace.
The "Second Reich," much like that which it had replaced, was a loose confederation of states, but it was dominated by Prussia. The military had always played a dominant role in Prussian society, and the Prussian army, having won three wars in quick succession virtually unaided, was admired, adulated, and emulated. It was virtually free from parliamentary control since the war minister was not answerable to parliament and the budget only came up for approval every seven years. The kaiser jealously guarded his power of command and protected the army from outside influences. Such was the social prestige of the army...
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