A History of Modern Germany E-Book

Martin Kitchen

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 1153

Beschreibung

Featuring revised and extended coverage, the second edition of A History of Modern Germany offers an accessible and engagingly written account of German history from 1800 to the present. * Provides readers with a long view of modern German history, revealing its continuities and changes * Features updated and extended coverage of German social change and modernization, class, religion, and gender * Includes more in depth coverage of the German Democratic Republic * Examines Germany's social, political, and economic history * Covers the unification of Germany, the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, post-war division, the collapse of Communism, and developments since re-unification * Addresses regional history rather than focusing on the dominant role of Prussia

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Halftitle page

Title page

Copyright page

Illustrations

Maps

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE GERMANY UNDER NAPOLEON

The Continental System

Resistance to Napoleon

The Prussian Reform Movement

Prussian Military Reforms

Educational Reform

The Confederation of the Rhine

Germany and the Defeat of Napoleon

The Congress of Vienna

CHAPTER TWO GERMAN SOCIETY IN TRANSITION

Women and Children

The Household

Town and Country

Agriculture

Industrialization

Class Structure

Jews

Social Change

CHAPTER THREE RESTORATION AND REFORM 1815–1840

Demagogues and Radicals

Bourgeois Discontent

Nationalism

The Zollverein

Germany Under Metternich

Catholicism

Liberalism

Radicalism

CHAPTER FOUR THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848

Revolution

The Frankfurt Parliament

Olmütz

CHAPTER FIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR MASTERY 1850–1866

Austro-Prussian Rivalry

The “New Era”

Changes in the Social Structure

Liberalism and Conservatism

Social Democracy

Prussian Army Reforms

Bismarck

The German Question

The Schleswig-Holstein Question

The Austro-Prussian War

CHAPTER SIX THE UNIFICATION OF GERMANY 1866–1871

Liberalism, Nationalism, and Particularism

The Franco-Prussian War

The German Empire

Bonapartism

The Military and Militarism

Nationalism

The German Jewish Community

CHAPTER SEVEN BISMARCK’S GERMANY

The Kulturkampf

Bismarck and the Liberals

Social Democracy

From Free Trade to Protectionism

The Anti-Socialist Laws

Bismarck’s New Course

Social Policy

The Social Structure of Imperial Germany

Food and Drink

Fashion

Women

Attitudes Towards Sexuality

CHAPTER EIGHT GERMANY AND EUROPE 1871–1890

The Congress of Berlin

The Dual and Triple Alliances

Colonialism

The Collapse of Bismarck’s System of Alliances

CHAPTER NINE WILHELMINE GERMANY 1890–1914

William II’s System of Government

The Reichstag

Caprivi and the “New Course”

Hohenlohe

Tirpitz, the Navy, and “World Politics”

Navalism and Imperialism

Criticisms of the Naval Building Program

Bülow

Anglo-German Rivalry

The Bülow Bloc

Scandals and Crises

Bethmann Hollweg

The Challenge from Social Democracy

Armaments

The Balkan Crisis of 1912

CHAPTER TEN THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Attitudes Towards the War

War Aims

German Society in Wartime

Women

Mounting Opposition to the War

The Peace Resolution

The Impact of Bolshevik Revolution

The Failure of the March Offensive

Armistice Negotiations

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC 1919–1933

The Treaty of Versailles

The Weimar Constitution

The Kapp Putsch

Reparations

Rapallo

Hyperinflation and the “Struggle for the Ruhr”

Hindenburg Elected President

Locarno

The Depression

The Middle Class

The Working Class

Rural Society

The Demise of Parliamentary Democracy

Brüning

Papen

Schleicher

Hitler Appointed Chancellor

CHAPTER TWELVE THE NAZI DICTATORSHIP

The Reichstag Fire

Gleichschaltung

The Persecution of the Jews: The First Phase

The SA and the Röhm Putsch

Hitler Becomes Head of State

The National Socialist Dictatorship

The SS

The Persecution of the Jews: The Second Phase

CHAPTER THIRTEEN NAZI GERMANY 1933–1945

German Society in the Third Reich

Labor

Peasants

Small Business

Women

National Socialism and Modernity

First Steps in Foreign Policy

The Anschluss

Munich

War

Poland

The War in the West

Barbarossa

The Final Solution

The Turn of the Tide

The Shortage of Labor

The End

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE ADENAUER ERA 1945–1963

The Occupation Zones

From Bizonia to Trizonia

The Formation of the Federal Republic of Germany

Rearmament

From the “Economic Miracle” to “Eurosclerosis”

The Heyday of Adenauer’s Germany

The Berlin Wall

The End of the Adenauer Era

CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

“The First Workers’ and Peasants’ State on German Soil”

June 17, 1953

The GDR after Stalin

The Berlin Wall

The New Economic System

The GDR and Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik

The Honecker Era

Social Structure of the GDR

Dissent

Relations between the Two Germanys

The Collapse of the GDR

CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC 1963–1982

The Great Coalition: 1966–1969

Confrontations with the Past

The Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (Apo)

The Chancellorship of Willy Brandt

Terrorism

Willy Brandt’s Second Term: 1972–1974

Helmut Schmidt’s First Term: 1974–1976

Helmut Schmidt’s Second Term: 1976–1980

Terrorism and the Changing Nature of Dissent

The Debate on Atomic Weapons

Helmut Schmidt’s Third Term: 1980–1982

The Transformation of West German Society

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN THE REUNIFICATION OF GERMANY

Debates over Germany’s Past

The United States, the Soviet Union, and the German Question

The New Germany

9/11

The Iraq War

Gerhard Schröder’s Second Term

Angela Merkel’s Two Coalition Governments

Problems and Perspectives

Bibliography

Index

A HISTORY OF

MODERN

GERMANY

This edition first published 2012

© 2012 Martin Kitchen

Edition History: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2006)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kitchen, Martin.

 A history of modern Germany, 1800 to the present / Martin Kitchen. – 2nd ed.

p. cm.

 Rev. ed. of A history of modern Germany, 1800 to 2000.

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-0-470-65581-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Germany–History–1789–1900. 2. Germany–History–20th century. 3. Germany–History–1990– I. Kitchen, Martin. History of modern Germany, 1800 to 2000. II. Title.

 DD203.K58 2012

 943.087–dc22

2010043502

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDFs [ISBN 9781444396881]; ePub [ISBN 9781444396898]

Illustrations

Plates

1 A Biedermeier interior

2 The Biedermeier family

3 The suffering of the Silesian weavers

4 Burschenschaftler attending the Wartburg Festival

5 Student representatives burning reactionary books and symbols

6 Street fighting in Berlin on the Night of March 18/19

7 A meeting of the National Assembly in the Paul’s Church in Frankfurt, September

8 German industrial might: a rolling mill in Saarbrücken c.1870

9 The founders of German Social Democracy

10 August Bebel

11 The Battle of Sedan

12 The Berlin Stock Exchange

13 Bismarck by Franz von Lembach, c.1880

14 William II “The Kaiser”

15 Bismarck dead and surrounded by the ghosts of the past

16 The German delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference

17 Mass protest in Berlin against the Treaty of Versailles

18 Homeless men, December

19 Homeless women, December

20 Nazi Party rally

21 Göring and Hitler

22 Hitler and Goebbels

23 Dresden after the raid

24 Red Army troops hoisting the Soviet flag on the Reichstag, May

25 Ludwig Ehrhard

26 The Berlin Airlift

27 East German Communist poster

28 No experiments!

29 Adenauer and De Gaulle

30 Willy Brandt in Warsaw

31 Monday demonstration in Leipzig in

32 The Berlin Wall, November

Maps

1 Germany, 1815

2 Prussia before and after the Austro-Prussian War

3 Germany, 1871 xiv

4 The Versailles Settlement, 1919

5 The division of Germany at Potsdam, 1945

6 Germany, 1993

Figure

1 Office organization of the SS (September 1939)

Maps

MAP 1 Germany, 1815

MAP 2 Prussia before and after the Austro-Prussian War

MAP 3 Germany, 1871

MAP 4 The Versailles Settlement, 1919

MAP 5 The division of Germany at Potsdam, 1945

MAP 6 Germany, 1993

Introduction

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 centre 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, Luxemburg, 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 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 Prussian chancellor. 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 that Bismarck remarked that “human beings start at the rank of lieutenant.”

Bismarck, often painted as a diplomatist of genius, left a fatal legacy. He permanently alienated France by agreeing to the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine and then earned the hostility of Russia, first by his alliance with Austria-Hungary and then by triggering a trade war. His ill-considered dabbling in imperialism made the British increasingly wary of the new Germany. When his successors began to build a battle fleet, Britain, humiliated by the Boer War, sought continental partners and joined the Franco-Russian alliance, thus realizing Bismarck’s “nightmare of coalitions.”

Bismarck’s domestic policies were as divisive as his foreign policy was hazardous. He painted a lurid picture of the Reich’s putative enemies, foremost among whom were the Social Democrats, but which also included Catholics, the French, Poles, Alsatians, Danes, and, whenever politically expedient, the Jews. With such a comprehensive catalogue of opponents a majority of citizens were considered to be aliens, while only Protestant conservatives were deemed to be true Germans. The system began to fall apart when powerful liberal and democratic forces confronted a hidebound conservatism, backed by racist anti-Semitic populism. When war began in 1914 these social and political tensions were temporarily overcome in a remarkable display of national unity, but as the war dragged on the nation fell apart. When the Western Front collapsed in 1918, soon after the spectacularly successful spring offensive, most Germans were shocked and taken by surprise. The army high command had concealed the true picture, and accused the democratic forces of stabbing the army in the back, thus causing the country’s downfall.

Germany was left truculently defiant of the Treaty of Versailles and was determined to undo a peace settlement that was harsh enough for everyone to feel that it was grossly unfair, but too feeble to be enforceable. Germany’s determination to undo the peace settlement was partly concealed by the Treaty of Locarno in 1925 and its subsequent admission to the League of Nations. Then a severe economic crisis combined with a complete breakdown of the political system enabled Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists to agitate to increasing effect. Resistance to the Nazi menace was weakened by the inability of the democratic forces to settled their acute differences in order to reach a workable compromise in the face of a common danger, and by the folly of conservatives who imagined that they could use Hitler to serve their own purposes.

As soon as he was appointed chancellor, Hitler rapidly established a one-party dictatorship and his opponents were terrorized into submission. Once he was firmly in command he began systematically to tear up the Treaty of Versailles. Military service was introduced in 1935; the Rhineland was occupied in 1936, Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938, Memel in 1939.

The Nazis provided a radical and horrific answer to the perennial question “Who is a German?” Bismarck’s old enemies – the Social Democrats, the politicized Christians, the left-leaning liberals – were forced into exile or locked away in concentration camps. The Polish elite was systematically murdered, millions of others enslaved. The much-vaunted “racial community” was purged of all elements considered to be dangerous and debilitating, such as the mentally and physically handicapped, habitual criminals, homosexuals, Gypsies, and Jews. They were segregated, sterilized, or murdered.

Hitler’s appalling vision could not be realized without a major war, which at first looked as if he might win, in spite of the warnings of his more level-headed generals. Through a deadly combination of ideological frenzy and bureaucratic efficiency, Hitler perpetrated a crime of unimaginable horror, which he believed to be his greatest achievement and legacy for which succeeding generations would be grateful. It left a world in ruins, with tens of millions dead, among them 6 million Jews.

In 1945 Germany was a pile of rubble with a starving population. It was a little Germany between Rhine and Oder, once again a power vacuum, divided into four occupation zones. As a result of the imperatives of the Cold War the country was divided into a democratic and capitalist state in the west and a Stalinist planned economy in the east. Western Germany was treated leniently – some would argue far too leniently – encouraged by the Western powers in its efforts to develop a parliamentary democracy and a liberal market economy. Although the crimes of a great many former Nazis were all too often overlooked, an extraordinary effort was made to confront the past. No country had ever made such an effort to atone for its crimes.

Whereas the economy of the western Federal Republic (FRG) grew at an astonishing rate thanks to the exceptional efforts of a generation determined to start anew, the eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR) was mismanaged so as to be virtually bankrupt by the 1980s. As the Soviet empire crumbled the GDR was left isolated as a post-Stalinist dictatorship. Abandoned by the Soviet leadership, the regime collapsed and, as a result of the first free election for 57 years, the country opted to unite with the Federal Republic. On October 3, 1990 Germany was thus reunited, but the gulf between the two Germanys remained alarmingly wide. Few had realized the hopeless state of the East German economy, the antiquated infrastructure, the appalling state of public health and housing, to say nothing of the psychological effects of almost 60 years of dictatorship, snooping, censorship, and repression. The staggering cost of reconstruction placed a heavy burden on the West German taxpayers, who regarded the easterners as indigent, surly, and ungrateful. Easterners in turn resented this arrogance, and felt that they had been colonized by a selfish bunch of greedy materialists.

The process of unification is still far from complete. The walls that have been built in people’s heads and hearts have to be broken down and the disparities between East and West overcome. But the prospect of a democratic and dynamic Germany, fully integrated into the European community, free from any dangerous ambitions, is a reassuring reminder that the country has learnt from its past mistakes and is determined to build on the democratic traditions that are also part of its troubled past.

German history is also the story of German historians, for they have shaped the way we see the German past. Leopold von Ranke, who established history as a professional discipline, was born in 1795 and died in 1886. Having witnessed the transformation of a ramshackle confederation into the most powerful state in Europe it is hardly surprising that he saw the state, its origins, its development, and its interaction with other states as the prime object of historical study. Ranke’s epigones thus asserted the “primacy of foreign policy.” With the reunification of Germany in 1990 the whole question of the German state was again on the agenda, prompting some remarkable neo-Rankean scholarship such as Heinrich August Winkler’s “The Long Road West” (Der lange Weg nach Westen).

It was not until the 1960s that the younger generation of German historians began to reject the Rankean approach to the study of history. Very few were influenced by the dominant Annales school with its sociological approach, its emphasis on mentalities, and, later, the linguistic turn – resulting from a rejection of political and diplomatic history as well as a hostility towards Marxist class analysis. Instead they rediscovered the works of a number of highly talented émigré historians such as Eckart Kehr, Arthur and Hans Rosenberg, Georg Hallgarten, and Alfred Vagts. They were politically engaged on the left, strongly influenced by Marx and Weber as reworked by the Frankfurt school into critical theory. Their self-proclaimed aim was to create a “historical science beyond historicism” (Geschichtswissenschaft jenseits des Historismus). Above all they saw history as a critical and emancipatory discipline. Theirs is a therapeutic model of historical discourse, based on the conviction that the historian has a grave moral responsibility to shoulder the burden of guilt for Germany’s recent unfortunate past. The result was a mirror image of the old nationalist historical legacy, which saw a glorious tradition stretching from Luther to Frederick the Great to Bismarck and reaching its apotheosis with the foundation of the Reich in 1871. Now the legacy was that of the anti-Semitic and reactionary Luther, of the militaristic Great Elector, the authoritarian Frederick the Great, and the Bonapartist Bismarck, coupled with the disjuncture between economic modernity and political backwardness in the Kaiserreich, and the traditions of dreamy inwardness and deference to authority, all of which culminated in the bestiality of National Socialism.

It is hardly surprising that since 1945 German historians have concentrated on the question how a highly civilized country, which vaunted its moral and cultural superiority, seeing itself as the “land of writers and thinkers” (Dichter und Denker), could sink into the deepest depths of fanaticized barbarism. The initial explanation, served up in an easily digestible form by the historian A. J. P. Taylor and the journalist William Shirer, was that there was a long tradition of aggressive nationalism, anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, hero-worshiping, and slavish obedience to authority that made something like National Socialism almost inevitable. This explanation was soon shown to be a very facile one. What seemed in retrospect to be inevitable was the result of an almost infinite number of contingent variables. National Socialism may not have been the inevitable outcome of German history, but Hitler did not descend from the clouds as he does in Leni Riefenstahl’s remarkable documentary on the Nuremberg Rally of 1934, Triumph of the Will. The heavy burden of the past resulted in an astonishing lack of resistance to a regime that trampled on all the positive traditions that Goebbels dubbed “the ideas of 1789.” There is some truth in the argument that National Socialism was the fruit of certain trends that were common to all of Europe. It is also true that at least in part it was a response to Russian communism. But none of this implies that Germany was not fully responsible for what happened between 1933 and 1945, or that National Socialism was not fully grounded on some unfortunate traditions in Germany’s past. Above all, National Socialism was certainly not an “accident” as some historians have argued.

The debate became further confused by a debate between “functionalists” and “intentionalists.” The first argued that the extremism of the Nazi regime resulted from the state’s structure, with its internal divisions and rivalries, its confusing decision-making process, and the unpredictability of charismatic leadership. The latter insisted that it was all essentially the result of Hitler’s obsessive designs. After much acrimonious discussion both sides made concessions, and calmer heads suggested that the truth lay in a combination of the two approaches.

Fortunately there is much more to German history than the search for the origins of National Socialism and the analysis of the twelve years during which it was in power, half of which were largely determined by the exigencies of war. There is also a strong and vibrant liberal and democratic tradition to which this book pays tribute, and which makes nonsense of the claim that National Socialism was the result of some fatal flaw in the German character. Such an idea is unable to account for the fact that the “horrid Huns,” with their ghastly atavistic inheritance and murderous anti-Semitic intent, now live in what is, for all its many faults and shortcomings, an exemplary democracy, securely integrated with Europe, and free from any territorial ambitions.

When we talk of Germany we tend to think of it as a powerful monolith, when in fact for most of the period under discussion it was a loose federation of widely different states. Even the Wilhelmine empire comprised four separate kingdoms with four separate armies, and a number of semi-autonomous entities. It was only during the mercifully brief Third Reich that the country was a centralized state. Regional differences were, and still are, extremely strong. Protestant Prussia was very different from and antagonistic toward Catholic Bavaria. Rhinelanders had precious little in common with Pomeranians or Holsteiners. Local loyalties, summed up in the uniquely German concept of Heimat, whether to proudly independent cities like Hamburg or Frankfurt, or to a particular town or village, remain powerful and are reinforced by local customs and practices.

The great nationalist historians concentrated on Prussia, for it was the driving force behind unification, and they glorified Bismarck’s Germany, which was dominated by Prussia. Subsequent historians continued to write as if the history of Germany was the history of Prussia writ large. Some of Karl Lamprecht’s acolytes, who concentrated on cultural history, studied local history and customs as part of the National Socialist völkisch project, but it was not until after the Second World War that serious regional and local histories were written which give us an inkling of the complexities and richness of German history. Detailed studies provide a timely reminder that different Germans experienced the history of their country in widely different ways. A miner in the Ruhr, a university-educated lawyer in Berlin, a Bavarian farmer, and a Frisian fisherman lived in worlds that were poles apart. The set of relationships between men and women underwent a sea change in the period under review. It is difficult to imagine that from such widely differing circumstances something as all-encompassing as a national character of the “German mind” could ever be constructed.

I make no apologies for writing a narrative history. History, as the word suggests, is essentially about telling a story. It is, with all due respect to the dwindling band of postmodernists, about a series of real events set in chronological order so as to show how one thing led, subject to however many eventualities, to another. For many years this approach has been dismissed by those who attempted to apply rigorously theoretical approaches derived from the social sciences to the study of history. In recent years historians have returned to a narrative approach, without which 200 years of German history would make little sense, and would dissolve into a series of unconnected events, trends, and data. On the other hand I am well aware that events occur within and are shaped by social structures, economic factors, and cultural attitudes. This new edition places greater emphasis on such issues. It also contains a much more detailed discussion of the peculiarities of the German Democratic Republic and brings the story more up to date.

The Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin, well known for his sardonic wit, once said that one might be tempted to call oversimplification the occupational disease of historians if it were not their occupation. I am all too aware of the many oversimplifications, omissions, and oversights in this book. Some are inevitable, others excusable, a few have been avoided in this new edition; the remainder are entirely my fault. My one wish is that readers will find the story I have to tell of interest, and that reading it will inspire them to look elsewhere for further insights. To this end I have appended a short bibliography of works in English.

CHAPTER ONE

GERMANY UNDER NAPOLEON

CHAPTER CONTENTS

The Continental System

Resistance to Napoleon

The Prussian Reform Movement

Prussian Military Reforms

Educational Reform

The Confederation of the Rhine

Germany and the Defeat of Napoleon

The Congress of Vienna

Writing at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century the whimsical German writer Jean Paul commented that providence had given the French the empire of the land, the English that of the sea and the Germans that of the air. He would have been at a loss to define what exactly he meant by the “Germans” and most likely would have found the question pointless. It could hardly have been confined to those who lived in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, for that would have excluded a large number of German speakers, including the Prussians. Nor would he have included all those areas where German was spoken. The German empire indeed existed in the air. It was a threadbare patchwork of innumerable political entities, from the European states of Austria and Prussia to the fiefdoms of the imperial knights, imperial monasteries, independent towns, and even villages.

All this was to change under the impact of the French revolutionary wars and above all of Napoleon. The French seized the territory on the left bank of the Rhine and in 1803 the map of Germany was redrawn as a result of the lengthy deliberations of an Imperial Deputation which did little more than add its seal of approval to a plan presented by the French and Russians. The deputation’s Conclusions (Reichsdeputationshauptschluss) of February 25, 1803, resulted in the secularization of the territorial possessions of the Catholic Church including those of the Prince Bishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier. Archbishop Dalberg of Mainz, a crafty politician, retained his princely estates and his electoral title, was made grand duke of Frankfurt and continued in office as chancellor of an empire that was soon to vanish. A host of smaller units were annexed (mediatized) and absorbed by the larger states under the guise of compensation for territory lost to the west of the Rhine. The remains of once influential states such as the Electoral Palatinate vanished overnight. More than 3 million Germans were given new identities, and most of the “petty sultanates” that had been the butt of Jean Paul’s mordant wit disappeared.

The southern and southwestern states profited the most from these changes. Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg were greatly strengthened as a counterweight to Prussia and Austria, but such power as they had resulted from their dependence on France. Clearly the empire was now doomed, and Dalberg’s efforts at reform proved to no avail.

Shortly after the publication of the Conclusions, France and England once again went to war. The French promptly occupied Hanover, which was in personal union with England and now directly threatened Prussia, in spite of the provisions of the Treaty of Basel of April 1795 that guaranteed the neutrality of northern Germany. The southern German states, determined opponents of the empire that constrained their sovereignty, joined in with their French masters in an attack on Austria in 1805. On October 17 Napoleon scored a great victory over the Austrians at Ulm, but four days later Nelson destroyed the French fleet at Trafalgar in the most decisive naval victory in history. Britain now had absolute command of the seas, leaving Napoleon no alternative to a land war on the Continent.