A powerful, synthetic recounting of Germany’s ill-managed siege during World War II, which marked the Eastern campaign’s turning point. The sometimes barbarous spring-summer blitzkrieg had driven deep into the treeless Russian steppe, but the campaign foundered in the street fighting of a Volga-side city, reduced to rubble by German bombing. Nazi advantages were thereby neutralized and the Soviets grimly hung on until winter set in. Ruthless use of humanity characterized the defense, which catalyzed on the belief that it could not retreat into Asia. Encirclement (kessel) preceded the destruction of the 6th Army as well as the start of Germany’s long retreat. The book divides time between geopolitical decision making and the chilling lot of the common soldier, unhealthful and cheap.
Germany
16. Kempe, Berlin 1961 (25 Dec 2012)
Narrates the construction of the Berlin Wall, along with Sputnik perhaps the Soviet zenith of the Cold War era. Under pressure stemming from Ossie migration, the Communists were surprised to find the tactics unopposed by West Berlin and German as well as American leaders. Well researched and readable; but only a small piece of the puzzle.
4. Dudley, Understanding German Idealism (1 Jun 2014)
Surveys the trajectory of German philosophy 1780-1830, a formative period roughly from Kant’s setting out to prove reason trumps empirical determinism to the passing of Hegel. Kant, the protagonist, sought to establish a priori knowledge (what can I know? what should I do? what may I hope?), and concluded knowledge is bounded by the subject’s understanding of objects. His categorical imperative remains vital in modern society: treat fellow humans as you would yourself, and as ends not means. Subsequent German idealists challenged his principles of first knowledge, changing a critical understanding into absolute viewpoints. Hegel determined subject-object falsely limits understanding of appearances, and moved from knowing to being, thereby concluding man’s reconciliation with the natural world is the primary objective. Religion, art, and philosophy are the practices par excellence. Clear but difficult.
11. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (3 Jul 2016)
Narrates the central event in 17th-century German lands, masterfully weaving military and political events; religious, regional, and class attitudes; and individual leadership and failure. The political dysfunction of German lands, including but not limited to the supra-‘national’ role of Hapsburg Austria, was the cause not the consequence of the internecine fighting. Sweden and France merely took advantage, and sectarian conflict was simply an activating force. German leaders (princes) several times missed their chance to coalesce, to set aside religion and dynastic interests. Broad in its sweep yet finely detailed. Perhaps the professional historians will have revised some of Wedgwood’s findings, both with the passage of time and because she was not a member of the guild, yet this is how history should be done.
12. Taylor, The Course of German History (21 Jul 2016)
A heavily (overly?) synthesized summary of German-speaking, central European lands from the French Revolutionary era to the start of World War II. ‘Germany’ failed to coalesce around liberal, popular leadership in 1848, ushering in fealty to indebted Prussian Junkers who were able to claim a national mandate but lost control of events. The conflict between greater and little Germany (e.g., with or without Habsburg Austria, or Polish and Bohemian Slovak peoples), the successes and failures of individuals (even Bismarck) is generally subjected to a clever but somewhat pat trajectory of inexorably class-driven events. Better read as a complementary work than a standalone monograph.
3. Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay (20 Feb 2017)
Examines the expansion of democratic government since the French Revolutions and evaluates reasons for its decay. Building on
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Origins of Political Order
, Fukuyama shows how the sequencing of a strong (capable) state machinery, rule of law, and accountability influence the course of progress toward democracy and also national history, contrasting the US, an earlier adopter of manhood suffrage without developed machinery, Italy (machinery suffused with ‘partrimonialism’), and Germany (lack of accountability). Although Britain extended the franchise relatively late, its strong rule of law and accountability gave it a more credible democratic government than clientelistic America, which conquered the problem only with the rise of Progressivism, heralded by Pinchot’s Forest Service(!). After reviewing the influence of geography and economics (e.g., natural resources), the author turns to democratic governance in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Fukuyama remains an advocate of Asia’s strong state model, even though few countries have reached full democracy. Then comes corruption in democracies, and recidivism. The final chapters consider the possibilities of America’s surmounting its rule-bound bureaucracy and ‘repatrimonialism’. Because he contends that ideas are products of events, Fukuyama continues to overlook ancient Greece, even though America’s founding fathers staked much of their thinking on classical political thought. Another thorough work, evidencing the same teleological shortcomings.
22. Craig, Germany 1866-1945 (13 December 2021)
United Germany, though evidencing the thirst for liberty and flourishes of superlative culture, succumbed to the seduction of power and consequences of political failure to embrace liberalism, its people transformed from a Kulturvolk to a Machtvolk. Responsibility stems from Bismarck’s nationalism, which excluded simultaneous transition to popular sovereignty; Hitler’s cataclysm made it newly possible; but Craig’s account overlooks the historic loss of Prussia.
After the Austrian war, Bismarck conciliated liberal opinion in order to coopt the southern Catholic states (opposed to agrarian Prussian aristocrats) which had blocked the Zollparlament in 1868; Bismarck had overestimated the economy’s integrative capacity. No politician dared oppose the chancellor after 1870, yet still he reserved local prerogatives including education, policy, and revenue generation to the lander (especially Bavaria). The constitution, meant to be efficient vis-à-vis provincial rivalries without curtailing the Prussian monarchy or aristocracy, acknowledged 18 states plus Alsace-Lorraine; it contained no bill of citizen rights. Politics did not attract capable men and competing interests were seen to undermine the superior purpose of the Hegelian state. The Kulturkampf set Germans against one another, damaging the authority of civil courts and more generally liberalism. Simultaneously, the Grunderzeit kindled modern anti-Semitism. Foreign policy was defensive, but Bismarck’s manhandling the foreign service undermined its professionalism and his machinations (more so than his overt character) were responsible for his fall. At the end of his career, he had no answers other than threat of violence – a tactic which would tragically persist.
The country’s position deteriorated under the feckless Wilhelm II, who never read the constitution, holding to divine right and direct rule. With von Holstein he sought and failed to draw closer to Russia, seeking like all German elites recognition as a great power, when it would have been better to pull back and redress social imbalances. Bernhard von Bulow hoped an aggressive foreign policy would disarm the left; Bethman Hollweg succeeded to debt and a military which saw itself as an increasingly necessary independent actor. In these 1890s, trade unions sought for social democracy and responsible government, but were demonized by elites, while the parliamentarians had no experience of using supply to leverage the executive arm. Effectively blocked by parties organized on the basis of economic class and so averse to coalition, Bethman become reliant on military influence as well as reserves of power in Prussia, the Conservative Party, the Pan German league, and the agricultural and industrial lobbies. Aside from Wilhelm II himself, Bulow and Tirpiz were the most reckless ministers, the latter converting the Bismarckian policy into grasping Weltpolitik. The arms race with Britain, the imperialism evident in the Baghdad railway, and the exclusion of Russian grain (at behest of Prussians) as well as the social Darwinism of conservative Germany professoriate guided the country toward World War I
In 1914 the problem was to survive a protracted conflict with inferior resources, industrial organization, and sea power. Food was an immediate liability: prewar Germany had imported one-third of supply. Ludendorff’s appointment was a political revolution: power was overtly transferred to the high command. The shocking terms of Brest-Litovsk aroused Western antagonism as well as resistance among Eastern nations which saw the nature of German aggression.
Normalcy persisted During the Berlin commune: ‘most don’t bother to participate in the political events which shape their lives’. The Kiel mutinists were liberals not Bolshevisks. Ebert, facing anarchy, decided to side with the military, at first understandably, over time less plausibly. Weimar ministries came to exist at the sufferance of parties or factions. Conversely, since federal law did not supercede the lander, Weimar’s true (anti-democratic) enemies exploited the gaps. Inflation was rooted not in the government fiscal policies but the wartime administration, which relied on loans not tax. Arts and culture were second to none in Germany history: poetry, novels, Expressionism, Bauhaus. But the bohemians, disappointed by 1918 and opposing contemporary ministries for their military affinities, did little to defend the political order. The universities remained conservative. The ‘average’ German resorted to glorifying war as an outlet for tragedy: the German sin is to take refuge in destiny; the ideal German resists politics, when submitting to the necessity, he works via force.
At the end of Weimar, the Mittelstand was disillusioned with Bruning’s reliance on Socialists, but industrialists did not rush to help Hitler (as often supposed). Conducted under the rubric of Gleichschaltung (‘putting into the same gear’), the Nazi takeover entailed dissolving state government and the Reichsrat, purging the civil service, abolishing political parties, and coopting trade unions and eventually (in 1938) the army. But in 1933’s preparations for purging the Brown Shirts, Hitler claimed revolutions should become evolutions.
Mein Kampf established Hitler’s aggressive foreign policy – but Russia was always the goal. The early success of Hitler’s foreign policy obscured the anarchy of competing planning agencies and willy-nilly commissions. Only SS terror prevented collapse. Germany could have been brought to heel by its balance of payments. Industry shifted from western lander to south central states. Wages kept pace with inflation (although the author notes 20 percent went to taxes!). The giant industrial concerns most benefitted from Jewish confiscation. Following America’s entering World War II, Germans blamed the Fuhrer, remembering the prior conflict. After 1942’s African reverses, Hitler descended from daring strategist to meddling tactician, prohibiting for example retreat from Stalingrad on grounds of morale.
Early on, Nietzsche is given commanding effect: military victories are not political wins; proficiency does not equal virtue or morality. While undoubtedly advanced by recent scholarship, a masterful telling.
7. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement (19 May 2019)
Narrates British foreign policy in the 1930s, relying on government records and personal papers to show Neville Chamberlain clung to once-respectable appeasement well after the dangers of Hitler’s Germany superseded the errors of World War I. The consequences were postponed rearmament, loss of any chance to head off the conflict, and near disaster in 1940. The consensus of appeasement comprised sympathy for rectifying the Versailles treaty, for great power conciliation (contra French obstruction), and limiting remilitarization, particularly aircraft. It further included strong belief in the League of Nations, and implicit opposition to an antebellum arms race. Chamberlain, who never attended university and so was uncomfortable with challenging debate, held an overmighty opinion of himself and was susceptible to Hitler’s flattery. Close allies Eden and Halifax were pushed away during a succession of events that gradually swung public opinion against status quo: occupation of the Rhineland, the Spanish Civil War, Anschluss, Czech occupation, Polish occupation. The author’s treatment of Soviet gambits, which Chamberlain correctly resisted as camouflaged aggression, is wrongheaded: although diplomatic papers don’t prove it, Stalin’s postwar behavior clearly shows his intent to aggrandize. Chamberlain was prepared to concede Hitler’s demands, if possible through Italian intervention, because he focused on independence (as determined by the UK) not territorial integrity; Eden’s exit from the cabinet made the policy his own. When Chamberlain finally allowed rearmament as a hedge, he focused on the navy and then the air force, despite the obvious threat of the new technology. His course neither deterred Germany nor made conciliation possible. (Aside: the possibility of the unseen moderate is plausible only if the extreme leader can be identified. Otherwise the leader is in fact the extremist and the policy is his.) Having drawn the main line, the author veers into problems presented by totalitarians in Spain and Japan, the latter threatening British economic interests in China, observing Chamberlain was too slow to pursue US support. This highlights the book’s understating Britain’s position as the world’s hegemon, but a declining one – the Athenian problem. Pursuant to which is treatment of Britain’s economic position, compromised by balance of payments shortfall and skilled labor shortage: the US recession of 1937 helped the British position. Chamberlain’s foreign policy dictated rearmament, at a slow pace. The Liberals offered no real alternative to the Conservative prime minister, but Winston Churchill’s presence offered a ‘duel’ comparable to Fox-Pitt or Gladstone-Disraeli; oddly, the author says Chamberlain’s policy has been ‘unfairly’ portrayed by the victor.
16. MacMillan, Paris 1919 (10 Sep 2019)
World War II was caused not by the shortcomings of World War I’s Versailles peace treaties, but inconsistent enforcement by Western democracies and Hitler’s desire to conquer the Soviet Union. The agreement with Germany was less punitive than the Franco-German treaty of 1870, but sufficient to irritate Germany.
All of the victors thought Germany started the war. Because they were quickly demobilizing and also threatened by Soviet-inspired unrest in Eastern Europe and Berlin, where the Bolsheviks were old-fashioned Russian imperialists in socialist rhetoric, the peacemakers had to rush to terms but also to attend to deferred domestic issues. Allied goals were inchoate, the French keen for revenge and the US and UK wary of one another; the Americans under Wilson favored self-determination while the British were concerned to husband their empire and navy. Wilson, who saw himself as tribune of the people, left unresolved the way to adjudge competing nationalist claims for self-determination; he brought no Republicans to Rome and so couldn’t persuade the Senate to ratify the League of Nations. (The League was innovative, MacMillan says, and predictably trusting of experts while lacking a constituency.) Clemenceau won more than expected, preserving a postwar UK alliance, getting (in 1920) 52 percent of Germany’s eventual payment of $4.5 billion, and a 15-year occupation of the demilitarized Rhineland (having proposed a joint customs union). David Lloyd George decided only that he should decide, albeit reparations were handled adroitly.
In southern Europe, Yugoslav sentiment was strongest among Croats inside Austria-Hungary, who wished to avoid Germanization or Magyarization. The Serbians were minded for independence. Wilson glibly overlooked Balkan history.
In central Europe, deals were cut to superimpose self-determination on traditional geographies and peoples. In Poland and Czechoslovakia, new resentments were created. The Allies went easier on Austria than Hungary, which lost two thirds of its territory and population (leaving 3.5 million Magyars outside the rump country), paid heavy reparations, and lost access to its core markets. Since the UK and US didn’t want to break up Germany, they prevented a peaceful Anschluss with Catholic Bavaria to counterbalance a Protestant Prussia. Half of world Jewry was living in the Russian pale, modern Belarus, Ukraine, and eastern Poland although 2.75 million emigrated to the United States before 1914.
Versailles’ Sykes-Picot was old-fashioned imperialism. Wilson blocked a racial equality clause favored by Japan, which was hoping for an Asian Monroe doctrine. Venizelos is labeled the greatest Greek statesman since Pericles, but comes off second best versus Ataturk. Turkey had little to lose in resisting Paris because most of the country had been given away. Delays worked in its favor, because Allied forces were weakening. The failure of the Megali idea is treated as the launching point for narrating the author’s view of Versailles’ failures.
Article 231, the famous war guilt clause, also appears in treaties with Austria and Hungary, in order to justify reparations. However, Germany’s fate is compared to a Roman triumph. Yet Germany paid less than French reparations after 1870, and the author asserts its strategic position improved after the war because Poland buffered its eastern border with Russia, while its southern border featured small states instead of the Habsburg empire.
MacMillian, because of her construction, struggles to reconcile the master narrative with the country- or geographically specific chapters and analyses. Many of her early observations labor to relate the events of 1919 to the 21st century, going beyond obvious precedents to Whiggish views.