Why did Bismarck's new German State Degenerate into Hitler's Third Reich? What happened to Europes leading industrial nation - cultural heirs to Kant, Goethe, Durer and Bach? How did East and West Germany diverge after 1945?
In this unique and controversial study the author - Prussian aristocrat, writer, scholar, historian and patriot - fearlessly explores German social mores, political structures and national psyche over several centuries. V. Krockow draws some sobering and novel conclusions about the unfolding drama in general and the Holocaust in particular.
First published in 1990 to coincide with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German edition sold widely. This first translation now makes it available to English-speaking readers worldwide.
List of maps
Introduction by Professor Dr. Konrad Jarausch
Preface
PART I
WILHELMIAN PRELUDE 1890–1914
1. About peace and progress
2. A society without self-confidence
3. Ship without a rudder
PART II
THE GERMAN DRAMA, 1914–45
4. War
5. The November republic
6. The decision
7. Life in the Third Reich
8. The ultimate crime for the ultimate delusion
PART III
THE GERMANS SINCE 1945
9. The return of the citizen
10. A new start and fresh anxieties
11. An end, a beginning – the Germans 1989–90
Epilogue: Germany - a Drama of tragedy enacted on the European stage of reason
Translator’s postscript
Index of Names
Why did Bismarck's new German State Degenerate into Hitler's Third Reich? What happened to Europes leading industrial nation - cultural heirs to Kant, Goethe, Durer and Bach? How did East and West Germany diverge after 1945?
In this unique and controversial study the author - Prussian aristocrat, writer, scholar, historian and patriot - fearlessly explores German social mores, political structures and national psyche over several centuries. V. Krockow draws some sobering and novel conclusions about the unfolding drama in general and the Holocaust in particular.
First published in 1990 to coincide with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German edition sold widely. This first translation now makes it available to English-speaking readers worldwide.