A History of Germany 1918 - 2020. Mary Fulbrook
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Название: A History of Germany 1918 - 2020

Автор: Mary Fulbrook

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Историческая литература

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isbn: 9781119574248

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СКАЧАТЬ Denker) was also one allegedly characterized by unique cultural patterns emphasizing docility, apoliticism, an exaggerated faith in bureaucracy, excessive militarism and so on.

      Clearly a brief sketch such as this inevitably bowdlerizes to a certain extent. Nor can justice be done to the full range of attempts to interpret the long sweep of German history. But underlying many such narratives there is a basic, persistent problem which is worth making explicit. To narrate the course of German history in terms of failures and distortions presupposes a ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ pattern of development. Sometimes the (often implicit) model is the development of liberal parliamentary democracy in Britain, or the experience of a ‘proper’ bourgeois revolution in France; sometimes there is no real country providing a model but rather a schematic view of ‘stages’ of historical development. Proponents of ‘distorted’ versions of German history may come from a variety of theoretical traditions, including both liberal and Marxist perspectives. What unites them is the tendency to explain whatever is seen as nasty about recent German history in terms of long-term ‘failures’ and ‘deviations’ from some supposedly ‘normal’ pattern of development.

      Where does this leave current thinking about twentieth-century German history? There are both broad debates about long-term patterns of continuity and discontinuity, as well as more closely focused arguments on specific issues to do with the collapse of Weimar democracy, the rise of the Nazis and, of course, the explanation of the ultimately inexplicable – the mass murder of over six million people on grounds of ‘race’ in the death camps and killing fields of war-torn Europe. There are also debates about not only the causation but also the historical consequences or longer-term impact of the Third Reich. From the 1960s there were, for example, discussions about whether the Nazis actually played an important role in putative processes of ‘modernization’ in twentieth-century Germany. With broader historiographical shifts – the ‘cultural turn’, transnational perspectives, heightened awareness of previously marginalized groups and identities – over recent decades new questions and approaches emerged.

      There is now, too, a final twist to the problem. Any overview of German history must now explain not only the relative stability – and apparent double solution to the German problem – produced by the division of Germany but also the dramatic historical transformation which occurred with the East German revolution in autumn 1989 and the unification of the two Germanies in October 1990. The years from 1945 to 1990 now form a clearly defined historical period. While there are particular debates about aspects of both West and East German history, scholars disagree about how, if at all, the two histories can (or on some views even should be) combined.1 To present a coherent account of longer-term trends which culminate in the unification of the two Germanies in October 1990 is to enter into new historiographical terrain. And in the early twenty-first century, with united Germany playing a powerful role in Europe, the Third Reich seems finally to be receding into history, displaced in significance by new transnational challenges, including the impact of economic crises, international terrorism, mass migration, environmental pollution, climate change and global pandemics.

      In seeking to explain patterns of stability and change, special attention has to be paid to Germany’s changing place in the international system; the roles, relationships and activities of different elite groups; the structure and functioning of the economy; the location and aims of dissenting groups; and what may loosely be called the patterns of political culture among different subordinate social groups. Clearly one cannot simply write an abstract formula of this sort, apply it to different historical periods, weigh up the equation and produce a neat outcome. History is not as straightforward or mechanical a process as that. But when considering the history of Germany since the end of the First World War, the formula just presented does appear to have remarkable explanatory power, as we shall see in more detail in the chapters which follow. Let me preview briefly some of the implications of the elements involved.

      The ‘land in the centre of Europe’ has been intimately affected by, as well as affecting, the international balance of power. Germany played a major role in causing the outbreak of the First World War, but the Treaty of Versailles, particularly in the ammunition it gave to revisionist elements in Germany, also played a role in the causation of the Second World War. However much СКАЧАТЬ