The last sentence of Raffael Scheck's interesting book reads in part, “it is a challenge for today's Germans to find a nuanced German identity that … does not let the twelve worst years of German history completely overshadow the other thousand years of German history” (p. 223). Ironically, the chronological parameters of Scheck's work highlight precisely what in retrospect are the most negative years of German history.
The author's reasons for concentrating on the years from 1871 to 1945 are partly pedagogic, and partly, I suspect, market-driven. Like most textbooks, this one is based upon lectures that Scheck used to teach a course in German history covering the years 1871 to 1945 at Colby and Bowdoin Colleges. In addition, while the author does not say so, it is a well-known if unproven truism that most American undergraduates are only interested in German history if it involves Bismarck, the Prussian military, and especially the Nazi era. I think this is an unfortunate chronological choice, but it is the task of a reviewer to comment upon the book the author has written, rather than discuss a work the reviewer wishes the author had written.
Scheck describes his work as one whose “primary focus is on political history” (p. xiv), but here he is rather too modest. The book also provides superb coverage of diplomatic and military history. On the other hand, readers who hope to find discussions of German cultural history, gender relations, and the now very popular politics of memory will be disappointed. The book contains very little on art, literature, or the mass media.
Methodologically, the author is heavily indebted to the Wehler/Kocka school of structuralism. He prefers to have groups, institutions, or structures rather than persons act as agents of history. The structuralism is modified by the presence of what might be called three Überpersons. Unlike most historic personages, Otto von Bismarck, Alfred von Tirpitz (perhaps not coincidentally Tirpitz was the subject of the author's dissertation and first book), and Adolf Hitler routinely act as personalized agents of history.
There are two quite original and very welcome features to Scheck's coverage of German history. One is the judicious and balanced discussion of various historiographic controversies that run through the narrative of German history. These include the outbreak of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles, the end of the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazis, and the origin and implementation of the Holocaust. The author also makes frequent allusions to parallel developments in the other European countries, thereby putting German history into its continental context.
Scheck's preference for structural causality does bring with it the problem that in a number of instances important people are ignored, or if they are introduced, they remain rather bloodless and schematic. In analyzing the Kulturkampf (pp. 39ff), for example, Scheck discusses Bismarck's role at some length, but there is no mention of Ludwig Windthorst, the chancellor's formidable parliamentary opponent. Similarly, the author attributes the founding of the Nazi Party (pp. 31–32) to some “railroad workers,” but it was really the initiative of one man, Anton Drexler, who in turn recruited some of his colleagues at the Munich repair shop of the Bavarian State Railway. Finally, to take one more example, Scheck ascribes the appointment of Joachim von Ribbentrop as foreign minister to the fact that he was “a Nazi” (p. 177). It would have helped to have known why Hitler chose this singularly incompetent Nazi. That omission is all the more remarkable, since Scheck does discuss the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935. It was Ribbentrop's part in negotiating this agreement that convinced Hitler that his new foreign minister was “a second Bismarck.”
While the author's discussion of various historiographic controversies in German history is welcome, I wish he had been a little more consistent in naming the protagonists of various positions. Scheck gives full credit to Thomas Nipperdey and Margaret Anderson (why not Dieter Groh?) for arguing that the Wilhelmine Empire was on its way toward becoming a more democratic society (p. 79), but when discussing and rejecting the thesis that Hitler started World War II to relieve the mounting domestic pressures in 1938/39, there is no mention of the principal proponent of that thesis, the late Tim Mason (pp. 181 and 185). Similarly, the author quotes and criticizes Daniel Goldhagen's thesis that during the Holocaust the Germans were “willing executioners,” but Goldhagen's name is not mentioned. Scheck also seems to feel that some controversies are settled when other scholars might disagree. The author states that by 1915 or so “Wilhelm II was hardly taken seriously anymore” (p. 80). There is no mention of the life-long work of John Röhl, who has tried to convince us of the opposite. Finally, to take one last example, Scheck does not discuss Jörg Friedrich's controversial book on the Allied bombings, although this work has become the focal point of the ongoing controversy about the Germans as victims in the debate over the politics of memory.
Perhaps because this work covers such a relatively short chronological time span, it is not entirely free of some historicisms. Bismarck's toying with a parliament of corporations (p. 42) hardly makes him a fascist. I also thought the treatment of the Weimar Republic was a little uneven. Scheck starts his analysis of Germany's first democracy with its demise and the rise of the Nazis, which is hardly how contemporaries would have experienced it (p. 111). In a similar vein, the author gives a lot more space to Bavaria's role as a gravedigger of German democracy than to Prussia's continuing support for political democracy during the Weimar years. The Prussian prime minister Otto Braun, the longest serving Land executive during the Weimar years, does not appear in the book until his government loses its parliamentary majority in April 1932.
Generally speaking, the book is free of serious factual errors, although there are a few problems that might be corrected in future editions. I don't really think the communists embraced Weimar culture (p. 143). They certainly welcomed the attacks on parliamentary democracy by many of the Weimar intellectuals, but once the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) had come under Stalin's control, the communists certainly did not endorse demands for artistic freedom and individual expression. Ernst Röhm was never a general (p. 163), and Francisco Franco was a Catholic authoritarian rather than a fascist (p. 178).
Stylistically, the book is characterized by smooth-flowing, quite accessible narrative. Unusual in a work of this sort, the author on occasion effectively weaves his own experiences and his family history into the narrative. I think subdivisions in the individual chapters would have helped the readability. So would shorter paragraphs. The author seems to have a distinct aversion to paragraph breaks. There are a number of occasions in which paragraphs run for two pages (pp. 15–16, 206–208, and 211–13), and in the otherwise judicious narrative bibliography the reader needs to go from page 229 to page 233 before encountering a paragraph break.
Overall, then, this is an interesting and generally balanced account of a crucial period in German history. The narrative is heavily—perhaps too heavily—weighted toward political history, but that was the author's stated intent.
Finally, I do have a major complaint that is directed not at the author, but at the publisher. My copy of the paperback edition began to fall apart after reading about a third of the book, and by the time I had finished the work, the $40.00 paperback was little more than a collection of loose pages.
