Barry Jackisch presents the history of the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband) from the abdication of the Kaiser in 1918 to the banning of the League by the Nazis in 1939. Because the history and role of the League during this period have been little studied and its importance largely discounted, this book represents an important contribution to our understanding of right-wing politics in Germany.

The slim volume moves chronologically. One major focus is on the immediate postwar period, with the first chapter looking at the Pan-German League from the 1918 Revolution through the Kapp Putsch of 1920. The second describes early divisions within the völkisch Right, with a focus on the poor relations between the League and its president, Heinrich Class, with both Reinhold Wulle and Erich Ludendorff. The third chapter examines early contacts between the League and Adolf Hitler through 1924. The emphasis is on the divisive nature of right-wing politics and the role of the League in both exacerbating and attempting to overcome them. The second major focus of the book is on the efforts of the League to manipulate the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP) and to drive it in a more radical, uncompromising direction. These are the subjects of chapters four and five. To this end, Class and the League conspired to increase the influence of Alfred Hugenberg within the DNVP, and ultimately, to elevate him to party leadership. This was arguably the League's most visible success, though of course it ultimately hastened the decline of the DNVP and the splintering of conservative forces in the Weimar Republic. The final chapter looks further at the splintering of the conservative camp, taking the story from 1929 to the banning of the League in 1939.

Jackisch argues that the Pan-German League was more important after 1918 than previously thought. Indeed, the League, though small and anchored in the educated bourgeoisie, is shown here to be one of the major agents radicalizing the right wing in Germany. In particular, Jackisch states that the League's support for Alfred Hugenberg and its efforts to radicalize the DNVP “helped to undermine the development of a moderate, state-supporting, mass-based conservative party” (187), and thus led to the success of the Nazi Party. Therefore, according to Jackisch, the main contribution of the Pan-Germans to the rise of Nazism lay less in their function as an ideological precursor of Nazism than in the role they played in accentuating divisions within conservatives. This left a power vacuum that the Nazis then filled.

Though it certainly contains much truth, the problem with this argument is that the DNVP, and particularly its rank-and-file, did not need any help from the Pan-German League to move in a radical direction and reject the republic as well as the comparative moderation of some DNVP leaders. Jackisch certainly confirms that the problem of right-wing unity was one of the major issues in the Weimar Republic—but also that it was a fata morgana. The question is thus not whether the failure of the Right to unite in Germany opened the way for the NSDAP to come to power: the real question is how the Pan-German League could continue to be influential at all after 1918. Jackisch does not really explain this, nor does he explain how not only the zealots of the Pan-German League, but also millions of other Germans could be so blind to political realities.

The Pan-German League did not create right-wing disunity or extreme antisemitic radicalism as much as it sought to exploit and manipulate them in the name of the old elites that largely made up the League. It was always numerically small and declined in size even more during the Weimar era. Its politics were also increasingly perceived as old-fashioned and remained rooted in an elitist, monarchist view of society, which greatly limited its impact. And yet, as Jackisch shows, it did have influence.

Jackisch's account of the Pan-German League is largely from the inside out and is strongest when it illustrates internal disputes and concerns. As a result, it does not provide much information about context, which might explain how a tiny and often bumbling group of radical notables could be as influential as he describes. One wishes for more information about the League's ties to business, agrarian, and other pressure groups and parties beyond the DNVP and the Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei (DVFP), as well as about its activities in Austria. In his emphasis on the DNVP and the evaporation of a moderate conservative alternative, Jackisch is forced to downplay the crucial importance of the founding of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund by the League in early 1919. Despite its short life, no other group was as important in the political and racist radicalization of conservative activists in the early years of the republic as the Schutz- und Trutzbund.

Despite these limits, this book does add to our understanding of conservative politics in the Weimar Republic. One major contribution is its emphasis on the importance of northern German conservative circles in the early days of the Weimar Republic. They were often completely overlooked in earlier historiography (not least because sources on the rightist groups in Bavaria were so plentiful and accessible), and Jackisch thus helps to correct a major distortion in our picture of Weimar politics. The book is also a step forward in that it shows the continued importance of an older generation of (Wilhelmine) notables and politicians in the radicalization of Weimar-era politics. Most studies stress the decisive role in radical politics of the “front generation” and even the immediate postwar “onlooker” generation. Jackisch convincingly shows, however, that the grandees and notables of the Pan-German League continued to spread their poison even during the years of the Weimar Republic.