When I was a boy, regularly my parents invited family to their homes to have a drink (and a smoke, lots of smoke, although they themselves were non-smokers). Several times the partying was interrupted by some of my uncles—none of whom had been through much during the war—who started fulminating against “these damned Germans.” And every time—at least that is how I remember it—my father quietly interrupted and said: “Those damned Nazis. Not those damned Germans.” Contrary to my uncles, my father had been in a camp—not a concentration camp but a punishment camp for escaping twice the labor camp he had been taken to after being dragged from the street and thrown into a van. He probably wouldn't have survived if not a German resistance group had managed to give the inmates some extra food every now and then. He stayed in touch with some of them for the rest of his life.

This is just an example of how tricky it is to talk about “Germany” as an undivided entity, especially when hinting at the time of 1933–1945, and how tricky it is to talk about a Sonderweg, in which authoritarian, antisemitic, and militaristic Germany as some kind of automaton in a straight line marched toward the Machtsübernahme, if only because authoritarianism, antisemitism, and militarism were (and are) not restricted to our Eastern neighbors. Rightfully, therefore, Patrick Dassen points out that when talking about continuity and discontinuity—the main theme of this book—it must be clear which Germany we are talking about, since the right-wing, conservative, racist, militaristic Germany is but one of many Germanys. The continuity of Friedrich II's Prussia to the Third Reich, a continuity already to be questioned thoroughly, stands apart from the continuity of social-democratic Germany, only interrupted by 1933–1945, but making the Federal Republic of Germany possible.

Dassen's article on ruptures and continuities in post-1800 Germany is but one of many splendid articles in a book called Nederlandse Historici over Duitsland (Dutch Historians on Germany); a bit of a misleading title because not all contributors are Dutch or historians. It is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on German-Dutch relationships. One article, for instance, by Friso Wielenga, analyzes the way the Dutch thought about the Germans in the second half of the twentieth century. In short: not as negative as often thought, including by my uncles, and if negative, not just caused by stolen bikes but also by the simple fact that Germany is bigger and richer, and because in the end the Germans always win. Another one, by Afke Berger and Ismee Tames, is on Jews fleeing from Germany to the Netherlands in the nineteen thirties. In it is stressed that “Jews in the Netherlands in the nineteen thirties” should—again—not be seen as an undivided entity but as a diverse group, every part, not to say every individual, having its own experiences, memories, testimonies. German refugees were much more alert to what could, or better, would happen in case of a German-Nazi occupation, and they were already familiar with the concept of fleeing. Action, resistance, hiding: these were more on their mind and at an earlier stage than in the minds of those already living here. Relatively speaking, more of the new arrivals survived.

The second part concerns itself with Germany and then especially with the question of the obvious ruptures or hallmarks of continuity, such as 1848, 1870, 1918, 1933, 1945, 1989, all of which were indeed ruptures or stepping stones. Was the failed revolution of 1848 a rupture, because if it had succeeded, Germany's future would have been an entirely different one? Was it a sign of continuity because a left-wing uprising was doomed to fail in Germany, as the Spartacist uprising in 1919 was? Or was it a sign of continuity nevertheless, because the ideas of the 1848 revolution, although nipped in the bud, clearly influenced the Weimar Republic, which in turn paved the way for post-1945 democracy, at least as it appeared in West Germany, and not the GDR. And speaking of the GDR: its anti-fascism was a continuity of communist resistance, but its authoritarianism a continuity of Nazism, at least in the eyes of conservative democrats in the Bundesrepublik, who in their turn represented the legacy of Adolf Hitler in the eyes of East Germany. In communist eyes, meanwhile, the GDR was the only German state really steering away from the Sonderweg.

All these ruptures and continuities were diagnosed in hindsight (and not free from ideology, as will be clear by now). Therefore, it is—as far as I'm concerned (and contrary to Ton Nijhuis, writing in a great article on the Zeitenwende resulting from the Ampel-Koalition of former prime minister Olaf Scholz)—too soon to decide if the new reign of Friedrich Merz, if the end of the Schuldenbremse, if the return to militarism, really means that Germany has said goodbye to “all the certainties which had given it so much stability and prosperity after World War II” and that now a “real seizure, and one that is not self-chosen” (p. 207) must be “welcomed.” Maybe my uncles would agree because of the rise of the AfD. Nonetheless, on account of the protests against the Right's rise in Germany, which has been far more outspoken and massive than any against the rightist FvD or PVV in the Netherlands, my father would probably disagree.