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A Brief History of Germany

por Jason P. Coy

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The story of Germany, a key player in global diplomatic and economic affairs, is crucial to our understanding of global history and the contemporary world. Covering more than 2,000 years of history, A Brief History of Germany provides a concise account of the events, people, and special customs and traditions that have shaped Germany from ancient times to the present.… (mais)
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Brief notes on German history:

Geography/pre-history:
That Germany has no significant natural boundaries/barriers probably explains a lot about its shifting borders over the centuries.
German prehistory is probably much better studied than that of many other countries, like Afghanistan, which I’m also reading about, Germany being so rich. This is a nice German gift to the world, prehistory being so international.
Germany a little colder/more northern than I realized; the same distance to the pole as, if warmer than, southern Canada. It’s easier to think of the USA as being ‘just like Northern Europe’, but NJ is more like Southern Europe in its distance to the poles.

Barbarian Germany:
It’s probably influential, on some level, that “France” and “Germany” (pre-France, pre-Germany), were both once part of the same post-Roman north Europe kingdom, and also that it was later divided into a “France”, a “Germany”, and a Lorraine in-between, giving rise to the age-old territory dispute.

Medieval Germany:
I hadn’t realized how nastily they investiture (appointment of bishops) crisis was fought out—nasty nominalism at its finest! The Church didn’t escape the world by acquiring lands, and the kings were out to control, not protect, the church, and used faith mostly cynically…. It is not surprising that Victorian mythology of whatever hue is fantastical, but the very mud itself does have some power to shock.
Re: Black Death—We probably do not know what most of us have been spared, re: our own pandemic, COVID-19, as per the breakdown of normal and orderly life, and also obviously the sheer bloody body count.

Reformation Germany: I’ve read a little Luther; he had a mouth like a sewer and has a way of coming across like a conspiracy theorist—the Pope is an alien! Aliens control the government!—but I think if you walked a mile in his shoes and familiarize yourself with his story’s historical backstory, you probably have to admit that he did a lot of good. You confidently dismiss his conspiracy theories, until the little green men whisk you away and nobody ever hears from you again. ^^
…. *laughs* Corrupt priests are funny.
The good thing about Luther is, that without him, without some spiritual competition, the Church can say any ridiculous thing, and as long as no one knows what it is, because it’s in Latin…. Whoops! Lols.
…. It was like the First German Revolution!
Dude, it was cray. ^^

Confessional Germany/30 Yrs War: The Wars of Religion/30 Yrs War was basically the main reason for the philosophical Enlightenment movement among the upper classes and governmental secularization in the coming years and centuries. Germany got burned to a crisp, and it was embarrassing. Of course, the war was obviously about nominalism and therefore politics, so it’s good not to be too naive about the whole thing. (Shocked, shocked!) It wasn’t a good idea necessarily to adopt a different religion than your neighbors, but it also wasn’t always such a good idea to be too much better at your job than your boss was at his, (kings assassinating their generals). Still, whole cities and regions got eaten up and spit out again, and nominalist religion/the religion of politics was a major factor. A lot of people didn’t want it to happen again, naturally enough.

Absolutism/Enlightenment: The Nazis were 20th century National Socialists, not just militarists, but Prussia really was a problematic state (“barracks-state”) in Europe. Prussia was the Little Tyrant, and Russia was the Great Tyrant. But for Prussia, it all started with a guy trying to steal a woman’s lands and getting her back in the kitchen!
The barracks-state aside, however, it was also the time of a sort of birth of reason (drama-time!). Not everything the skeptics said was true, of course, but given what went before—burning Germany to a crisp—it was probably mostly a good thing, that may have been a necessary palate cleanse, that enabled honorable people to be allowed without lying, either to believe or disbelieve, and therefore found a healthier religious state. It may have even been a sort of embryo of diversity, even if that ended up being a long time in coming.

Napoleon/1848:
Napoleon: Before 1789, armies were small, professional bodies and control was elite. During 1789-1815, armies relied on mass conscription and power became democratized; cf Aristotle, “Politics”. I’m just not sure it’s worth it. Although industrialization is nice, assuming we don’t burn the planet to a crisp, I’m not really inclined to fight for political power. I don’t make decisions, and yet I have a life. Why fight and die?…. Although I will allow, I suppose, that it makes some difference what the deal is. Fighting and dying to protect someone like Mr Woodhouse from something like the UK’s 1832 reform seems frankly pretty stupid. On the other hand, the farther away the leprechaun prince of Paris, skilled mostly in Smashes, and Grabs—I mean, send the fucker on a vacation, right. All expenses paid, no return ticket necessary or available. What good is he? “I, the leprechaun prince of Paris, vow to smash the old order, and plunder the new order, and replace everything with Shooty-Guy, other cronies and minions, like my brothers!, and uh, me, because I…. Well, I’m the semi-mythical version of Slim Shady, and I’m gonna kill you.” But what talent does your brother have? What are you good at? “Grabbing?…. Shooting, like at geese?”
1848: I’m not sure that I would risk life and limb against the royal cavalry in 1848, but seeing liberal Germany punished by physical violence for daring to try to exist would make me lose all respect for the state.

Unification & Empire:
The future of the world and how people live—and how people are made good—is not really made by a perishable empire, an empire made by hands and by guns—that was the great mistake of 1864-1871–but by something less czarish, something agreed-upon…. and not because of lie and insult. Bismarck may not be Hitler, but he is the very German Napoleon, though the French one they did not like.
Like Lenin Bismarck did his best work when he realized that politically he was full of shit.

Great War & Weimar:
Wilhelm II: “mad, mad, mad as March hares” (not what you tell a Victorian Englishman lol). The world is an enemy land; let’s fight!
German Culture, 1890-1914: A language barrier can be a terrible thing, as Wilhelmine Germany was just as learned as Victorian England. Though of course it was still rife with inequality: Jews (assimilate or else), people in the African empire (hot dog, the white boys are takin’ over da woirld!), and even women (feminist agitation did begin, but none of the biggest-name cultural leaders were women). Socialism did exist to combat inequality, but given the choice in 1914 the nominal socialists chose nationalist war.
1914-18: With Bismarck, Germany had a rational imperialist, if you like a bastard with brains. In 1914 they had not even this. The Germans had good technology and tactics, and usually good nerve, you know, but they just didn’t know how to stop gambling when they had broken even again. The whole world was against them, as irrationally as the British ruled the world of 1914. There was no way they could crush every great power that existed, and for what? Germany in 1914 was not some oppressed India but the flower of Europe. What else did they need? They needed to stop gambling when they’d broken even again. “But I wasted so much time getting to this place; I need total victory or I’m a loser.” Madness. Of course, the German rulers weren’t so pure that getting kicked on their ass was the worst thing, but by the end of 1914-45, all Europe would be leveled and many people who weren’t German at all would be lost.
The German Revolution of 1918: You forget that the Kaiser never had the power to admit he lost; he lost power. And the Allies didn’t make Germany a republic, the commoners did.
Weimar: Hindenburg may not have been a straight-out Nazi, but I still think that the Germans shouldn’t have chosen this WWI loser who helped destroy the country, which had once been great, in this butcher’s fiasco, was not a good move. You’ve gotta move on. Gotta get to the next lesson.

Nazism/WWII:
It is kinda crazy that the Nazis killed 6,000,000 Jews, even though only 500,000 Jews lived in Germany before the war, because of all the other countries they killed Jews in.
“Megalomania”: that’s the thing about people like Hitler, if they’re on your side, they make you feel good, but in a sick way. (Greatness-mania, cf manic-depressive). Cf Jung, “the Nazi psychosis”, or Hitler’s break from reality.
It’s amazing that Stalin could crush the Jew Trotsky and Hitler could brand Stalin’s system Jewish Bolshevism. It’s like a bidding war to see who hates Jews more. (Hitler won, of course.)
Anne Frank couldn’t have had an easy death—ill in a sick land.

Division/Reunification:

Special note on Nazi/fascist and general German history—And then one day the Germans woke up and found that they were no longer the center of the world: just a frontier-land in the Cold War, and no longer a renegade civilization. “I have passed the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel” (Tolkien). Just like before Bismarck Germany was just part of medieval society, after Hitler Germany became just part of modern society. They never became as interesting again as they were when they were evil. Without Hitler, German history—general German history—is a relatively small kettle of fish, but that’s not such a bad thing. It is what it is.
East/West Germany: Of course there were two Germany’s, and the German experience as Cold War frontier-land was at times harrowing. West Germany wasn’t perfect, notably on the local/social level, although at the federal level it was normal, and from the 60s more lasting change happened. East Germany was a prison, and eastern Germany is still less prosperous today, although the Ruhr/Rhine region was always more productive; but the quasi-Stalinist state was new. It’s eventually happy though, because in the 90s change came for East Germany as well…. Gorbachev was such a good guy.

Contemporary Germany:
You know that the Germans have hit their stride when their history is bookish and boring; Hegel and Kant are in a deadlock at the polls, so they’re going to rule together in a grand coalition.

Other thoughts: I like how he paints a little scene at the beginning of each chapter with maybe two or three paragraphs, of the most dramatic thing maybe, and then on to the main event. It’s probably a feature of this line of brief histories by Checkmark Books, but I still love it.
  goosecap | Jun 5, 2022 |
A concise and informative narration of Germany, its people, culture, and events that shaped what it is today. Two things stood out to me in the story of Germany. One being how short comparatively its history as a sovereign nation; as it functioned for such a long time as a loosely and changing matrix of states and interests. Second that it was a battleground for centuries, modeling human nature and the seeming lust for battle. For the past 75 years it has remained at peace; certainly a milestone and hopefully a lasting lesson from the ruins of The Third Reich. ( )
  knightlight777 | Jun 2, 2018 |
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The story of Germany, a key player in global diplomatic and economic affairs, is crucial to our understanding of global history and the contemporary world. Covering more than 2,000 years of history, A Brief History of Germany provides a concise account of the events, people, and special customs and traditions that have shaped Germany from ancient times to the present.

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