It is often argued that the unification of Germany in 1871 was the inevitable result of the convergence of Prussian power and German nationalism. John Breuilly here shows that the true story was much more complex. For most of the nineteenth century Austria was the dominant power in the region. Prussian-led unification was highly unlikely up until the 1860s and even then was only possible because of the many other changes happening in Germany, Europe and the wider world.
In this survey of an important period in European history, John Breuilly examines the influences and events that resulted in the formation of the German nation state under Prussian dominance.
In this survey of an important period in European history, John Breuilly examines the influences and events that resulted in the formation of the German nation state under Prussian dominance.
Helmuth von Moltke's The Franco German War of 1870-1871 is a comprehensive history of one of the 19th century's most influential wars, and the one that helped lead to the establishment of the modern state of Germany. It is written by one of the most important participants in the war, because von Moltke was a field marshal for the Prussians and a Chief of the General Staff.
In this vivid fifty-year history of Germany from 1871-1918—which inspired events that forever changed the European continent—here is the story of the Second Reich from its violent beginnings and rise to power to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. Before 1871, Germany was not yet nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians, Bavarians, and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France—all without destroying itself in the process? In this unique study of five decades that changed the course of modern history, Katja Hoyer tells the story of the German Empire from its violent beginnings to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. This often startling narrative is a dramatic tale of national self-discovery, social upheaval, and realpolitik that ended, as it started, in blood and iron.
A history of the British Army’s experience at the Battle of the Somme in France during World War I. After an immense but useless bombardment, at 7:30 AM on July 1, 1916, the British Army went over the top and attacked the German trenches. It was the first day of the battle of the Somme, and on that day, the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, two for every yard of their front. With more than fifty times the daily losses at El Alamein and fifteen times the British casualties on D-day, July 1, 1916, was the blackest day in the history of the British Army. But, more than that, as Lloyd George recognized, it was a watershed in the history of the First World War. The Army that attacked on that day was the volunteer Army that had answered Kitchener’s call. It had gone into action confident of a decisive victory. But by sunset on the first day on the Somme, no one could any longer think of a war that might be won. Martin Middlebrook’s research has covered not just official and regimental histories and tours of the battlefields, but interviews with hundreds of survivors, both British and German. As to the action itself, he conveys the overall strategic view and the terrifying reality that it was for front-line soldiers. Praise for The First Day on the Somme “The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words.” —The Guardian (UK)
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism comprises thirty six essays by an international team of leading scholars, providing a global coverage of the history of nationalism in its different aspects - ideas, sentiments, and politics. Every chapter takes the form of an interpretative essay which, by a combination of thematic focus, comparison, and regional perspective, enables the reader to understand nationalism as a distinct and global historical subject. The book covers the emergence of nationalist ideas, sentiments, and cultural movements before the formation of a world of nation-states as well as nationalist politics before and after the era of the nation-state, with chapters covering Europe, the Middle East, North-East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Americas. Essays on everday national sentiment and race ideas in fascism are accompanied by chapters on nationalist movements opposed to existing nation-states, nationalism and international relations, and the role of external intervention into nationalist disputes within states. In addition, the book looks at the major challenges to nationalism: international socialism, religion, pan-nationalism, and globalization, before a final section considering how historians have approached the subject of nationalism. Taken separately, the chapters in this Handbook will deepen understanding of nationalism in particular times and places; taken together they will enable the reader to see nationalism as a distinct subject in modern world history.
The first major history of Germany in a generation, a work that presents a five-hundred-year narrative that challenges our traditional perceptions of Germany’s conflicted past. For nearly a century, historians have depicted Germany as a rabidly nationalist land, born in a sea of aggression. Not so, says Helmut Walser Smith, who, in this groundbreaking 500-year history—the first comprehensive volume to go well beyond World War II—challenges traditional perceptions of Germany’s conflicted past, revealing a nation far more thematically complicated than twentieth-century historians have imagined. Smith’s dramatic narrative begins with the earliest glimmers of a nation in the 1500s, when visionary mapmakers and adventuresome travelers struggled to delineate and define this embryonic nation. Contrary to widespread perception, the people who first described Germany were pacific in temperament, and the pernicious ideology of German nationalism would only enter into the nation’s history centuries later. Tracing the significant tension between the idea of the nation and the ideology of its nationalism, Smith shows a nation constantly reinventing itself and explains how radical nationalism ultimately turned Germany into a genocidal nation. Smith’s aim, then, is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of Germany: Is it essentially a bellicose nation that murdered over six million people? Or a pacific, twenty-first-century model of tolerant democracy? And was it inevitable that the land that produced Goethe and Schiller, Heinrich Heine and Käthe Kollwitz, would also carry out genocide on an unprecedented scale? Combining poignant prose with an historian’s rigor, Smith recreates the national euphoria that accompanied the beginning of World War I, followed by the existential despair caused by Germany’s shattering defeat. This psychic devastation would simultaneously produce both the modernist glories of the Bauhaus and the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. Nowhere is Smith’s mastery on greater display than in his chapter on the Holocaust, which looks at the killing not only through the tragedies of Western Europe but, significantly, also through the lens of the rural hamlets and ghettos of Poland and Eastern Europe, where more than 80% of all the Jews murdered originated. He thus broadens the extent of culpability well beyond the high echelons of Hitler’s circle all the way to the local level. Throughout its pages, Germany also examines the indispensable yet overlooked role played by German women throughout the nation’s history, highlighting great artists and revolutionaries, and the horrific, rarely acknowledged violence that war wrought on women. Richly illustrated, with original maps created by the author, Germany: A Nation in Its Time is a sweeping account that does nothing less than redefine our understanding of Germany for the twenty-first century.
It is often argued that the unification of Germany in 1871 was the inevitable result of the convergence of Prussian power and German nationalism. John Breuilly here shows that the true story was much more complex. For most of the nineteenth century Austria was the dominant power in the region. Prussian-led unification was highly unlikely up until the 1860s and even then was only possible because of the many other changes happening in Germany, Europe and the wider world.
This is a history of the Austro-Prussian-Italian War of 1866, which paved the way for German and Italian unification. It is based upon extensive new research in the state and military archives of Austria, Germany, and Italy. Geoffrey Wawro describes Prussia's successful invasion of Habsburg Venetia, and the wretched collapse of the Austrian army in July 1866. Although the book gives a thorough accounting of both the Prussian and Italian war efforts, it is most notable for the light it sheds on the Austrians. Through painstaking archival research, Wawro reconstructs the Austrian campaign, blow-by-blow, hour-by-hour. Blending military and social history, he describes the terror and panic that overtook Austria's regiments of the line in each clash with the Prussians. He reveals the unconscionable blundering of the Austrian commandant and his chief deputies who fumbled away key strategic advantages and ultimately lost a war - crucial to the fortunes of the Habsburg Monarchy - that most European pundits had predicted they would win.
