Bread and Democracy in Germany
Bread and Democracy in Germany

Author: Alexander Gerschenkron

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780801495861

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A classic in its field, Bread and Democracy in Germany has been widely praised since its publication in 1943 for its account of German political and economic development. In his preface, Alexander Gerschenkron states: "The primary purpose of this study is to show, first, how, before 1914, the machinery of Junker protectionism is agriculture, coupled with the Junker philosophy... delayed the development of democratic institutions in Germany; and second, how the Junkers contrived to escape almost unscathed from the German revolution of 1918 and how this fact contributed to the constitutional weakness and subsequent disintegration of the Weimar Republic." Emphasizing the importance of the problem of German agriculture in its relation to democratic reconstruction, Gerschenkron asserts that "the political attitude of farmers in several European countries had a decisive influence on the fate of European democracy. Nowhere is this more true than in Germany. The German farmers bear their full share of responsibility for the advent of fascism in that country."

Red Banners, Books and Beer Mugs: The Mental World of German Social Democrats, 1863–1914
Red Banners, Books and Beer Mugs: The Mental World of German Social Democrats, 1863–1914

Author: Andrew G. Bonnell

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-10-26

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 9004300635

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The German Social Democratic Party was the world’s first million-strong political party and was the main force pushing for the democratisation of Imperial Germany before the First World War. This book examines the themes around which the party organized its mainly working-class membership, and analyses the experiences and outlook of rank-and-file party members as well as the party’s press and publications. Key themes include: the Lassalle cult and leadership, nationalism and internationalism, attitudes to work, the politics of subsistence, the effects of military service, reading and the diffusion of Marx’s ideas, cultural organisations, and socialism and republicanism under the Imperial German state. Before 1914, the party successfully simultaneously addressed workers’ everyday concerns while offering the prospect of a better future.

The German Right, 1860-1920
The German Right, 1860-1920

Author: James Retallack

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2006-12-15

Total Pages: 894

ISBN-13: 1442659181

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Before the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, Germany was undergoing convulsive socioeconomic and political change. With unification as a nation state under Bismarck in 1871, Germany experienced the advent of mass politics, based on the principle of one man, one vote. The dynamic, diverse political culture that emerged challenged the adaptability of the 'interlocking directorate of the Right.' To serve as a bulwark of the authoritarian state, the Right needed to exploit traditional sources of power while mobilizing new political recruits, but until Emperor Wilhelm II's abdication in 1918 these aims could not easily be reconciled. In The German Right, 1860-1920, James Retallack examines how the authoritarian imagination inspired the Right and how political pragmatism constrained it. He explores the Right's regional and ideological diversity, and refuses to privilege the 1890s as the tipping point when the traditional politics of notables gave way to mass politics. Retallack also challenges the assumption that, if Imperial Germany was modern, it could not also have been authoritarian. Written with clear, persuasive prose, this wide-ranging analysis draws together threads of reasoning from German and Anglo-American scholars over the past 30 years and points the way for future research into unexplored areas.

The German Predicament
The German Predicament

Author: Andrei S. Markovits

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1501732897

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What does the unification of Germany really mean? In their stimulating exploration of that question, Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich sketch diametrically different interpretations than are frequently offered by commentators. One is that Germany, well aware of the Holocaust, has been 'Europeanized' and is now prepared to serve as the capitalist and democratic locomotive that powers Europe. The other is that the proclivities behind Auschwitz have been suppressed rather than obliterated from the German psyche. Germany's liberal democracy was imposed by the allied victors, according to this view, and will one day dissolve, revealing the old expansionist tendencies to try to 'Germanize' all of Europe. Markovits and Reich argue that benign contemporary assessments of Germany's postwar democracy, combined with admiration for the country's economic achievements, contribute to German influence far greater than military might was able to achieve. Yet, at the same time, some Germans have internalized liberal and pacifist principles and now see their nation as powerless, simply a larger Switzerland. As a result, while the Germans have enormous influence and latitude, they have not taken responsibility for leadership. The prime reason for this gap beween ideology and structure, Markovits and Reich suggest, lies in the politics of collective memory.

The Betrayal
The Betrayal

Author: Kim Christian Priemel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-05-17

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 0192563742

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At the end of World War II the Allies faced a threefold challenge: how to punish perpetrators of appalling crimes for which the categories of 'genocide' and 'crimes against humanity' had to be coined; how to explain that these had been committed by Germany, of all nations; and how to reform Germans. The Allied answer to this conundrum was the application of historical reasoning to legal procedure. In the thirteen Nuremberg trials held between 1945 and 1949, and in corresponding cases elsewhere, a concerted effort was made to punish key perpetrators while at the same time providing a complex analysis of the Nazi state and German history. Building on a long debate about Germany's divergence from a presumed Western path of development, Allied prosecutors sketched a historical trajectory which had led Germany to betray the Western model. Historical reasoning both accounted for the moral breakdown of a 'civilised' nation and rendered plausible arguments that this had indeed been a collective failure rather than one of a small criminal clique. The prosecutors therefore carefully laid out how institutions such as private enterprise, academic science, the military, or bureaucracy, which looked ostensibly similar to their opposite numbers in the Allied nations, had been corrupted in Germany even before Hitler's rise to power. While the argument, depending on individual protagonists, subject matters, and contexts, met with uneven success in court, it offered a final twist which was of obvious appeal in the Cold War to come: if Germany had lost its way, it could still be brought back into the Western fold. The first comprehensive study of the Nuremberg trials, The Betrayal thus also explores how history underpins transitional trials as we encounter them in today's courtrooms from Arusha to The Hague.

The German Social Democratic Party, 1875-1933
The German Social Democratic Party, 1875-1933

Author: W. L. Guttsman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-26

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 1000007790

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Originally published in 1981, this book covers the development of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from its inception to the end of the Weimar republic. Within a historical framework it analyses the role and operation of the SPD in the changing social and political climate of Germany and describes the party’s internal struggles throughout the period. The party continually debated its aims and the means to achieve them. Conducted by people such as Kautsky, Bernsteina dn Rosa Luxemburg, with close links to Marx, Engels and other leaders of the international socialist movement, this debate within the party was one of the most fundamental socialist controversies, whose relevance remains today.

The Death of Democracy
The Death of Democracy

Author: Benjamin Carter Hett

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Published: 2018-04-03

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1250162513

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A riveting account of how the Nazi Party came to power and how the failures of the Weimar Republic and the shortsightedness of German politicians allowed it to happen. Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship. Benjamin Carter Hett is a leading scholar of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.

Politics in Hard Times
Politics in Hard Times

Author: Peter Alexis Gourevitch

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780801494369

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In Politics in Hard Times, Peter Gourevitch explores the common political factors that shape economic policy choices. He focuses on three periods of economic crisis--1873-1896, 1929-1949, and 1971 to the present--and compares policy choices made in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and the United States.

The Political Economy: Readings in the Politics and Economics of American Public Policy
The Political Economy: Readings in the Politics and Economics of American Public Policy

Author: Thomas Ferguson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-02-14

Total Pages: 505

ISBN-13: 1315495791

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The Political Economy is ideally suited as a supplementary text for courses in American government and politics, policy studies, business-government relations, and economic issues and policy making. It integrates selections from the very finest new and classical works of political and economic analysis, by distinguished scholars, into a comprehensive overview of the American political system.