History – 270 pages – my copy (paperback; 2007) borrowed from University of Plymouth library
- 4 nods out of 5 -
Written during the end of the bloody and shattering Second World War, A.J.P. Taylor’s The Course of German History is a polemical condemnation of the German nation. Condemnation of its militaristic need to seize land and expand; condemnation of its leaders; and condemnation of its very own people. Hitler, Taylor controversially argues, is a natural progression from Bismarck in the 1800s.The falling bombs and advance of the Soviet army into Nazi Germany is almost predestined; as Taylor states eloquently in the book’s final sentence:
‘The “many great nations”, whom Bismarck had dismissed with scorn, now sat in the seats of Frederick the Great, of Hitler, and of Bismarck himself. German history had run its course.’
Such a viewpoint was reconfirmed in the first paragraph of the preface from 1961:
‘…it shows that it was no more a mistake for the German people to end up with Hitler than it is an accident when a river flows into the sea, though the process is, I daresay, unpleasant for the fresh water.’
Much of Taylor’s work has now been discredited. But the author excels in stirring up a debate, on adding new interpretations, and entertaining his readership. The writing style is lively and engaging; Taylor truly has the novelist’s touch for drama. For example, read his description on the murder of the socialist leaders in 1919:
‘…the “Free Corps”, organisations of out-of-work officers, who would fight against anyone – at first against the Spartacists and Independents, later against any democratic movement, true condottieri, without any principle or belief other than that of the bullet in the back. These gentlemen, deprived of the pleasures of foreign domination, asked nothing better than to slaughter German workers and liberals; and it was officers of the Guards who murdered Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg brutally and without excuse, and also without protest from the Social Democratic government. The Sparticists were broken; but broken too was the life of the German republic.’
Taylor takes the read from the end of the 1700s, through Bonapartist Germany, the rise of Prussia and the forging of the Second Reich, of the burning defeat in the First World War and the uncertainty that came from the Weimar years.
Typical of Taylor, he has divided the past two centuries into emphasised dates (such as chapter 10 the rule of the German Army, 1916-19); whilst the reoccurring divide is that of the “two Germanies”: the past of princes and paupers; of Hohenzollern Prussia and Habsburg Austria; of the Catholic south and the Protestant north. It is almost fitting – in a somewhat morbid sense – that at the book’s close the two Germanies theme continues with the split between West and East.
But had German history run its course in 1945? No, of course not. The river would keep flowing, through the pain and suffering of the Cold War to a reunion once more in 1990. The united Germany is now a pillar of the European Union, a potential force of good in the coming uncertainty of the twenty-first century. Such a reunion was beyond Taylor’s knowledge and remit; but the historian is never positive about Germany’s future, being more in the camp of dividing and weakening this colossus rather than endure the pain of a potential World War Three.
Buy it here and pick your side of the argument!:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Course-German-History-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415254051
Read more about Taylor here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._P._Taylor
