This article discusses the problem of why there was a constant demand for ennoblement in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Central Europe, even though those who aspired to it had little or no prospect of integration into the established feudal nobility. Nobility was first and foremost an ideological concept closely connected to power and rule. The Holy Roman emperors ennobled persons who exercised power precisely because, in the premodern social order, the exercise of power was a prerogative of the nobility. However, the newly ennobled had only their title in common with the old aristocratic families and rarely attained the other privileges enjoyed by these families. For this reason, the emperors’ practice of ennoblement gradually reshaped the nobility as a whole and simultaneously the ideological notion of nobility. Certainly, ennoblement still served a strategic purpose in the context of social advancement. Particularly for civil servants and military officers, it was the most effective means of preserving their newly acquired status for their descendants and possibly establishing their families in a new bureaucratic and military hereditary elite, which in some places coexisted with the old aristocracy. The central element of the new ideological concept was the notion of the nobility as a hereditary ruling class, both qualified for and entitled to the exercise of power on account of inherited superiority.

The nature of Catholicism in early modern Central Europe did not result solely from a conflict between elite reform endeavors and popular traditionalism. Instead, the Catholic population and influential elements within the German Imperial church (Reichskirche) shared a devotion to particularism, privilege, and local religious traditions. This convergence of popular and elite religious attitudes underscores the local character of German Catholicism and helps explain the failure of Tridentine universalism to capture the German church.

A history, both comprehensive and detailed, of the foreign contacts of the German Resistance does not yet exist. The subject is vast, and many sources are not yet accessible, notably those in the custody of intelligence agencies, and also those relating to contacts between the German Communist underground and foreign authorities or individuals. This paper will, firstly, consider some conditions and circumstances of foreign contacts sought and established by the German Resistance; secondly, survey some of those contacts; and, thirdly, attempt to draw some conclusions.

Of all the officers in the German High Command (OHL) during the First World War none played a more active political role than Colonel Max Bauer. Colonel Bauer's papers, which are preserved in the federal archives in Koblenz, contain numerous memoranda on a wide range of topics, which make it possible to present a coherent picture of his views. This paper will analyze Bauer's political thinking during the First World War, but it will not deal with the more complex questions of his political role and influence.

Given the Weimar Republic's collapse into dictatorship, its political historiography has stressed its many failures. To that pattern the Catholic Center Party, or Zentrum, which participated in all of the Republic's cabinets but one, has been no exception. Programmatically vague, the party was subject to bitter divisions between an authoritarian monarchist right and a vocal republican left. This trend was already obvious after the June 1920 Reichstag elections in which the party lost four million votes, mostly from the Catholic working class. Thereafter the Center remained unable to extend its appeal beyond a fixed, socially conservative base. Accordingly, the Center's record, culminating in the controversial chancellorship of Heinrich Brüning, has been presented as one replete with failure, if not desperation.

Ludwig Müller, former naval chaplain and confidant of Hitler, had managed in September 1933 to get himself elected bishop of the newly organized German Evangelical Church, which was intended to bring all the Evangelical churches under one head. His election had caused great controversy, and the conflict (Kirchenkampf) which soon developed led to the establishment of the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche) in opposition to the church government headed by Bishop Müller. This disorder in the church delayed Müller's formal installation, but it finally took place with great pomp on September 23, 1934, in the Berlin Cathedral, despite the deliberate absence of many churchmen as well as important political officials. Müller could not have been a particularly happy man on that day, although he had long sought this formal ecclesiastical blessing. He was definitely in hot water, and many sought his removal from office.

At the end of World War II, vast quantities of German documents had fallen into the hands of the Allies either during hostilities or in the immediately following weeks. Something will be said near the end of this report about the archives captured or seized by the Soviet Union; the emphasis here will be on those that came into the possession of the Western Allies. The United States and Great Britain made agreements for joint control and exploitation, of which the most important was the Bissell-Sinclair agreement named for the intelligence chiefs who signed it. The German naval, foreign office, and chancellery archives were to be physically located in England, while the military, Nazi Party, and related files were to come to the United States. Each of the two countries was to be represented at the site of the other's holdings, have access to the files, and play a role in decisions about their fate. The bulk of those German records that came to the United States were deposited in a section of a World War I torpedo factory in Alexandria, Virginia, which had been made into the temporary holding center for the World War II records of the American army and American theater commands. In accordance with the admonition to turn swords into plowshares, the building is now an artists' boutique.