Three American Studies of German Socialism

Extract

American historians dealing with modern Germany have been preoccupied with the problem of why that country failed to achieve an effectively functioning democratic structure which could resist the onslaught of Nazism. Gordon Craig, in The Politics of the Prussian Army, has sought the explanation in the uncontrolled power and anti-democratic outlook of the Junker-dominated General Staff. Leonard Krieger's The German Idea of Freedom analyzes the divorce in German liberalism between the ideals of liberty and self-government, which led to its emasculating compromise with the Bismarckian state.