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The Germans by Gordon A. Craig
They have given mankind triumphs in science, literature, philosophy, music, and art. They have also produced Hitler and the Holocaust. They are romantic and conservative, idealistic and practical, proud and insecure, ruthless and good-natured. They are, in short, the Germans.
Gordon A. Craig, one of the world's premier authorities on Germany, comes to grip in this definitive history with the complex paradoxes at the many contemporary institutions in German history and closely examines such topics as religion, money, Germans and Jews, women, professors and students, romantics, literature and society, soldiers, Berlin, and the German language. In his new Afterword, Professor Craig discusses the events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two Germanies into a new democratic republic. In this classic work, now thoroughly updated, Gordon A. Craig offers invaluable insights into a people and a nation that have played a pivotal role in world affairs for over a century.
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First published January 1, 1982
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About the author
Gordon A. Craig
38 books18 followersBorn in Glasgow, Gordon Craig emigrated with his family in 1925, initially to Toronto, Canada, and then to Jersey City, New Jersey. Initially interested in studying the law, he switched to history after hearing the historian Walter "Buzzer" Hall lecture at Princeton University. In 1935, Craig visited and lived for several months in Germany, to research a thesis he was writing on the downfall of the Weimar Republic. This trip marked the beginning of lifelong interest with all things German. Craig did not enjoy the atmosphere of Nazi Germany, and throughout his life, he sought to find the answer to the question of how a people who, in his opinion, had made a disproportionately large contribution to Western civilization, allowed themselves to become entangled in what Craig saw as the corrupting embrace of Nazism.
Of Adolf Hitler, Craig once wrote,
"Adolf Hitler was sui generis, a force without a real historical past... dedicated to the acquisition of power for his own gratification and to the destruction of a people whose existence was an offense to him and whose annihilation would be his crowning triumph. Both the grandiose barbarism of his political vision and the moral emptiness of his character make it impossible to compare him in any meaningful way with any other German leader. He stands alone"
Craig graduated in history from Princeton University, was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1936 to 1938, and served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a captain and in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. In 1941, he co-edited with Edward Mead Earle and Felix Gilbert, on behalf of the American War Department, the book Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought From Machiavelli to Hitler, which was intended to serve as a guide to strategic thinking for military leaders during the war.
After 1945, Craig worked as a consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the State Department, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Historical Division of the U.S. Marine Corps. He was a professor at Princeton University from 1950–61 and at Stanford University from 1961-79. In 1956-1957, he taught at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. In addition, he often held visiting professorships at the Free University of Berlin; in 1967, Craig was the only professor there to sign a petition asking for an investigation into charges of police brutality towards protesting students. Craig was chair of the history department at Stanford in 1972-1975 and 1978-1979. Between 1975-1985, he served as the vice-president of the Comité International des Sciences Historiques. In 1979, he became an emeritus professor and was awarded the title J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Humanities.
During his time at Stanford, Craig was considered to be a popular and innovative teacher who improved both undergraduate and graduate teaching, while remaining well liked by the students. After his retirement, he worked as a book reviewer for the New York Review of Books. Some of his reviews attracted controversy, most notably in April 1996, when he praised Daniel Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners and later in September of the same year when he argued that David Irving's work was valuable because of what Craig saw as Irving's devil's advocate role. Craig argued that Irving was usually wrong, but that by promoting what Craig saw as a twisted and wrongheaded view of history with a great deal of élan, Irving forced other historians to fruitfully examine their beliefs about what is known about the Third Reich.
Craig was formerly President of the American Historical Association. In 1953, together with his friend Felix Gilbert, he edited a prosopography of inter-war diplomats entitled The Diplomats, an important source for diplomatic history in the interwar period. He followed this book with studies on the Prussian Army, the Battle of Königgrätz and many aspects of European and Ger
Of Adolf Hitler, Craig once wrote,
"Adolf Hitler was sui generis, a force without a real historical past... dedicated to the acquisition of power for his own gratification and to the destruction of a people whose existence was an offense to him and whose annihilation would be his crowning triumph. Both the grandiose barbarism of his political vision and the moral emptiness of his character make it impossible to compare him in any meaningful way with any other German leader. He stands alone"
Craig graduated in history from Princeton University, was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1936 to 1938, and served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a captain and in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. In 1941, he co-edited with Edward Mead Earle and Felix Gilbert, on behalf of the American War Department, the book Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought From Machiavelli to Hitler, which was intended to serve as a guide to strategic thinking for military leaders during the war.
After 1945, Craig worked as a consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the State Department, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Historical Division of the U.S. Marine Corps. He was a professor at Princeton University from 1950–61 and at Stanford University from 1961-79. In 1956-1957, he taught at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. In addition, he often held visiting professorships at the Free University of Berlin; in 1967, Craig was the only professor there to sign a petition asking for an investigation into charges of police brutality towards protesting students. Craig was chair of the history department at Stanford in 1972-1975 and 1978-1979. Between 1975-1985, he served as the vice-president of the Comité International des Sciences Historiques. In 1979, he became an emeritus professor and was awarded the title J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Humanities.
During his time at Stanford, Craig was considered to be a popular and innovative teacher who improved both undergraduate and graduate teaching, while remaining well liked by the students. After his retirement, he worked as a book reviewer for the New York Review of Books. Some of his reviews attracted controversy, most notably in April 1996, when he praised Daniel Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners and later in September of the same year when he argued that David Irving's work was valuable because of what Craig saw as Irving's devil's advocate role. Craig argued that Irving was usually wrong, but that by promoting what Craig saw as a twisted and wrongheaded view of history with a great deal of élan, Irving forced other historians to fruitfully examine their beliefs about what is known about the Third Reich.
Craig was formerly President of the American Historical Association. In 1953, together with his friend Felix Gilbert, he edited a prosopography of inter-war diplomats entitled The Diplomats, an important source for diplomatic history in the interwar period. He followed this book with studies on the Prussian Army, the Battle of Königgrätz and many aspects of European and Ger
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 22, 2018
This book probably deserves 5 stars. However, I had to give up after laboring half-ways into it because of the small print and--worse--the lines being so close together. My eyes just could not take it any longer.
I found this book highly interesting, but I certainly would not recommend it to anyone who does not have excellent eyesight.
I found this book highly interesting, but I certainly would not recommend it to anyone who does not have excellent eyesight.
November 9, 2019
German surnames always seem to have some meaning to them – often, a meaning that refers to a family’s occupation. For example, my last name, in German, means "one who makes spools for the storage of yarn" – a descriptor that gives me a clue as to what some distant artisan ancestor of mine probably did for a living a long time ago. I am a German American who has traveled throughout Germany, and I have always been impressed by the kindness, the hospitality, and the friendliness of the German people. And yet, when I visited Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp in central Germany where Anne Frank died, I could not help reflecting that people with linguistic and cultural ties to the nice people I had been meeting in Frankfurt and Fulda had launched history's most hideous war and murdered six million innocent people. Gordon Craig’s The Germans makes the most of the opportunity to engage the paradoxes of modern German society.
Craig, a Scottish-born American, conducted research for one of his early historical works in Germany in 1935, by which time the Nazi regime had already seized power. During the Second World War, he served as a U.S. Marine Corps officer, and in the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA). After the war, as a professor of history, he frequently taught at the Free University of Berlin, at a time when Berlin was quite literally walled off from the rest of the West. All of this experience left Craig admirably well-suited to spend part of his life as a scholar studying the German people.
For any student of German history, The Germans is a real find. A comprehensive study of the German people and their history, The Germans addresses a wide array of topics: politics, religion, economics, anti-Semitism (a prejudice that revealed itself in German society long before Hitler's rise to power), gender, academia, the military, and literature, among others.
As the edition I have before me was published in 1982, I found Craig’s The Germans particularly strong in its examination of Cold War divisions. On one side of the Innerdeutsche Grenze, the fortified Inner German Border, there was West Germany -- Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the Federal Republic of Germany, a democracy with a federal structure similar to that of the United States of America. On the other side was East Germany, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. It was called the German Democratic Republic – even though, as many a wag pointed out, it was not democratic, was not a republic, and was not even particularly German (with the real decision-making power emanating from Soviet Russia).
The differences between the Bundesrepublik and the D.D.R. come through over and over again in Craig’s The Germans. The chapter on religion, for example, minces no words in showing how the East German regime sought to discourage religious practice: “[E]very effort was made to break the independence and undermine the faith of these congregations, and official pressure and individual harassment at the local level, often extending to the exclusion of young people who were churchgoers from privileges open to other citizens, and even from the Abitur (school-leaving examination) and the right to university study”. Nonetheless, “The nonconformists…were numerous, and they were stubborn enough to withstand and eventually to wear down the persecution” (p. 102). It was encouraging to learn that, at least in this instance, the wish of ordinary East Germans to live as they wished prevailed, to some extent, against the all-powerful D.D.R. state apparatus and its omnipresent Stasi secret police.
Another intriguing part of The Germans comes when Craig analyzes the role of Romanticism in German life. We have all heard about the cultural achievements of German Romanticism in areas like art, music, and literature; but what interests Craig is something much more grim: the consequences when Romanticism became tangled up in an aggressive form of German nationalism. In 1930, Craig records, as Hitler began to move closer and closer toward seizing power in Germany, the liberal German writer Thomas Mann “sought to remind the German middle class of the danger of escapism and unstructured Sehnsucht [nostalgia]”. But voices of reason like Mann’s went unheard; and “The beneficiary of [the political Romantics’] work was Adolf Hitler, who showed no gratitude for their services and whose Third Reich did not in the slightest way resemble that of their dreams.” Even in the post-World War II years, “characteristics of the older Romanticism became evident in the proliferation of anarchist groups in the universities and, in the 1970’s, in the growth of terrorism and the activities of the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Army Faction” (pp. 209-10).
In contemporary Germany, a far-right populist-nationalist party called Alternative für Deutschland (“Alternative for Germany”) has gained increasing power, becoming the country’s third-largest political party as of 2017; and one wonders, with concern, if political Romanticism in Germany has truly breathed its last.
A touching later chapter focuses on the West Berlin of 1982, the city where Craig often taught at the Free University, as "city of crisis," steadily losing population because of its separation from the rest of the Bundesrepublik; Craig even wonders at one point if Berlin can even remain viable as a city. With those larger questions still unresolved as of the publication of The Germans, Craig addresses the question of German reunification: “As for the larger question of whether and when Germany would be reunified, there was no likelihood of its being decided by Germans alone….This did not mean that German reunification was an impossibility; only that…it would come, in all probability, only after a long period of peace” (p. 309).
History records that Craig was right when he foresaw that German reunification, if it were ever going to occur, would occur only as a result of changes in world politics generally and in Russia specifically. The accession to power of Soviet reformist leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, with his policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) broke the proverbial logjam of Cold War confrontation; and when it became clear that Gorbachev would not send in the Red Army to quell reform movements in Warsaw Pact states, the stage was set for the eventual reunification of Germany.
I am writing this review on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was 28 then, and I remember vividly the excitement and hope of that day. When I visited Berlin some years later – the city from which my great-grandfather, Albert Haspel, escaped to America, in order to avoid being drafted into the Kaiser’s armies – I saw that the area around Checkpoint Charlie, once a site bristling with barbed wire and abounding in tanks and armed soldiers, is now a thriving tourist district where one can get one’s photo taken with young men in authentic-looking American and Soviet army uniforms of Cold War vintage. And, in the context of European Union politics, nations that once looked at Germany in fear – at first, fear of Nazi tyranny, and horror at Nazi genocide; later, fear that a divided Germany would be the site of the beginning of a nuclear Third World War – now look to Germany, with its vast economic power, to lead Europe into an uncertain future.
For anyone interested in Germany's often tragic history and its complex modern situation, Gordon Craig's The Germans is ausgezeichnet, excellent.
Craig, a Scottish-born American, conducted research for one of his early historical works in Germany in 1935, by which time the Nazi regime had already seized power. During the Second World War, he served as a U.S. Marine Corps officer, and in the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA). After the war, as a professor of history, he frequently taught at the Free University of Berlin, at a time when Berlin was quite literally walled off from the rest of the West. All of this experience left Craig admirably well-suited to spend part of his life as a scholar studying the German people.
For any student of German history, The Germans is a real find. A comprehensive study of the German people and their history, The Germans addresses a wide array of topics: politics, religion, economics, anti-Semitism (a prejudice that revealed itself in German society long before Hitler's rise to power), gender, academia, the military, and literature, among others.
As the edition I have before me was published in 1982, I found Craig’s The Germans particularly strong in its examination of Cold War divisions. On one side of the Innerdeutsche Grenze, the fortified Inner German Border, there was West Germany -- Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the Federal Republic of Germany, a democracy with a federal structure similar to that of the United States of America. On the other side was East Germany, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. It was called the German Democratic Republic – even though, as many a wag pointed out, it was not democratic, was not a republic, and was not even particularly German (with the real decision-making power emanating from Soviet Russia).
The differences between the Bundesrepublik and the D.D.R. come through over and over again in Craig’s The Germans. The chapter on religion, for example, minces no words in showing how the East German regime sought to discourage religious practice: “[E]very effort was made to break the independence and undermine the faith of these congregations, and official pressure and individual harassment at the local level, often extending to the exclusion of young people who were churchgoers from privileges open to other citizens, and even from the Abitur (school-leaving examination) and the right to university study”. Nonetheless, “The nonconformists…were numerous, and they were stubborn enough to withstand and eventually to wear down the persecution” (p. 102). It was encouraging to learn that, at least in this instance, the wish of ordinary East Germans to live as they wished prevailed, to some extent, against the all-powerful D.D.R. state apparatus and its omnipresent Stasi secret police.
Another intriguing part of The Germans comes when Craig analyzes the role of Romanticism in German life. We have all heard about the cultural achievements of German Romanticism in areas like art, music, and literature; but what interests Craig is something much more grim: the consequences when Romanticism became tangled up in an aggressive form of German nationalism. In 1930, Craig records, as Hitler began to move closer and closer toward seizing power in Germany, the liberal German writer Thomas Mann “sought to remind the German middle class of the danger of escapism and unstructured Sehnsucht [nostalgia]”. But voices of reason like Mann’s went unheard; and “The beneficiary of [the political Romantics’] work was Adolf Hitler, who showed no gratitude for their services and whose Third Reich did not in the slightest way resemble that of their dreams.” Even in the post-World War II years, “characteristics of the older Romanticism became evident in the proliferation of anarchist groups in the universities and, in the 1970’s, in the growth of terrorism and the activities of the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Army Faction” (pp. 209-10).
In contemporary Germany, a far-right populist-nationalist party called Alternative für Deutschland (“Alternative for Germany”) has gained increasing power, becoming the country’s third-largest political party as of 2017; and one wonders, with concern, if political Romanticism in Germany has truly breathed its last.
A touching later chapter focuses on the West Berlin of 1982, the city where Craig often taught at the Free University, as "city of crisis," steadily losing population because of its separation from the rest of the Bundesrepublik; Craig even wonders at one point if Berlin can even remain viable as a city. With those larger questions still unresolved as of the publication of The Germans, Craig addresses the question of German reunification: “As for the larger question of whether and when Germany would be reunified, there was no likelihood of its being decided by Germans alone….This did not mean that German reunification was an impossibility; only that…it would come, in all probability, only after a long period of peace” (p. 309).
History records that Craig was right when he foresaw that German reunification, if it were ever going to occur, would occur only as a result of changes in world politics generally and in Russia specifically. The accession to power of Soviet reformist leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, with his policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) broke the proverbial logjam of Cold War confrontation; and when it became clear that Gorbachev would not send in the Red Army to quell reform movements in Warsaw Pact states, the stage was set for the eventual reunification of Germany.
I am writing this review on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was 28 then, and I remember vividly the excitement and hope of that day. When I visited Berlin some years later – the city from which my great-grandfather, Albert Haspel, escaped to America, in order to avoid being drafted into the Kaiser’s armies – I saw that the area around Checkpoint Charlie, once a site bristling with barbed wire and abounding in tanks and armed soldiers, is now a thriving tourist district where one can get one’s photo taken with young men in authentic-looking American and Soviet army uniforms of Cold War vintage. And, in the context of European Union politics, nations that once looked at Germany in fear – at first, fear of Nazi tyranny, and horror at Nazi genocide; later, fear that a divided Germany would be the site of the beginning of a nuclear Third World War – now look to Germany, with its vast economic power, to lead Europe into an uncertain future.
For anyone interested in Germany's often tragic history and its complex modern situation, Gordon Craig's The Germans is ausgezeichnet, excellent.
September 1, 2018
Dieses Werk liest sich als ideale Fortsetzung zu Golo Manns Deutscher Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, da es mit der selben Eleganz geschrieben ist und die Ideen des Autors in die selbe Richtung gehen. Besonders gut gelungen, die Kapital über die Problematik des Militärs im Nachkriegsdeutschland, die Literatur und den Feminismus.
March 14, 2009
This is a history of Germany after World War 2. Or, more precisely it is a history of the German people and society after WW2. The author is sufficiently knowledgeable and a good enough writer that what might seem like dry thematic topics (religion, politics, the economy) come across almost like stories. And it is a compelling story to read too. How a country comes to grips with their guilt (from the holocaust and other horrors of the war period) as well as the devastation visited on their own country at the end of the war.
I have been wanting to fill the gap in my knowledge of Europe and European history. What little I knew of Germany before this, came from reading histories of Central and Eastern Europe or Russia, or of the wars.
Reading this book was a very nice way to fill this gap.
I have been wanting to fill the gap in my knowledge of Europe and European history. What little I knew of Germany before this, came from reading histories of Central and Eastern Europe or Russia, or of the wars.
Reading this book was a very nice way to fill this gap.
January 30, 2012
My last name, in German, means "one who makes spools for the storage of yarn," giving me a clue as to what some distant artisan ancestor of mine probably did for a living a long time ago. I have traveled throughout Germany, and have always been impressed by the kindness, the hospitality, and the friendliness of the German people. And yet, when I visited Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp in central Germany where Anne Frank died, I could not help reflecting that people with linguistic and cultural ties to the nice people I had been meeting in Frankfurt and Fulda had launched history's most hideous war and murdered six million innocent people.
For any student of German history, Gordon Craig's The Germans is a real find. A comprehensive study of the German people and their history, The Germans addresses a wide array of topics: politics, religion, economics, anti-Semitism (a prejudice that revealed itself in German society long before Hitler's rise to power), gender, academia, the military, and literature, among others. Particularly powerful is one chapter that discusses how the legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust has impacted postwar Germans' efforts to build a modern democracy.
The edition I have, from 1982, might seem dated to some; at that time, Germany was still divided into East Germany (the D.D.R., the comically named "German Democratic Republic"), and West Germany, the Bundesrepublik or Federal Republic that is now the united Germany of today. A touching chapter focuses on the Berlin of 1982 as "city of crisis," steadily losing population, and wonders if Berlin can even remain viable as a city. Yet Craig was right when he foresaw that German reunification, if it were ever going to occur, would occur only as a result of changes in world politics generally and in Russia specifically. For anyone interested in Germany's often tragic history and its complex modern situation, Gordon Craig's The Germans is ausgezeichnet, excellent.
For any student of German history, Gordon Craig's The Germans is a real find. A comprehensive study of the German people and their history, The Germans addresses a wide array of topics: politics, religion, economics, anti-Semitism (a prejudice that revealed itself in German society long before Hitler's rise to power), gender, academia, the military, and literature, among others. Particularly powerful is one chapter that discusses how the legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust has impacted postwar Germans' efforts to build a modern democracy.
The edition I have, from 1982, might seem dated to some; at that time, Germany was still divided into East Germany (the D.D.R., the comically named "German Democratic Republic"), and West Germany, the Bundesrepublik or Federal Republic that is now the united Germany of today. A touching chapter focuses on the Berlin of 1982 as "city of crisis," steadily losing population, and wonders if Berlin can even remain viable as a city. Yet Craig was right when he foresaw that German reunification, if it were ever going to occur, would occur only as a result of changes in world politics generally and in Russia specifically. For anyone interested in Germany's often tragic history and its complex modern situation, Gordon Craig's The Germans is ausgezeichnet, excellent.
July 24, 2025
Gana įvairiapusiška knyga apie vokiečių tautos, jos charakterio, mentaliteto formavimąsi. Tekstas, prasidėjęs 1935 m. kaip daktaro disertacija apie Veimaro respubliką, išsirutuliojo iki plačios apžvalgos, rašytos iki 1982 m., o pabaigos žodis jau po Berlyno sienos griuvimo. Knygos savitumas - autoriaus pasirinkimas į vokiečių pasaulį žvelgti per įvairius kampus - muziką, literatūrą, pinigus, valdžią, požiūrį į kariuomenę. Man bene įdomiausi skyreliai buvo apie muziką ir kariuomenę. Pirmasis paaiškina Vagnerio vietą vokiečių kultūroje, antrasis - pacifistines vokiečių nuotaikas.
July 31, 2022
A lot of good information in this book, but it is a very dense read.
July 30, 2007
A clear and judicious history by a wise man. Craig, who died last year, is an American humanitites professor of the old (i.e., bow-tie) school. Craig applies his narrative insight equally well to the Siege of Magdeburg and to Currency Reform. This account of post-war German culture, and how it got that way, reads like a symphony.
October 5, 2010
This is a fascinating multidisciplinary view of Germany. With a mix of older and more modern history and including chapters on aspects of German culture this is a delightful look at the soul of Germany.
August 29, 2017
Gordon Craig's The Germans is a scholarly and verbose work that gave me more information than I was prepared to digest in preparation for my upcoming Rhine River Cruise. I was looking for insight into the German people, and I got a deep analysis of their national character, complete with extensive quotes from literature, detailed discussions of post-WWII politics, and a breakdown of financial policies in East and West Germany. There is much that I read that deserved much more attention than I gave it; I was moving quickly looking to retain only what was useful to me now.
There were several chapters that I found fascinating, particularly those that helped me understand more about the rise of Nazism. There was a good discussion about the century of Anti-Semitism and its effects, an interesting analysis of the societal results of the Romantic movement with its emphasis on emotion and destiny over reason and analysis, and an insightful chapter on the political uses of the Germanic language. If this book in its entirety is overmuch, I would suggest a reading of the first chapter, "Historical Perspectives" to anyone who would like to understand more about how modern German culture has been so shaped by its past.
3.5 stars.
There were several chapters that I found fascinating, particularly those that helped me understand more about the rise of Nazism. There was a good discussion about the century of Anti-Semitism and its effects, an interesting analysis of the societal results of the Romantic movement with its emphasis on emotion and destiny over reason and analysis, and an insightful chapter on the political uses of the Germanic language. If this book in its entirety is overmuch, I would suggest a reading of the first chapter, "Historical Perspectives" to anyone who would like to understand more about how modern German culture has been so shaped by its past.
3.5 stars.
January 10, 2023
The continuation from “Germany, 1866-1945” by Gordon A. Craig
Copyright 1982. To keep the time in perspective the Berlin wall went up in the middle of the night on Aug. 13, 1961, and The Fall of the Berlin Wall was in 1989.
Now before ignoring books written in the last century it is interesting to read books at the time things are happening instead of only books in retrospect.
Instead of just dry history, Gordon covers many subjects:
Come to the table of contents –
Part two -
Religion
Money
Germans and Jews
Women
Professors and Students
Romantics
Literature and Society
Soldiers
Berlin: Athens or Spree and City of Crisis
No pictures or diagrams
Good bibliography and index.
Copyright 1982. To keep the time in perspective the Berlin wall went up in the middle of the night on Aug. 13, 1961, and The Fall of the Berlin Wall was in 1989.
Now before ignoring books written in the last century it is interesting to read books at the time things are happening instead of only books in retrospect.
Instead of just dry history, Gordon covers many subjects:
Come to the table of contents –
Part two -
Religion
Money
Germans and Jews
Women
Professors and Students
Romantics
Literature and Society
Soldiers
Berlin: Athens or Spree and City of Crisis
No pictures or diagrams
Good bibliography and index.
June 10, 2020
Its a cool way to write a history and he manages to weave different topics nicely (e.g religion, money, professors and students, romantics, Berlin) but his view of Germany is pretty elitist. Its basically intellectuals and politicians. I'm really looking for a sociologist's take on Germany.
July 15, 2018
Not an easy read but not an easy subject, either. In fact, a tremendous history of the evolution of the German mind.
June 23, 2023
Fine overview.
December 18, 2025
~3 Stars~
October 17, 2023
The continuation from “Germany, 1866-1945” by Gordon A. Craig
Copyright 1982. To keep the time in perspective the Berlin Wall went up in the middle of the night on Aug. 13, 1961, and The Fall of the Berlin Wall was in 1989.
Now before ignoring books written in the last century, it is interesting to read books at the time things are happening instead of only books in retrospect.
Instead of just dry history, Gordon covers many subjects:
Come to the table of contents –
Part two -
Religion
Money
Germans and Jews
Women
Professors and Students
Romantics
Literature and Society
Soldiers
Berlin: Athens or Spree and City of Crisis
No pictures or diagrams
Good bibliography and index.
Copyright 1982. To keep the time in perspective the Berlin Wall went up in the middle of the night on Aug. 13, 1961, and The Fall of the Berlin Wall was in 1989.
Now before ignoring books written in the last century, it is interesting to read books at the time things are happening instead of only books in retrospect.
Instead of just dry history, Gordon covers many subjects:
Come to the table of contents –
Part two -
Religion
Money
Germans and Jews
Women
Professors and Students
Romantics
Literature and Society
Soldiers
Berlin: Athens or Spree and City of Crisis
No pictures or diagrams
Good bibliography and index.
January 31, 2012
An interesting overview of the development of the German people, culture, and state. This won't make much sense unless one already has a fairly firm grasp of German history. I wish the author could/would have written an updated version after the Wall fell. This one only brings you up to 1982. Still relevant, and very readable.
July 17, 2012
Good look at the German people. It provided a lot if background and context for a two week trip to the country. Doesn't deal very objectively or in much depth with the GDR but it originally appeared in 1982 and updated in 1991.
March 28, 2009
Essential reading
May 11, 2013
Das Standardwerk für alle, die wirklich etwas über die Deutschen lernen wollen. Geschrieben von einem ehemaligen US-Spion. Sehr empfehlenswert, besonders für Deutsche!
asa
December 24, 2013Engagingly written topical historical essays about German culture. Skimmed as I am not really looking for history right now.
May 30, 2009
One of the best one volume studies of Germany and what it means to be German.
February 8, 2010
I learned to understand them. I learned to understand myself.
June 24, 2017
Compelling and readable.
February 22, 2018
Very dry. Narrative is very boring. Hard to follow. However very detailed and we'll researched.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews