Germany: The Long Road West: Volume 1: 1789-1933

by H.A. Winkler, Alexander Sager (Translator)

Vivid, succinct, and highly accessible, Heinrich Winkler's magisterial history of modern Germany offers the history of a nation and its people through two turbulent centuries. It is the story of a country that, while always culturally identified with the West, long resisted the political trajectories of its neighbours.This first volume (of two) begins with the origins and consequences of the medieval myth of the 'Reich', which was to experience a fateful renaissance in the twentieth century, and ends with the collapse of the first German democracy. Winkler offers a brilliant synthesis of complex events and illuminates them with fresh insights. He analyses the decisions that shaped the country's triumphs and catastrophes, interweaving high politics with telling vignettes about the German people and their own self-perception.With a second volume that takes the story up to reunification in 1990, The Long Road West will be welcomed by scholars, students, and anyone wishing to understand this most complex and contradictory of countries.

Genres: History, Germany

474 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 12, 2006

Reviews

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first volume of an English translation of a two-volume political history of Germany from the French Revolution until the reunification of East and West Germany following the end of the Cold War. The focus of this work is the evolution of the idea of Germany as a western nation over the course of its growth from a fragmented seto of small states sharing at most a common language into an progressively more unified entity under Prussia and eventually Bismarck to the drama of two world wars and an extended Cold War.

I will not even begin to summarize the history (seriously?) but found Winkler to be exceptional in explaining the dynamics by which the different actors contributing to what would become Germany interacted with each other at critical times, for example how the various smaller German states, stuck between Prussia and Austria, tried and failed to combine after 1848. The discussion of Bismarck’s internal political strategy is wonderful, as is the discussion of Reichstag political dynamics during the Weimar Republic. This is an extraordinarily complicated history but Winkler at least holds open the possibility of following what is going on at any given time and making some sense of it.

The focus on political dynamics comes with trade offs, however. The richness of external diplomatic interactions does not get the attention it deserves sometimes, for example with Bismarck and the Congress system. Cultural and religious issues also seem downplayed as well, except in some stretches, such as for the Weimar Republic. More on interwar economics and inflation would have been helpful, but that would have made a complicated portion even more complex. Overall, I thought the author did what he could short of crafting a multi volume epic.

There were also some editorial shortcoming that got in the way sometimes. For example, the book is organized into a relatively small number of chapters, with subsections where needed. This leads to some long stretches of text where one is hoping for a break - such as with the Weimar Republic being covered in one very long chapter. The publisher could also have spent a little bit more on proofreading and typo correction. It reads better than Hegel, but I am just saying ...

The second volume picks up with the rise to power of Hitler. I may need to do push-ups in anticipation but I am looking forward to tackling it.

[Martin Chudik · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece. Essential for anyone interested in modern German history and especially the problem of Sonderweg. Winkler himself calls this a 'problem history', centered around this very issue.

The nineteenth-century portion heavily discusses the relation between nation and state and between unity and liberty. And although it starts at the end of 18th century, it also includes a discussion on the origins of the divisions - the confessional divide, the accumulation of sovereignty at territorial level and the Austro-Prussian antagonism - which so effectively obstructed German national and political centralization and unification.

Probably the best history book on Germany I have ever read. This is no light stuff and quite detailed, but easily merits multiple re-readings.