Germany: The Long Road West: Volume 2: 1933-1990

Der lange Weg nach Westen #2

by Heinrich August Winkler, Alexander Sager

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 second and final volume begins at the point of the collapse of the first German democracy, and ends with the joining of East and West Germany in the reunification of 1990. 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.

The two volumes of The Long Road West , exploring the history of the German lands from the final days of the Holy Roman Empire to the very first of a reunified state in the late twentieth century, will be welcomed by scholars, students, and anyone wishing to understand a most complex and contradictory past.

Genres: History, Germany, Nonfiction, Politics

698 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Heinrich August Winkler is a German historian. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen. In 1970 he became professor at the Free University of Berlin.

Reviews

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second volume of a two volume translation of a German history examining the question of Germany’s relationship to “the West” from the French Revolution and before up through German reunification after 1990. Sounds like a broad enough question... In practice, this is a study of German political history (constitutions, kings, ministers, laws, elections) and the general national discussion that goes on in any country but that is supremely critical for understanding German history in the 19th and 20th centuries. I could not begin to summarize this but it is a masterful study that helps me tie together pre-and post-WW2 German history, as well as pre= and post-reunification German history. The author views the answers to the big questions here as deeply tied to a broader history that goes way back and that continues to motivate the thinking of politicians, academics, and policy wonks today, albeit in not always explicit forms. This is not light reading and there are lots of names and dates and places - keep a map and google handy.

My major negative about this is in the editing of the translation. It could have been a bit tighter and editing lapses sometimes are distracting. I am whining a bit here, but the chapters could have also been broken up a bit so that the book did not seem like separate volumes stitched together. The effort generally holds and is worth the time and effort to work through.

... I am traveling and so will get back to and expand this when I return.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

For Winkler, Hitler's regime was the ‘climax of the German rejection of the western world’ (p. 580). Therefore the defeat of 1945 was a major turning point, even more important than 1945. Following this moment, the sensible German electorate kept the country on the straight and narrow and prevented its fall into the hands of excitable intellectuals. Overestimates, in my opinion, the split between Nazis and the West.

[Martin Chudik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal.