Die kürzeste Geschichte Deutschlands: Der SPIEGEL-Bestseller: Charmant, originell und streitbar: ein Brite erklärt die deutsche Mentalität

Shortest History

by James Hawes, Stephan Pauli (Translator)

Auf 250 Seiten einmal durch 2000 Jahre deutscher Geschichte: Überzeugend und souverän führt James Hawes von den alten Römern bis in die Gegenwart. Eine große Tour durch die Jahrhunderte, die in einer leidenschaftlichen Hommage an die Bundesrepublik endet.

Der Sieg gegen die Römer im Teutoburger Wald, die barbarische Grausamkeit des Dreißigjährigen Kriegs, der Aufstieg des militaristischen Preußens im 18. Jahrhundert — wie Blitzlichter scheinen diese historischen Ereignisse in James Hawes’ fulminantem Parforceritt durch die deutsche Geschichte auf. Die alles beherrschende Frage, die sich wie ein roter Faden durch die Seiten zieht: Gehört das Herzstück Europas zum Westen oder zum Osten? Für Hawes ist klar, dass dieses Land zum Westen zählt. Die Bundesrepublik, so wie wir sie kennen, sieht er in der Tradition des wahren, historischen Deutschlands, dem Staatshörigkeit, puritanischer Eifer und narben gesichtiger Militarismus stets fremd waren. Hawes ist sich sicher: Deutschland ist heute »Europas größte Hoffnung«.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Germany, Politics, German Literature, Historical, European History

337 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2017

About the author

James Hawes grew up in Gloucestershire, Edinburgh and Shropshire. He took a First in German at Hertford College, Oxford, then did a postgrad theatre studies in Cardiff, Wales. Having failed as an actor, he worked as an English teacher in Spain. In 1985-6 he was in charge of CADW excavations at the now-UNESCO World Heritage site of Blaenavon Ironworks. He took a PhD on Nietzsche and German literature 1900-1914 at University College, London 1987-90, then lectured in German at Maynooth University (Ollscoil Mhá Nuad) in Ireland between 1989 and 1991 before doing so at Sheffield University and Swansea University.

James has published six novels, all with Jonathan Cape. He turned to creative non-fiction with a Kafka anti-biography, Excavating Kafka (2008) which became the subject of a BBC documentary. In 2015, Englanders and Huns was shortlisted for the Paddy Power Political Books of the Year 2015. The Shortest History of Germany, published in May 2017, reached #2 in the Sunday Times bestseller charts in April 2018, being pipped for #1 only by Noah Yuval Harari. The Shortest History of England appeared in October 2020 and reached #4 in the Times bestseller charts in July 2021.

James has reviewed and/or written for every UK broadsheet, on topics from DIY to Prince Philip. His journalistic high-points to date were the cover-story for The New Statesman in September 2017 and the long read The England Delusion in Prospect in August 2021; this was publicly described by Prof Ciaran Martin, CB, founding Chief Executive of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, as “a really brilliant essay on the historical origins of UK constitutional tensions”. He has appeared on Radio 4 Today, Channel 4 News, Sky News and GB News.

In 2022, he was “series story consultant” and key on-screen commentator in the eight-part BBC TV series “Art that Made Us”. He also wrote the accompanying book.

His next book will be The Shortest History of Ireland.

Reviews

[Cj Dufficy · Rating 1 out of 5]

A revisionist history at odds with everything else I've read. This is not a history, it is a thesis that boils down to an evil race of East Germans that are hell bent on destroying the world for the last 150 years. It's mainly supported with dog whistle factoids, deliberate misinterpretations and outright falsehoods. Either the author has been paid to deliberately write this argument or he is congenitally dishonest.

It's well written and easily consumed, the first 1500 years are gobbled up and its tone and invective change with subtlety and at first for me imperceptibly. My reading list is in my profile so the basis of my objections can be found there. Outrage and doubt arrived when I read the following which is presented prior to the criticism of this (apparently) very poor idea "Schools were to be taken out of church control, civil marriages allowed and priests forbidden from engaging in anything that could be termed political [opposition]" attributed to Bismarcks Prussia about 100 years after the US constitution enshrined church and state separation.

I wondered who on earth writing a history book today would object to this? Before reading on I checked the authors bio to discover he thought in an Irish seminary university and this and the rest of the book came into focus.

He claims the Catholic Church deported itself well during the holocaust because 1 German cardinal was under house arrest despite almost total papal silence excepting even more damning luke warm nuanced protestations made far too late. No mention that Catholic Austrians were disproportionately represented in the SS or that of 18,000,000 who served in the Wehrmacht less that a 100 were cited for bravery after the war for protecting war crimes victims (see The Pianist movie for almost the only case). Ludicrously he declares that Prussians were the first to give a legal basis to antisemitism. A total lie, state legal antisemitism dates back thousands of years before its zenith of Hitler approved death camps operated by an enthusiastic SS and compliant greedy and shameful European populations. Legalised antisemitism continues today in states such as Iran. Lying about the bigotry Jews suffered throughout the world up to and beyond the holocaust to make your ridiculous thesis gain weight is a disgraceful trivialisation of history and insulting to Jewish people all over the world and to tens of millions of Germans that accept the facts and try to atone in their own way for the sins of that generation. Tony Judt's Postwar has I think an unrivalled essay at the end of the book about antisemitism which the author here would do well to read.

His current thoughts (not history in any way) about refugees follow the same racist pattern. No suggestion about what to do for the hopeless only to not allow them here. Hardly a philosophy Jesus Christ would support. Europe spends $75bn on refugees that arrive in Europe each year and $5bn on programs to encourage them to remain close to home, that should change and the problem any way is not A Prussian plot as this ignominious fool would have you believe. I hope a scholarly dissection of this crap takes place before to many buy it. I'll give the author a $1000 for every thing I'm incorrect about if he'll just give me my money back if I categorically show where he is lying, I'll leave out that Eva Hitler poisoned herself and was not shot by Adolf Hitler as stated in his book.

In summary dangerous appalling rubbish, handle with care only read if already in possession of the main facts.

[Evelyn Wood · Rating 1 out of 5]

If anyone is kind enough to read this review I think it only fair to state the following: I am not religious. I speak German. I have lived and worked in Germany and managed German companies in the UK, Africa and Central Asia. I do not claim to be an expert, but do have sufficient knowledge both of history and current affairs to justify this review.
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This is not a history, rather a propaganda exercise and, for anyone who knows anything of German and European history, it is dangerously silly. The author James Hawes is a fanatical EU integrationist and that colours this polemic. In a nutshell Hawes idea (one cannot dignify it with the term 'theory') is that Germany is Roman Catholic and good and Prussia is protestant and bad and when the latter took over the former it made the whole atrocious.

According to Hawes the Franks under Karl der Grosse (Charlemagne) inherited the Roman Empire's goodness and unifying vision. He ignores the fact that the Franks were one of many tribes that occupied much of Europe and spoke a number of Indo-Germanic languages. Charlemagne was a Christian and decided everyone in his empire must be too, imposing the death penalty on those (especially Saxons) who refused to convert. On his death, the Carolingian Empire split into three. The west Franks adopted a Latin dialect and became French. Middle Francia included parts of the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. East Francia included the rest of Germany. Eventually east and middle Francia minus Burgundy, Switzerland and parts of northern Italy became the Holy Roman Empire (HRE). Hawes would have us believe that the HRE was a coherent political unit. Voltaire summed it up rather better when he remarked that, “it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor really an Empire.” Indeed, it was a geographical area consisting, at the end, of some 1,800 states of varying sizes recognising the HRE as their titular head.

Hawes makes much of the HRE being geographically similar to the Roman province 'Germania'. Apparently, all was well in the Carolingian world until efforts were made to expand east of the Elbe river (For this part of Europe and Germany he invents the term East Elbia a dark place inhabited by - shock horror - Slavs and Prussians!) Prussia is named after its original Slavic inhabitants, but following its 13th century conquest by the catholic Teutonic Knights it was 'Germanised' by immigration from central and western Germany.

In order to justify his risible 'Catholic good Protestants bad' idea he ignores the 30 years war started by Ferdinand II, HRE 1619-1637, who decided to force protestant member states to become catholic. The result was a war that cost millions of lives, in some areas a population loss of 50%. Also, at this time, in catholic areas, there were hysterical witch hunts. The worst were those of Trier where the Catholic Archbishop/Prince Elector Johann von Schoenberg was a man with a mission. First he purged Protestants, then Jews and then witches and an estimated 1,000 men, woman and children convicted of witchcraft were burned by his order. In all over 40,000 people died.

We are whizzed through centuries with the same disregard for history although he pauses to blame Britain for giving Prussia the Rhineland in 1815 thus making it stronger. (The Rhineland states were part of the Confederation of the Rhine a grouping of most of the German states allied to France during the Napoleonic wars. Part of the confederation was ceded to Prussia and became the Rhine Province in 1822). Little mention is made of the ‘Zoll Union’ = ‘Customs union’ created by Bismarck to which all the German states, except Austria, belonged. Bismarck saw it as the means to 'Unify' Germany. He engineered a war with France and when that was over the members woke to find themselves members of an Empire with a new boss. Oddly only Luxembourg escaped joining it. The lesson was, however, well learned. In 1952 Jean Monet (a founding father of the EU) wrote, "Europe's nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation."

Lets skip to the Nazis. They were (you guessed) East Elbian protestant monsters who had almost zero support from the good burgers of Germania. Blithely ignoring Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen and Dachau (to name just three) he claims the Nazis had to wait until they got to Poland before creating concentration camps. They would not be tolerated in Germania. Writing on page 180, "But T4 had shown the Nazis that, even in wartime, they couldn't just start killing people wholesale in Germany." (T4 was a program to 'put down' mentally ill people - mostly Germans).

At the end of WW2, Germania now separated from East Elbia by the Iron curtain could at last take its place as a truly democratic western nation. Except….Konrad Adenauer did not trust the Germans and wanted West Germany integrated with the west to stop them repeating their past. To aid the process two former Nazis advisors, Ludwig Erhard (Later Chancellor of West Germany) and Karl Blessing (Later president of the Bundesbank) dusted off the plan they had developed for Hitler's post victory nation. The plan was simple. Replace the Reichsmark with the Deutsch Mark at a rate of 15 to one for the people (so they all went bust) and 1 to 1 for industry who had benefited from slave labour. Marshal aid poured in and finally all Germany's debts were written off. Erhard was pleased with everything opining that poverty would make the common man work harder!

Post war the EEC, then the EU and the Euro. Like Adenauer, Kohl did not trust Germans and saw tying them into a currency union as an insurance against resurgent bad habits. People who demanded a democratic vote were told they were too dumb to understand the issues. Quite why dumb people are brainy enough to pick people who can decide was never asked. Since the Euro, Germany has powered ahead financially and no one doubts that EU decisions are made in Berlin. Although vehemently denied by the Germans, the IMF, amongst others, have variously put the benefit for Germany of using an undervalued currency at between 10 and 17 %. Most telling, in 2012 the Bundesbank estimated that a return to the DM (proper value) would involve the loss of 5 million jobs and a drop of 10% in GDP.

Many countries have elements in their history that today’s generations regret, Germany more than most. I do not accept that the only way to deal with that is to punish others. If German leaders don't trust their own people it’s time to get new leaders. The idea that other nations should lose industry and face terrible unemployment in order to prevent German resurgence is ridiculous. The EU in particular and the world in general being locked into an unending payment of Dane Geld is surely a certain recipe for bitterness and strife? It may strike Dawes as a brilliant result, but to use a German word, I'm afraid the Untermenschen may not put up with it. Rewarding Flashman with the headmastership of Rugby was never an option and the post war settlement lauded by Hawes is as bizarre as that would have been.

In his other writings Hawes displays the sneering arrogance typical of the self appointed intelligentsia that dislikes Anglo Saxons, especially British ones. In his book Hawes observes that the German word 'Untergang' = ‘Humiliating defeat' has no equivalent in English. He could have more usefully asked why the word 'Fair' has no German equivalent. One can but hope they will find one; in my experience the concept is understood even if it is expressed in English.

This is a squalid little book, but it does raise two interesting questions. 1) Are University degrees useful indicators of intelligence? 2) The book has been review praised in serious journals, one wonders if that was the result of anyone actually reading it?

[Ami · Rating 1 out of 5]

Something that should be said from the start: Hawes is not a historian, his work was not endorsed by historians, and it falls behind even the normally low standards of history books written for the general public. It's barely referenced, lacks a bibliography, and omits facts if they don't fit into the author's general argument.

I had one encounter with Hawes before, and it left me intrigued. In September 2017, he wrote an article in the New Statesman in which he explained the then-upcoming German election and the possible rise of the AfD in terms of ancient divisions in Germany. I disagreed with his argument from the start, but it was a bold and well-written article. Maybe this is why I am so disappointed with this book. I expected so much more.

At the very least I expected a proper history book, since it's been branded and sold as such, but what I got instead is a very dubious and confusing demonology manual, complete with fact omissions, logical fallacies, and vague, poor-quality maps that help hide the weakness of the author's argument. Said argument boils down to this: there is something rotten in East Elbia. This apparently doesn't change from Roman times to present, despite the fact that actually many changes happened there, including major population shifts. No, the evilness of East Elbia remains the same across history, and all that has the misfortune to exist there, be it non-Latinized German tribes, Slavs, or Prussians, is equally unworthy and incapable of assimilating into Roman/Western culture. Among what I regard as Hawes' most questionable points within this thesis are the following:

- Dismissing the Hussite rebellion in Bohemia as a mere 'Slav pushback' against German domination, and claiming that it was actually just another aspect of the 'ancient' German-Slavic conflict beyond the Elbe. It's safe to say that this is not the point of view of the majority of historiography on the subject

- The whole idea of an ancient, everlasting German-Slav struggle in Eastern Europe, which comes up again and again throughout the book. According to Hawes, Germany lost both world wars because Prussia (or the Prussian elite) were so blinded by this struggle. This is so wrong, so propagandistic and so scary that I can't even comprehend how it got printed in 2018

- Dismissing Luther as a mere populist, and his brand of Protestantism as something that will poison Germany forever. While yes, Luther was a populist by modern definition (this becomes very clear if you look at how different his points of view were from those of liberal contemporaries like Erasmus), being a populist in C16 meant standing up to pervasive elitism and corruption, and ensuring common people's access to religion - for example by producing a translation of the Bible from Latin and Greek into a language actually spoken. Dismissing the effect Luther's legitimate criticism of the Catholic Church had on Christianity everywhere is absurd. Dismissing Protestantism as a whole because Protestant areas of Germany voted more heavily for Hitler than Catholic areas is equally absurd. It becomes even more ridiculous when Hawes says nonsense like "Berlin is closer to (Catholic) Warsaw and (Orthodox) Moscow than (virtually Protestant) Washington or (Protestant) London". He clearly means to convey that Prussia is far away from the West therefore barbaric and bad, but his own argument that Catholicism = good / Protestantism = bad makes his point absolutely moot... if all of this sounds confusing, that's because it is. Hawes is so busy dismissing everything to do with 'East Elbia' (from location to religion) that he becomes incoherent

- Painting Otto von Bismarck as a warmongering evil man who manipulated the whole of Europe into believing that his version of Germany is the real one. Bismarck was in fact an able statesman both abroad (he managed to create the first modern Germany that worked) and at home (where he created things like history's first modern welfare state). After he unified his country, he became very dedicated to maintain the balance of power (hence peace) between powers in Europe, which is why I have no idea why Hawes is convinced Bismarck was particularly intent on war. Hawes even goes so far as to attack Bismarck's decision to support Austria-Hungary against the Russian Empire's ambitions in the Balkans, seeing it not as the balance-of-power-maintaining effort that it was, but as a decision based on the 'ancient' German-Slav conflict, which subconsciously influenced Prussian Bismarck, according to Hawes. He (even more ridiculously) has a go at Bismarck for the secularization campaigns in Germany known as Kulturkampf (these actually happened in several other European states, which Hawes neglects to mention). These were apparently so terrible that they traumatized the country's Catholic politicians forever, to the point where they helped Hitler gain a majority in the Reichstag. I kid you not, here's the quote from pp169-170: "The Centre Party decides, after agonised debate, that if it votes against a 51.9% national mandate, Germany's Catholics will be cast once again as traitors to the will of the people, and suffer a vicious new Kulturkampf. Hitler gets his super-majority, and democracy in Germany ends."

- Claiming that Prussia was a more or less artificial state created and supported by 'Slavs' (created under the Polish crown, supported by Russia at one point etc), hence its terrible influence on the actual Germany. Hawes never mentions the fact that 'the Slavs' were in most cases very modern by contemporary standards (Hus in what would be today's Czech Republic preceded Luther; the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had a constitutional monarchy, high levels of diversity and religious tolerance) and can therefore not take the blame for Prussia's unfortunate character

I could go on forever, but I think I've proven my point. This book is a mess highlighting very little of that bold argument I glimpsed in the New Statesman article, and a lot of the author's prejudices and biases.

[Judith Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I see that there are many very angry one star reviews for this book on Goodreads, from those who are outraged that there is neither bibliography, footnotes nor academic references for it, but surely, written by an author who is also a university lecturer, it’s clear that Hawes is not aiming for it to be taken as an academic work? HG Wells didn’t have references in his Short History of the World, nor did EH Gombrich in his A Little History if the World, albeit written for young readers.

I see Hawes’ book as more of a long blog, written from a clearly impassioned point of view. I was a Remain voter in the accursed Referendum of 2016 in Britain, and also a Germanophile, so I enjoyed the read, and I would vouch to say that it hopefully might inform many Anglo-Saxon readers who think German History is just Kaiser Bill and Adolf Hitler. Having said that, it inspires me to read further on the subject. I am keeping an open mind meanwhile (or at least aiming to!).

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Problematic to say the least. For half of this book, I was marvelling at the author's skill in boiling down the history of a complex subject in such a limited amount of pages. By clever use of diagrams and illustrations, I learned a lot about the broad sweep of Germany's history and was relishing the narrative. Then, around the time of German unification, the grinding of the author's axe suddenly became ear splitting. The author equates Germany's western and southern reaches to a utopia of good sense, with all the blame for its troubled past (and present) laid at the door of an eastern, overwhelmingly protestant, militaristic and anti-democratic Junker class hailing from the wrong side of the River Elbe.

It's a cornucopia of generalisations and while the subtext is a cry for the benefits of liberal democracy and the benefits of the European Union, it may do more harm than good. That Hitler emerged from Austria and enjoyed considerable support in Bavaria is glossed over, that leading figures in business and politics in West Germany had Nazi pasts is practically ignored and that a whole region of Germany and its former territory is characterised as backward and literally beyond the pale marks this out as an intentionally provocative attempt to draw historical parallels when the reality is far more complicated. I don't care that Hawes isn't an academic historian - neither is Andrew Marr - but this is back of the envelope, pub rant stuff from a hundred pages onward.

[Rob M · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wrote the review copied below in a fit of pique a few minutes after finishing the book, so its a little heated. On reflection, there's some good stuff here about the German relationship with "roman" Europe - particularly the mixed identity of the areas west of the Rhine - and it complimented some aspects of Prisoners of Geography, which I had read just beforehand.

However, here's the reason I gave it one star:

Understanding how two centuries of revolution and violence have somehow culminated in the realisation of Germany’s long standing ambition to be Europe’s leading power can be a tall order. In light of current events, this book has the potential to be a timely and relevant contribution to public enlightenment.

Sadly it is nothing of the sort.

The book begins with some excellent exposition on the Roman origins of the German idea. It enjoyably and concisely goes on a little romp through the rise, fall and rebirth of Rome from the perspective of an increasingly Romanised Germanic barbarian. We get a good sense of how the memory of Rome formed a mythical centre of gravity for the emerging mediaeval central Europe. In fact, everything up to the pre-modern age is fairly enjoyable.

As in genuine history, signs of the trouble to come start to appear around the industrial revolution. Hawes introduces us the great Prussian philosopher, GW Hegel. He explains how, in order to avoid brutal censorship, Hegel and other thinkers of his age veiled their ideas in an attempt to throw the authorities off the scent of their radicalism.

Sadly, Hawes acts more like a thick headed Prussian censor than an educated reader of philosophy. Hegel couched many of his radical ideas for a new social order in gushing admiration for the totalitarian Prussian state. He loudly exclaimed that if a perfect state was ever going to exist, Prussia was well on the way to being it. Like Thomas Moore before him, Hegel is playing to the ego of authority in order to express dangerously radical ideas with relative impunity. Unfortunately Hawes simply takes Hegel at his word on this, and then proceeds to hamfistedly blame him for “all state loving extremists ever since, both of the left and right” – a theme which Hawes determinedly sticks to through the rest of the book.

At first its hard to tell whether all this is deliberate dishonesty or simply the kind of astounding stupidity enthusiastically performed by the apparently well educated (what a surprise that Nick Cohen has given this book his resounding endorsement!).

As the book goes on it becomes clear that the reader is being subjected to a poorly constructed barrage of lies-by-omission, error and ideological nonsense.

The author’s almost obscene hatred of Prussia should probably disqualify him from writing a genuinely useful history of Germany full stop. I won’t go much into this, as other reviewers with better knowledge of Prussian history have already throughly trounced this aspect of the writing (amazing that such a short book can be so a-historical in so many different ways!).

His handling of Marx is fairly typical of sneering liberalism: “a clever writer who was wrong about everything”. A view which totally fails to appreciate that Marxism took off in a big way after World War I because he was, in fact, right about so many things. I was more or less prepared for this particular bit of nonsense, as his view of Marx was heavily insinuated in his earlier discussion of Hegel.

However, it wasn’t until his handling of the 1919 working class uprising that I began to develop a genuine sense of revulsion towards the text.

Rather than address the painful schism that ripped through the German working class after WWI, which resulted in the Social Democratic government hiring mercenaries to violently suppress their own people, he simply shrugs his shoulders and ignores it, blaming incitement by communists for the whole debacle. The only mention of the great German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg is in a picture caption – her ideas are ignored and her brutal murder is entirely omitted.

So ready is Hawes to blame communists for everything, including their own murders (which he implicitly endorses), one wonders how many other victims of terror he’d happily blame for their own fates.

The stench of his fascist semi-apologism becomes almost too much to bear as the book continues, and I was tempted to simply give up several times, despite it being a short and very basic text.

His clear and constant implications about the inferiority of Eastern European society, his abject hatred of communists and his occasional flirtation with anti-semitism lead me to suspect that, had he been living in West Germany in the 1930s, he’d have been more sympathetic to the rising forces of fascism than he’d like to admit.

His old nemesis Prussia comes to the rescue here, as he’s able to frame Nazism as uniquely driven by those East Elbian barbarians, which his enlightened, civilised, Roman West Germany was unwillingly dragged along with. How like modern Polish far right revisionism this sounds. His awesome liberal chauvinism disallows Hawes from taking a nuanced or self critical view of Germany’s troubled history.

As I mentioned above, the writing at times borders on almost anti-semitic. The clearest example being when he dismisses the post-war East German government as a prefabricated puppet government installed by Moscow. Although there is some truth to this allegation, neglecting to mention that it was composed of many Jewish anti-Nazi German refugees, some of whom hadn’t been living in Moscow during the war, but living in camps, is unforgivable. Who cares about the truth when it doesn’t fit into a homogenous narrative of good vs evil?

Maybe those East Germans who heroically purged their society of slav and jew hatred were the wrong kind of jews? Communists are always the wrong kind of jews, aren’t they?

He goes on to wax lyrical about the West’s pragmatic decision to reinstate the Nazi civil service and allow them to enact the (Nazi) plan to transfer the entire wealth of the nation (including both war industries and citizen’s personal savings) into the hands of Western facing businesses, while also changing to a new Western backed currency in order to divide the country – first economically and then formally – along the borders of Western occupation.

Hawes more or less skips the GDR and the cold war as an irrelevant aberration. Strange, as this book is so much a product of the cold war that it could have been written by the CIA. Whether this is because he knows next to nothing about East German society, or because he actively wants to wipe it out of the history books is unclear.

Perhaps the only thing I agreed with in this whole sorry segment is that process by which reunification was undertaken was borderline criminal. However, while I see the economic terrorism and cultural purges of East German civil society as being the issue at hand (including the totally unnecessary dismantling of its world class health system), Hawes objects to his beloved West Germany being saddled with an inferior society to subsidise.

The book concludes by asserting that the modern EU, as led by West Germany, is the natural successor to both Rome and Charlemagne. A fantastically unhelpful lesson to take from modern Germany’s fascinating history and an uncomfortable parallel with the traditional fascistic desire to create ultra-modern states modelled on a glorious mythic past.

Frustrating and disturbing in equal measure

[All My Friends Are Fictional · Rating 2 out of 5]

It started off as a very informative read and somehow along the way turned into an anti-Prussian propaganda. Hawes' argument basically comes down to this: everyone and everything east of Elbe is rubbish and to blame for all the disasters of 19th-21st century. Don't waste your time on this.

[Ioannis Papagiannis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally understood what Prussia was. After all these years of seeing it appearing and disappearing in European history maps. It is safe to say this author is no big fan of it.

[Maja - BibliophiliaDK ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Germany has always been a divided country

I bought this book in the airport on my way home from Berlin because I was interested in German history and this seemed like a good place to start. And I was not wrong about that. It is a great place to start because it is so short and condensed. There were definitely times when I found myself think 'what about this' or 'what about that' and these things were never adressed or answered. But it dind't ruin the book for or my understanding of the subject. These were simply things I found interesting and wanted to know more about.

My favourite part of this book was actually these thesis that James Hawes puts forward, that Germany is, in essense, a divided country. East and West Germany was not a product of the Cold War, it has always been divided like this. Of course, Germany has always consisted of many smaller states, but what Hawes here says is that even at this time, there was a difference between eastern and western states. The defining line here was the river Elbe, and this has been the dividing factor since Ceasar's time. That part of the book I found really fascinating and it sort of shone a new light on German history for me.

The one thing I felt was lacking from this book was a 'suggested reading' section or bibliography. When your aim is to boil a really big subject down into a 200 page book, you have to provide a list of other books for your reather to dive into after reading this. That is at least my opinion. Had there been a suggested reading list I would have given this 5 stars.

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[Margarita Garova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Може ли историята на държава като Германия да се побере на има-няма 200 страници?

“Най-кратката история на Германия” прилича много на онези помагала по литература, в които на 20 страници се преразказва сюжета на тухли като “Червено и черно” или “Декамерон”, като разликата е единствено в свободата на интерпретация. Защото Джеймс Хоус си е избрал виновник за всички беди, сполетели германците от 1866 г. насам – а именно началото на пруската хегемония.

Въобще, Прусия или земите на изток от река Елба, в тази интерпретация на историята, са демонът, отговорен за двете световни войни и изборната победа на нацистката партия, както и за ред второстепенни грехове към германската култура и цивилизация. Всичко това е омешено с протестантския характер на населението там, милитарилизма на юнкерите и амбивалентния характер в отношението към славяните на Одер и отвъд.

Истината е, че като изключим периода на двете световни войни, не знам почти нищо за историята на Германия преди и след тях. Възможно е Джеймс Хоус да е прав и наистина Прусия да е тази аномалия, насилствено пришила се към “истинската” Германия – Рейнланд. Може и да греши напълно, а може би истината е някъде по средата. Но категоричният тон, използван от автора и неговата пълна убеденост, която в края на книгата се извисява като почти истерично предупреждение, че днешните територии на Прусия, разбирай бившето ГДР, ще се окажат гробокопача на Германия, оставят неприятен вкус.

Не ми харесаха и препратките със съвременната история (хиперинфлацията след Първата световна война е сравнена с гръцката дългова криза, дори има сравнения с войната в Сирия). И нещо наистина забавно – Априлското въстание през 1876 г. е наречено “Война на панславянския национализъм”!

Преводът на книгата, вероятно и редакцията й, можеха да бъдат изпипани малко по-добре. Битката при Аженкур е наречена Агинкурт, а песента “Стражата на Рейн” е преведена като “Охраната на Рейн”. Сигурно такива грешки са допустими от английски превод за френски и немски имена, но и двете са достатъчно известни, за да може колебанията да се отстранят с една бърза проверка в Гугъл.

И все пак, понеже не ми е в стила да громя една една книга без да кажа нещо положително за нея, мисля, че като оставим настрана натрапчивата пруска нишка, малкият обем е успял да синтезира наистина ключовите моменти от германската история, които са разказани цветисто и запомнящо се. Поп историите като тази всъщност разпалват апетита за големите сериозни четива. А Джеймс Хоус пише с много хумор и с любов към Германия. Е, или поне за тази част от нея, която спира до река Елба.

[Peyman Haghighattalab · Rating 3 out of 5]

کتاب تاریخ خوبی بود.
دید خوبی از شرایط ژئوپلتیکی آلمان و بحران‌هایش ارائه می‌کرد. آلمان از قدیم الایام دو بخش متفاوت داشته. نواحی بین رود راین و الب و نواحی شرقی رود الب. شیوه و منش فکری این دو بخش همواره متفاوت بوده و هست. شرقی‌ها کلا افراطی‌ترند و البته یکپارچه تر. پروس و نازیسم دو محصول اصلی مردمان شرق الب در تاریخ معاصر آلمان بوده‌اند. بیسمارک و هیتلر را آن‌ها روی کار آوردند. ایده مرکزی کتاب جدا بودن این دو گونه‌ی آلمانی بودن است که آن را در طول دو هزار سال تاریخ گرمانیا تا به امروز دنبال کرده است. برای من خیلی یادآور کتاب در اسارت جغرافیای تیم مارشال بود. در حقیقت این کتاب یک جورهایی تاریخ را هم در اسارت جغرافیا معرفی می‌کرد...
کتاب البته برای قبل از جنگ اوکراین است. ولی کاملا می‌شود پیش‌بینی کرد که اگر نویسنده قرار بود این جنگ را هم به کتاب اضافه کند در باب محکومیت روسیه و موضع درست آلمان غربی چه می‌گفت... او آلمان را قلب تپنده‌ی سنت غرب می‌داند.

[Rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had very mixed thoughts on this book. On the one hand, he's drawn the history together very well in that he shows its continuity. This makes a much more readable and compelling history than - as so often happens - it being treated as separate events that are isolated from one another.

However, Hawes clearly has his own biases that crop up throughout the book. In an early map of Europe ('In the Proto-Beginning', xi) he labels northern Germany 'Proto Germans' and the Mediterranean, specifically Greece and Rome, as 'Civilisation'. I wasn't sure if I was being overly critical but civilisation seems a particularly loaded term. This seems to be part of his wider bias towards West Germany. It becomes clear in the last few pages where he talks of Germany's future and says that 'Merkel must hold firm and recall the Roman limes; Charlemagne's renaissance; the Golden Age of medieval Germany; the south western realms which fought in vain against Prussia in 1866; the hapless southern and western Germans shackled by Bismarck to war against Russia; the doomed southern and western Germans who never voted for Hitler but got him all the same; and Adenauer's late, lamented West Germany...this Germany is the sole hope for Europe. It must now act and it must now be embraced, as what it was always meant to be: a mightyland at the very heart of the West.' (p.226). I would not say 'The Shortest History of Germany' is impartial by any means - and credit where it's due, I've not seen anywhere claim it would be - but it casts a shadow on much of the rest of the work.

[Kirsty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whilst in Munich with my boyfriend in February of this year, I mentioned that I'd love to learn more about German history. I have a sound grasp of it from the Weimar Republic up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, and have studied the period between 1914 and 1945 intensively, but I knew very little about earlier eras. James Hawes' The Shortest History of Germany therefore sounded as though it would be perfect to fill in those gaps.

It rings alarm bells for me when history books do not include a bibliography or list of sources, and this omits both entirely. There are no footnotes to denote where a quote has been taken from, and sometimes things are quoted - in italics! - in the main body of text which do not include even the reference of the author's name. Had I noticed this before purchasing The Shortest History of Germany, it would have gone straight back onto the shelf.

The placing of text, maps, and diagrams here is so awkward, and makes for an unpleasant reading experience. Every pictorial source has been placed into the main body of text, sometimes randomly and without commentary, and therefore some of the text has been rendered into a column. I really did not enjoy the format, and think it would been easier to read, and more accessible, had all of the non-textual sources been grouped together on glossy paper, something most other history books include as a matter of course. This is not my only qualm in this respect, because many of these sources were poor in quality, and therefore the text was blurred. Most of them added very little to the book.

The way in which the quotes were not embedded in the main body of text, but appeared randomly in greyscale boxes - again, with barely a source to denote where they had been found - was annoying and unnecessary. I did not enjoy Hawes' writing style at all, and did not appreciate the constant references which he tried to draw between particular elements of German history and the present day. This made it feel even fluffier than a history book with no appendix or bibliography already feels.

Whilst The Shortest History of Germany has a relatively linear structure, the way in which it has been partitioned into sections is odd. Hawes' commentary felt as though it was all over the place due to the way in which what he includes here has both been set out and handled. I did read it all the way through, but only because it is such a short book; on reflection, I wish I hadn't bothered. The book, as one might expect, is incredibly brief, and not at all comprehensive. Far more attention was focused upon the twentieth-century than anything else, and whilst I can understand this to a point, it made the whole feel highly uneven. It also became far more biased as time went on, and his tone felt patronising at points.

I'd like to say that I learnt a lot from this book, but as there is no concrete evidence to show what Hawes had read - if anything! - before compiling it, I found myself mistrustful. If it had been submitted as even an undergraduate thesis, I doubt it would have received a very good mark, with the unnecessary omission of the bibliography, and its quite clumsy writing at times. It feels almost as though Hawes has chosen to include so many charts, graphs, maps, and newspaper clippings - many of which are barely legible - in order to detract from his often skewed perspectives and cursory mentions of really rather important things.

There are many short books which I have read that effectively give the history of a particular topic in succinct and immersive ways, and which also include a comprehensive list of sources for further reading. The omission of such an important thing here was a mistake. In consequence, I will never read anything of Hawes' again, as I am unsure whether I can trust what he includes.

[Kevin Gibbons · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is dishonest history. The main argument is based on a distinction between cultural "West Germans" who are descended from those tribes which were under the power of the Roman Empire, and "East Germans" who were never 'civilized'.

This distinction is a fantasy, based on some idealized (and, indeed, sterilized) idea of what the Roman Empire was. Rather than the source of all democratic and liberal thought, the Roman Empire is more accurately characterized by its "state-worship" and "scar-faced militarism", the exact descriptors Hawes uses to describe the non-Romanized "East Elbians", than its commitment to liberal ideals. If Hawes was right that the cultural monolith of the German People is properly conceived of as two distinct peoples, then in actuality the West Germans ought to be the ones with a militaristic, autocratic streak--- not the Easterners. But this is not the case. Hawes, lacking any realistic study of the romans, is therefore forced to make the wildest inferences to support his claim. One has to wonder why Hawes is willing to go to these rhetorical lengths to defend such an obviously weak thesis, given that he does seem to possess a sweeping command of the relevant names, dates, and events. In the end though, all one can do is wonder.

[Miguel Pinto · Rating 5 out of 5]

if your interest in history or simply curious about German history, this is the book to go.
Clearly written, not boring it focus on fact without putting you to sleep.
for me understanding why world war I started and also discovering a permanent mark on brittish society with German origin made this book fun to read,
totally recommend

[GONZA · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not an history book, it is propaganda. It is based on some crazy idea of the author and I am wondering how could a publisher decided that it was worthy. I gave up after a while because there seemed to be no point in keep on reading rubbish,

Thanks Netgalley for the preview

[Peter Castine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was going to give this only one star… but then I reminded myself that Hawes is primarily an author of fiction. As a work of historical fiction, the book gets a nudge upwards. Even then, the strategies used to make the desired point are anything but subtle.

If we are to take the book at the face value of its title, I understand that to keep 2,000 years of history short it's going to be necessary to simplify, smooth over details, and leave things out. But still, the book deliberately skips over enormous bits of important history, and always points that would inconveniently get in the way of Hawes' thesis of two Germanys that don't belong together (in opposition to Willy Brandt's famous comment "that which belongs together will grow [back] together.") Having lived as a foreigner in Germany through the period of reunification, I learned in 1989 (admittedly somewhat to my surprise at the time) that Germans were as unified as a people could be in the conviction that they are "one people" — "ein Volk. Hawes repeatedly confuses the natural boundary of the Elba river as a "fault line," but it is nothing of the sort. Yes, there are nuances between the East and West, but there are also nuances between North and South, as well as many further subtle regional variations, but if anything fewer differences than between north and south of the Tyne in Great Britain (never mind the regional differences in the US). I wonder is Hawes would make analogous claims that Britain north and south of the Tyne should be made into two different countries (at least public opinion in Scotland would be much closer to a toss-up on that than in Germany). Ditto for east and west of the Irish sea, or west of Bristol, or even north of the Trent.

The book's problems start in the first chapter with the claim of Julius Cesar essentially "discovering" Germany, despite the fact that the Germanic tribes already had numerous ties in trade with the Mediterranean (a claim rather like the notion that Columbus "discovered" America). The last chapter (roughly from the 30 Years War to current times) is rife with omissions, and notably anything that would weaken the notion of "good" Catholic Germans in the West and South and "bad" Lutheran Germans in the East is left out: no mention of the schism in the Lutheran church during the 1931–45 period, with one half denouncing Naziism, no mention of Nazi support with the Catholic church (both admittedly difficult topics in need of nuanced handling, but to not mention either while claiming blanket support from the one side is simply bad history). The list could go on and on, but perhaps this gives an idea of just how much spin is used to support a flimsy argument.

Perhaps the one positive point about Hawes' thesis that Germany should have its borders end at the east at the Elbe (without even hinting at what should become of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Thuringia) is that it might serve as a counterbalance to the few voices from the far right calling for a return to pre-war borders. But both ideas are equally delusional in contemporary Europe.

[Stanislav Stanchev · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am impressed with how much James Hawes has accomplished in just 226 pages of image-rich and small-format pages. To me, the book has three layers on which it can be appreciated:

First, the reader is served an engaging and accessible tale of 2,000 years of German history. I particularly enjoyed the many maps and the interspersed etymological facts (such as the English pound Sterling being derived from Easterling, referring to the reliable money of the Hansa merchants on the German Baltic Coast).

Second, the author supplements his historiography with succinct analyses of critical junctures that shaped the course of this history. One example is the recurring outward fixation of the Holy Roman Emperors on the Empire’s foreign holdings in Italy and elsewhere at the expense of inward focus on German unity and stability. These analytical points are frequently condensed into simple, parsimonious equations (as illustrated below), ripe for contention and discussion.

Third, and most crucially, Hawes reveals that his book is not merely a “German history for dummies”. The book’s title does not only refer to its readable coverage of 2,000 years of history in 226 pages. It is in fact a reference to the central hypothesis of the essay: “The shortest history of Germany since Frederick the Great [can be boiled down to] Western Germany disunited + Unified block of East Elbia = East Elbia has disproportionate weight in German affairs” (p. 210).

It is clear throughout the book that the story-telling (first layer) and historical analysis (second layer) of Roman, Medieval and Modern events in Europe are used to drive home the importance of the two components of the “causal equation” above.

The (explanatory) power of East Elbia

Quoting the Roman historian Tacitus on page 18, Hawes quickly reveals what he considers the “great lever of German history”: the uncertainty of how far east it actually stretches. The river Elbe is the focal point of Hawes’ historical narrative and argumentation:

In ancient times, the Elbe was where the Roman general Drusus in 9 BC ended his military conquest of Germania, allegedly because of a superstitious warning against venturing further east. In medieval times, the Elbe was to Charlemagne’s successors in East Frankia what the Rhine had been to Caesar: “It was a border you might be tempted to cross, but where the first priority was to simply hold against troublesome barbarians” (p. 38). In early modern times, after the devastating Thirty Years’ War, France was ascendant, and the countless tiny and disunited West German states between the Rhine and the Elbe were simply a useful buffer zone for the ambitions of the Prussian Hohenzollerns east of that mythical river. After the creation of Bismarck’s German Empire, the military caste of the Junkers east of the Elbe held the decisive sway in German politics. After WWI, it was especially voters east of the Elbe who voted for Hitler’s NSDAP. After the fall of the Berlin wall, the “real” Germany west of the Elbe has been taxed so as to subsidize Germany east of the Elbe. In recent years, it is especially Germans east of the Elbe who vote for Die Linke, for the neo-nazi NDP and for the Alternative für Deutschland, and who attack homes for asylum seekers.

Hawes puts forth these bold, “Elbe-centric” statements and causal links with great conviction. In Hawes’ view, Germany was not unified by Bismarck in 1871. Rather, the “real” Germany west of the Elbe, was conquered by Prussia (with the first part of this “conquest” being achieved at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 when Britain “foolishly” gave the Rhineland and Westphalia to Prussia in order to check potential French ambitions). The author traces the significant intra-German west-east differences and tensions in terms of religion, culture, economy and the attitude towards the state in the period 1871-1945. Thus, he convincingly argues that Germany was divided already before the post-WW2 iron curtain partitioning by the Allies. The logical conclusion for Hawes is that there was no genuine “reunification” in 1990, because East Elbia was never compatible with West Germany. Rather, it was Prussia haunting the “real Germany” west of the Elbe from beyond the grave.

The real “us” and the real “them”

Hawes’ conclusion and political recommendations are clearly tinted by a romantic vision for Germany and Europe that yearns for the Empires of Augustus, Charlemagne and Napoleon. The “real Germany” should be unshackled from the alien East Elbia as in the days of Roman Germania, Carolingian East Francia and Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine. Hawes naturally points out that the European Union had its beginnings in exactly this sort of neo-Carolingian geographical setup. West Germany should end its economic subsidization of East Germany and instead look to its “natural friends” to the west and south and, for instance, act as a “guarantor for some kind of Eurobond” (p. 224).

Though it can seem eyebrow-raising at first, Hawes is not alone to present this sort of analysis: That the east-west divide cuts across Europe and across Germany has also been eloquently formulated by Ivan Krastev (along with a good piece on the difference between western and eastern conservatism), among others.

Still, I am not convinced that labeling everything east of the Elbe as “them”, cutting the ties and looking inward for the comfort zone of a demographically doomed “us” in the West is the right answer. Using these pronouns is of course very awkward for me with my eastern genes and birthplace and western passport and coming-of-age. I do appreciate Hawes’ historical analysis of this important geographical divide, but is it the right lesson to draw from history? That some borders – like the Roman limes or the river Elbe – are destined to remain permanent? That only the naïve and the idealistic believe in erasing them and spreading “our” coveted “western values” beyond the realm of Charlemagne? Even Samuel Huntington was less pessimistic, at least drawing the inescapable civilizational fault line further east.

It is pertinent to ask if Europe really would have been in a better geopolitical and economic state if Germany had not been (re)unified and if the EU had not been enlarged to the east. Because that is the logical conclusion of Hawes’ argument. And though counterfactuals are very difficult to present and evaluate, I remain convinced that Europe as a whole has benefited from looking beyond the Elbe. The economic success of Poland as compared to Ukraine is impossible to divorce from the path to European integration, and even recent, worrying slides on the judicial front are being checked by the EU’s institutions. Because of the EU, many states in Eastern Europe (e.g. in the Baltics) have been better at embracing difficult economic and structural reforms than Germany’s more “natural friends” west of the Rhine and south of the Alps. Within the EU, the tensions between North and South are no less important than the ones between East and West. And the tensions between centre and periphery are felt everywhere. Hawes is silent on potential approachces to these devilishly difficult challenges for Europe beyond his wish that Germany “[…] must now be embraced, as what it was always meant to be: a mighty land at the very heart of the West.” (p. 226).

Sharp, short and sweet?

In the end, the concise format and parsimonious causal arguments of The Shortest History of Germany are both its greatest strengths and its biggest shortcomings. The main point is driven with force and precision already from Tacitus and all the way to Merkel. The text is not encumbered by “on one hand…and on the other…” discussions like the one I shortly delved into above.

I very much appreciated this approach. It made the book feel less like a tedious political science master thesis and more like an impactful essay. It is up to the reader to ask the critical questions and to discuss rather than outright accept all of the arguments and conclusions. And make no mistake, a critical mind is essential when reading Hawes’ book. I learned just as much from his points as from the questions he prompted me to ask (for instance, it is not quite certain that Sterling is derived from Hansa traders, as the Oxford Dictionary explicitly states). There is a lingering suspicion that the presentation of certain maps and figures are streamlined to underline the author’s points (see for instance the peculiar thresholds for the map above). But I don’t mind that an author is explicit about his purpose even if I end up disagreeing in the end.

Taking all of the above into consideration, I can highly recommend The Shortest History of Germany for anyone interested in European history, society and politics. It is a remarkable feat to produce something so accessible, so comprehensive and so thought-provoking that can easily be read in a single afternoon.

[D'Ailleurs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Η μικρή ιστορία της Γερμανίας η αλλιώς η μικρή ιστορία μιας εκ των σημαντικότερων ιστορικά Ευρωπαϊκών χωρών, ένα μικρό βιβλίο που προσπαθεί σε 330 σελίδες να εξηγήσει γιατί αυτός ο λαός μας ταλαιπωρεί τόσο. Αρκετά περιεκτικό με μια τίμια προσπάθεια αποστασιοποίησης και ουδετερότητας, δίνει κάποιες απαντήσεις για την επιθετικότητα και την ανάγκη χειραγώγησης των υπολοίπων Ευρωπαίων από τους Γερμανούς (spoiler alert: οι Πρώσσοι φταίνε για όλα). Αρκετά χρήσιμο για όσους θέλουν μια πρώτη αλλά περιεκτική εικόνα της Γερμανικής ιστορίας.

[Charlotte · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up the book in the English literature section of my local bookstore (to give it away immediately, I am German). My intention wasn't so much learning about my own countries history, I did so abundantly in school where I became an avid history nerd at some point and I would say that for a non-historian I do have a good grasp of German history. My intention was more so to learn of another perspective on certain historical aspects and this seemed promising, after all I like my own convictions to be challenged. However this book was an utter disappointment, more so the second half than the first. By the time the (hi)storytelling reaches the 19th century I was confused more than once about the simplifications and mere omittances of important historical facts and details that are crucial in order to understand German history. The most shocking and disappointing part was on first and second world war since, though sometimes these themes might be discussed extensively and to a point where people don't want to hear about it anymore this book gives it way too few pages of attention! The overall theme is that there is an ancient Germanic-Slavic divide running through Germany and that everything east of the river Elbe is evil, cold, calculated and nothing good can come from it. It is a Russia, Poland, GDR and Prussia bashing all in one...maybe because the author is British and therefore is foreign to the idea of a hotchpotch or patchwork rug of individual kingdoms and regions that characterised the area of modern Germany for the most part of its history and therefor was subject to shifting borders on the continent? I don't know what it is but in his bashing of everything East German and protestant, and praising everything Western and Catholic (edit: I grew up Catholic in Western Germany myself...) he fails to connect the dots right. Some of the points he raises aren't wrong but his interpretation is poor. I don't say this because I was expecting to read something I could agree on, as mentioned earlier, the intention was to be challenged by a different point of view, however I cannot take a point of view seriously that deliberately omits or twists historic facts to a degree that it is gut-wrenching.
Utter waste of time (as is maybe this review, but if it helps to prevent even one person from reading the book it's worth it).

[Paul Stevenson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Sh**test History of Germany paints with a very broad brush, and presents a particular view that is more of a personal thesis than a history. To some extent, that is really true of all histories, especially pop histories. Especially short ones. It started off promisingly enough, sketching out a picture of the Roman interactions with the peoples of Germania, and proceeding from there, keeping in mind the boundaries at the Roman time as a template through which to remember what passed before. By the time it gets near the present day, the idea of the east-west boundaries that existed at Roman times remains key to the author's thoughts, but now, with a dread lurch in my stomach, I realise that Hawes's argument includes a racial stereotyping that should long have stopped being voiced -- that those (Slavs) from the East are just in-built too different from the (much better) people from the West who are capable of "Western Civilisation", whatever that is (Hawes never says). It's actually a long book to come up with a trite conclusions that humans are not one race and some "races" are inferior and unchangeable. Well, there's that and the suggestion that protestants and catholics split along similar lines too (with catholics being the goodies).

How did the publishers manage to get positive quotes for the cover? Well, The Spectator, The Oldie, and some selected academics, okay. The best they could find from the Economist was "A must-read" which could mean many things. But Philip Pullman... Oh, Philip.

[cool breeze · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even Shorter History of Germany (according to Hawes): West Germans good; East Germans bad.

I think I am reasonably well read on history, but I have long had a nagging feeling that my knowledge was stronger with regard to English-speaking peoples than others. So, I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about German history in a relatively short 228-page book.

The book largely delivers on its promise of "2,000 years of history in one riveting afternoon". It is notably well written and lively, brisk reading. The author does a good job of making his arguments and makes unusually good use of quotes and visuals to emphasize his points. The book definitely gave me a better understanding of German history than I had before. If I were to ignore the author’s political point of view, I would rate is as four stars.

However, one can’t simply ignore the author’s point of view, which was apparently his reason for writing the book. He has a very definite point of view – pro-EU, pro-West-German, anti-East-German, anti-AfD, anti-Brexit and anti-Trump – but only states it explicitly in the concluding 8 pages. His views of the situation are even stronger than that, borderline moralistic, and could be paraphrased as follows:

Western and Southern Germans are good. They are the heirs of Romanized Catholic Germans –educated, talented, cultured, tolerant and hardworking. They are natural and welcome members of the European community. East Germans are bad. They are the Prussian/Slav Protestant heirs of barbarians - brutish, uncivilized, militaristic, intolerant, and parasitic. They are backwards outsiders ill-suited to being members of the European community.

So, Prussia is cast as Sparta (without a heroic Thermopylae) and the rest of Germany as Athens. Everything bad that has happened in German history was due to the “East Elbians”. The author has a hard time fitting the Nazis’ rise in southern Munich into his thesis, but he gamely attempts it and does a passable job, emphasizing their disproportionate voting strength in the East. He clearly thinks reunifying East Germany was a mistake, but it wasn’t clear to me what he wants to do with the East Germans. He would obviously like to kick them out of Germany and the EU, but he almost seems to be longing for a more “final solution”.

It is difficult for me to say how much the author’s views biased his presentation of factual German history. It would probably require reading a different book on German history by an author with contrary or neutral views to get a better perspective. The top three reviews on goodreads, which are detailed and articulate, say it is “dishonest”, “propaganda”, “a mess”, and all give it the lowest rating. I tentatively think that this book was factual enough that I benefited from reading it, but I feel obligated to lower my rating to 3 stars because of the book’s clear political agenda.

It was nevertheless interesting to have read a book and found it well-written and worthwhile, even while not agreeing with the author’s viewpoint. It is regrettably common to encounter books whose writing and reasoning are mediocre or worse, even if one agrees with their viewpoint and conclusions.

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eines muss man dem Author lassen: noch nie habe ich eine so lange Rezension geschrieben und es gehört eine Menge Selbstbewusstsein dazu, ein Buch über ein Thema zu schreiben, von dem man so wenig Ahnung hat.
Nicht viele Bücher schaffen es, das ich auf der zweiten Seite die geistige Verfassung des Authors in Frage stelle.
Dabei gibt der Buchrücken dies eigentlich schon vor: wenn die nettesten Worte, die Rezensenten gefunden haben, „ambitioniert“ und „meinungsstark“ sind, wäre schon abzusehen gewesen, worauf es hinausläuft.
Geprägt wird das Buch von teilweise wirren oder schlichtweg falschen Gedankengängen, wenn beispielsweise zunächst behauptet wird, Marius von der Lubbe habe den Reichstag angezündet, nur um danach einzugestehen, dass dies gar nicht gesichert ist und mit „wie auch immer der Brand ausgelöst wurde“ weiterargumentiert wird.
Im Schlusskapitel verliert der Author leider vollends den Bezug zur Realität und plädiert für eine neue Teilung von Ost- und Westdeutschland (???).
Den einen Stern nicht wert.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an impulse buy, and I’m a bit of a sucker for short histories (let alone “the shortest history” - how could I resist?). The Observer calls it “sweeping and confident” and the New European calls it “authoritative.” I’d have to disagree with the New European assessment, although add “overconfident” to the Observer’s characterisation and it’s pretty much spot-on. What Hawes has to say about Hegel and Marx is pure nonsense, and it seems a little too neat that we can simply blame Protestantism for the sins of what we now know as “Germany.” The strength of the book is how it underscores how contingent Germany is as a country, and how difficult/problematic/arbitrary it is to speak of nation-states in the context of German-speaking Europe. As a reference text for sorting out dates and chronology over the span of approximately 2,500 years in a mere 227 pages, I think it does a pretty good job.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I saw this book, I saw it as an opportunity to learn more about the history of Germany. Disappointment set in almost from the moment I opened the book. Non-existent documentation, an overly familiar writing style, and blatant political bias plagued the account. In a small book such as this, one expects superficial treatment; however, the author's biases seem to drive what he glosses over and what he treats more in-depth. The author needs to return to writing fiction and refrain from non-fiction unless he plans to document his work and ignore his own biases. I received an advance electronic copy through NetGalley with the expectation of an honest review. The book's index was not included in the version I read.

[Belinda Carvalho · Rating 1 out of 5]

Welllllllllllllllllllllll...where to start with this book. I got off to quite a bad start with this. I bought it as a Kindle edition, I genuinely thought it was going to be a short bite-sized book that I could use to brush up on my Germany history. Unfortunatley this wasn't to be , as this book is compeletely revisionist and falls into an opinion-based view on real events that have been put through James Hawes mind an emerge bearing little resemblance to reality and actual history.
Have you ever read the historical sections on the royals that the Mail on Sunday does? This is the approach that has been taken in this entire book.
That's not to say that there weren't interesting sections, interesting facts or that it isn't an overall entertaining read in parts, it's just not correct and the way it has been titled and marketed is particularly dangerous for readers who don't know anything about Germany and may not know that this is not correct. I frequently found myself wondering what is the story with the publishing house that put this out?
The writer has a thesis..and this is that Prussians and Saxons are the 'bad Germans', responsible for all the probelsm in Germany's history. West germans are the 'good Germans'. Germany definitely has issues but this analysis is compeltely false.

[Emma Bridger · Rating 1 out of 5]

“Dangerous rubbish” - as put by another reviewer - is so apt for this book. It starts off enjoyable and I thought I was going to learn some things. Then all Hawes’ biases start to seep through and pile up and it turns into a real polemic. Dude has an agenda and it is rabidly pro-west and anti “Prussia”. There is no room for nuance here. And there is no way this should be filed under history- it is propaganda.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t tend to read much non-fiction, but as this was one of Waterstones ‘books of the month’ and Germany is one of my favourite countries that I’ve visited - this book was an instant purchase.

It’s a fascinating bite size read, the author covers 2000 years in just over 200 pages.

It’s certainly wetted my appetite to read more on the subject.

[Radiantflux · Rating 3 out of 5]

95th book for 2018.

Interesting polemical essay, arguing that the recent rise of neo-nazism in East Germany is nothing new, and that there are really two Germanys, one east and one west of the Elbe, that have existed since Roman times. I am not sure I buy all the arguments, but an enjoyable and provocative read.

3-stars.

[Udit Nair · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's impossible to provide any sort of history of a nation in 220 odd pages. This warrants some generalizations which might not be factually true or historically appropriate. Either ways it's a nice attempt to briefly go through different set of events which dominated this region. It would have been better if it was just historical overlook and not generalizations /opinions of the author.