In my last post, I noted how I’d set about to reading Eric Cline’s 1177 B.C. Ah, but the best laid plans of mice and men and all that. I stopped a couple of chapters in to pick up Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s The German Empire: 1871-1918. Wehler takes a very straight line approach from Bismarck to …
Tag Archives: Germany
Strategic Bombing: A Moral Hazard?
To say that the Allied campaign of “strategic bombing” during World War II was controversial is ans understatement. With the exception of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it might be the single most debated purely military aspect of the war. While the initial reactions to the strategic bombings of Germany might have been …
Did Germany Actually Win the War?
My post for this week is inspired by the following quotation, which I read only two days ago for the first time. It surprised me at first and then struck me as somewhat perceptive. Now, however, I see the authors as having emphasized Germany’s “victory” too much: In strategic terms Germany had won the Great …
Political Destabilization in WWI Germany
It is axiomatic that World War I had tremendous impacts on Germany, and these effects were political, economic, and social. These effects were, to a very large extent, interrelated, since economic causes often underpin political and social changes. However, in terms of the long-term effects of the changes wrought by Germany’s involved in WWI, I …
Hasty Mobilization in World War I
For Germany, a hard-learned lesson of the first year of the war was that how it interpreted the act of military mobilization was not the same as other nations’ interpretations. As a result of this assumption, Germany declared war on Russia although it is not clear that Russia undertook mobilization for reasons other than preparedness …
Colonialism During the Belle Époque
Here’s my first forum post from the next course: Modern European History. ===== The popular militarism of the Belle Époque is broadly expressed in cultural texts from the period. For the readings for the week, this militarism is expressed within the context of colonialism, but more specifically, the readings provide hints of the conflicts that …
Inevitable Historicity 