Newsletter: a bit of history goes a long ways ...

Some of the lessons embedded in 227 pages of German history ...

The following is the first history “Cheat Sheet” I have posted in quite a while. It is very much a teacher’s set of notes and reflections and may not be your cup of tea. It is based on a recent reading of James Hawes bestselling The Shortest History of Germany. It is short – 227 pages. It is imaginatively illustrated and is written in an often humorous and always lucid style. Filled with information, it is FUN to read even if you are not a history geek. Further, it brings into focus the history of a people (their origins, wars, empires (Reichs) and beliefs) who have rattled world history not just in the terrible 20^th century but all the way back to a world run by the greatest of Europe’s empires … Rome. Hawes is riding the wave of “short” histories that began about ten years ago. I read a version about Russia which I wrote enthusiastically about. There are ones for all subjects and not just history. It is important to do a little research before committing to one since they can be a bit too reductionist. I also worry about the ability for AI to spit this type of thing out. (HOLD HARMLESS: This is not at all an effort to abridge the book. The notes are more ruminations than a summation and have no order to them.)

· Charlemagne’s empire in 800 AD was the First Reich in the historical narrative of the German peoples. The myth of Charlemagne is rooted in the dream of German unification - a close relative to nationalism. Her post-Charlemagne history is the story of all the forces that kept her divided. While France, England, Spain and even Russia developed various versions of political structures that fed their national character, Germany was in a constant state of flux. When England was violently stitched together by the Norman invasion of 1066, the First Reich of Charlemagne had become a distant memory and the collection of wholly independent princely states known as the Holy Roman Empire was taking shape and ensuring political fragmentation for 800 years. When Spain was consolidated by Ferdinand & Isabel in 1492, Germany was a diplomatic and religious playing ground that would have its horrifying expression in one of the world’s most violent struggles, the Thirty Years War. From 1618 to 1648, up to 40% of the German population would die as the various princely states of the Empire would either fight each other or be used as proxies most directly by the Spanish and French but even by Sweden, Britain and the Ottoman Empire. The closest Germany came to unification was when the newly minted Napoleonic empire occupied her many regions and implemented a benevolent campaign of reform that led to many Germans hoping that Napoleon would remain. As the modern world began to take shape in the 19^th century, the remaining states of Germany, dominated now by Prussia, would still be a minority partner in the power games of the maturing empires in France, Russia, Austria and England. Though Bismark would almost single-handedly create a German state by defeating Austria then France while reluctantly absorbing the hated Catholic provinces of southern Germany, his national version of a unified Germany was, in fact, nothing more than a pan- PRUSSIAN state (see below). It would be that Prussian state that would lead the German people into the tragedy of WWI. The fact is that the first man to truly unify ALL of Germany was Hitler. Germany’s dark place at the heart of two terrible world wars and the horrors triggered by each, was, in no small part, the apocalyptic culmination of an 1100-year search for unification. The ironies only continue as her 20^th century world war sins led to her further bifurcation during the Cold War. Today, within the embrace of a 21^st century version of Charlemagne’s empire (the European Union), she finally stands, albeit a bit shakenly, united.

· Once again, geography is … fate, history, destiny … take your choice. The Northern European Plain that runs from the Low Countries to the Urals has irresistibly shaped the histories of the countries that lie within it: the north of France, central and northern Germany, all of Poland, Ukraine and the vastness of western Russia. Without a great mountain range or expansive sea to block their advances, the hordes from the steppes of Asia ranging from the Hun to the Mongols swept unimpeded through much of the Plain. Russian history is nearly unintelligible without understanding the Golden Hordes terrorizing her in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. Poland’s long history contains barely 200 years of independence as the Germans, Russians, Austrians and Swedes take turns dividing up her boundary free expanse. Ukraine, despite a late 20^th century flirtation with geographic independence was always being carved up by her powerful neighbors as so tragically evidenced by the most recent example. For Germany, the EAST was Catholic Poland and the huge presence of the ever-expanding Russia and her millions of Slavs. For almost 1200 years, the river Elbe, where pointedly the Soviet and American troops met at the end of WWII, was the great divide between the Germans and her eastern neighbors. The great plain running from the Elbe to the Urals via Poland, Ukraine and western Russia was, in many respects, for Germans what the West was for Americans – a vast land occupied by, in their mind, inferior but threatening people. Hitler’s popularity was rooted in several tenants ranging from German unification to racial purity; however, the idea of the eastern plains being the Lebensraum destined for German occupation and settlement was the most compelling and romantic. This Germanic version of our agrarian myth provided not only the emotional justification for his ill-fated invasion of the Soviet Union but was a central thesis in Hitler’s Mein Kampf written 16 years before Operation Barbarossa. As he confessed in his infamous book, America’s ruthless expansion West, her Manifest Destiny, was his model for a greater Germany.

· Modern Germany’s Founding Father was Otto Von Bismark. A tall, imposing and ruthless Prussian, Bismark would stitch together the outlines of modern Germany through war and diplomacy. Such is the traditional narrative. James Hawes’ history draws a very different and revealing conclusion. Bismark never wanted a unified Germany that combined his beloved Prussian north with the Catholic south. His goal was a greater Prussian state with secure borders, a military culture and a low wage, highly productive industrial base. Most importantly, he sought the Prussian ideal of an authoritarian Protestant only state with the hated Catholics of the south (e.g. Bavaria) with their Austrian sympathies and the equally despised Catholic and Slav peoples of Poland and the East all kept at arm’s length. His diplomatic brilliance fell short of this goal, and he was eventually forced to incorporate the despised Catholics and even go so far as to sign a treaty with Austria to secure his new Germany. This was a compromise that upset all parties. This was not the celebratory unification of the long-fragmented Germany. Instead, it was newly emerged modern state dominated by a militaristic Prussian minority that would lay the foundations for Germany’s role in WWI. The Kaiser was from a Prussian royal family. The military was run by Prussians. The large corporations were run by Prussians. The German juggernaut of 1900 was very much the product of a Prussian minority.

The role of the organized minority in modern history is both instructive and disturbing. While our Founding Fathers were fearful of tyranny from either the Executive Branch or from the rule of the majority, they clearly did not foresee the ability of an organized minority, like the Slave Power South, to consolidate power at the expense of the majority. A tiny minority of Bolsheviks would seize control of Russia and rewrite history. Though he would eventually receive the support of most Germans, Hitler’s Nazi party origins were that of an extreme minority amidst the great political confusion of the Weimar Republic. Arguably, a conservative minority has controlled Israel for over two decades. In our backyard, there is MAGA, a minority of no more than 30% of Americans, that is threatening America and the world with its toxic agenda. Even in an era of unlimited access to information and opinion, the greatest political threat is too often the vulnerability of a distracted, indifferent or fragmented majority to the concentrated, single-minded will of a determined or threatened minority.

NOTE: these minorities usually require another minority group to operate as the scapegoat to fuel their ferocious loyalties. When Bismark cut his deal with the German south and latter Austria, he lost his very effective Catholic scapegoat. He and his ultra-Protestant (mostly Lutheran) Prussian cohort immediately substituted the Jews for the Catholics, igniting an antisemitism that would forever scar Germany.

· The largest employer in the world in 1913 was the German (Prussian) railroad system. The German industrial worker worked the longest hours in Europe for low wages in return for health care and job security. Though not at all the same, the similarities with China’s 21^st century model are striking.

· In 1914, it was clear that Germany would surpass Britain industrially. Her steel provided the armor for the Royal Navy and her technology was cutting edge. Britain both feared and profited from Germany’s growing economic might and this paradox (a version of Thucydides trap) mirrors America’s current relationship with China.

· World War One did not end on November 11^th, 1918. Whole divisions of Prussian led soldiers continued fighting the despised Poles for months after the Armistice and their veteran remnants would form the core of the first ultra-right party in post war Germany. Poland was despised not only for its Catholicism but, in the minds of the Prussians, as the “womb” of Europe’s Jews. Several years after the Versailles Treaty, Prussian militarists would skirt the armament restrictions by developing an arms industry in the Soviet Union. This cooperation with the dreaded Slavs would lay the groundwork for Hitler’s notorious 1939 pact with the Soviet Union that gave him the green light to conquer, destroy and depopulate Poland … the goal of Germany since the Teutonic Knights in 1410.

· It was hard not to compare the long-standing split between the eastern Germany of strict Lutheran Protestants, the Teutonic Knights, Prussia, the Kaiser and the post WWII GDR and the western Germany with its Roman roots, its Catholic and religious diversity and its French influence with the split between much of America and the South. With the rise of a Vance supported hard right, Germany today remains haunted by its two halves. MAGA is, likewise, the modern crude return of the Anti-Federalists, the reincarnation of the Civil War without the obvious spark of slavery, and the dangerous overreach of anti-communism. In the case of America, our vast and protected geography absorbed our terrible differences until technology began to erase space. Geography, however, only exasperated Germany’s differences allowing for external and internal trafficking of conflicting ideas and peoples. Clearly, much of this is a bit of a stretch, but the fun of a book like this is that it provokes such comparisons. It allows you to conjure up the rhymes of history

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