Germany

All the Nazi leaders had a talent for self-dramatisation. None was more enamoured of the role he had chosen than Heinrich Himmler.

After a reign of forty-eight years, Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, left behind him in 1688 a military and bureaucratic system that endured until 1945. F.L. Carsten describes how it was the army he had founded that accomplished, in 1871, the triumphant unification of the German Empire and fought the battles of the Third Reich.

East Germans recall their experiences 25 years after the DDR’s slow death.

Roger Moorhouse tells the story of the Lützow, a partly built German cruiser delivered to the Soviet Union in 1940 and renamed the Petropavlovsk, following the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939.

The German Progressive Party was founded in 1861, writes F.L. Carsten, but “the Liberals desired the unification of Germany so ardently that they were willing to forego their political ambitions when Bismarck gained unification at the point of the sword.”

A man of letters in the German struggle against Napoleon, writes Douglas Hilt, August Wilhelm von Schlegel had many French connexions and is a renowned translator both of Shakespeare and Sanskrit writings.

As a minister in the German cabinets of 1921-2, writes David Felix, Rathenau faced formidable problems of post-war reconstruction.

During the opening years of the twentieth century, writes I.F. Clarke, many fantastic forecasts of the coming World War aroused widespread interest and alarm.

In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, writes William Verity, the enterprising family of merchant bankers expanded their activities from Frankfurt to London and Paris.

Elizabeth Wiskemann describes how Hitler ruthlessly consolidated his power in Germany by the slaughter of some of his closest former colleagues.