(, "special path") refers to the theory in

German historiography The historiography of Germany deals with the manner in which historians have depicted, analyzed and debated the history of Germany. It also covers the popular memory of critical historical events, ideas and leaders, as well as the depiction of thos ...

that considers the

German-speaking lands This article details the geographical distribution of speakers of the German language, regardless of the legislative status within the countries where it is spoken. In addition to the German-speaking area (german: Deutscher Sprachraum) in Europe, ...

or the country of

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

itself to have followed a course from

aristocracy Aristocracy (, ) is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocracy (class), aristocrats. The term derives from the el, αριστοκρατία (), meaning 'rule of the best'. At t ...

democracy Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...

unlike any other in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

. The modern school of thought by that name arose early during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

as a consequence of the rise of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. In consequence of the scale of the devastation wrought on Europe by Nazi Germany, the theory of

German history The Germani tribes i.e. Germanic tribes are now considered to be related to the Jastorf culture before expanding and interacting with the other peoples. The concept of a region for Germanic tribes is traced to time of Julius Caesar, a Roman gen ...

has progressively gained a following inside and outside Germany, especially since the late 1960s. In particular, its proponents argue that the way Germany developed over the centuries virtually ensured the evolution of a social and political order along the lines of Nazi Germany. In their view, German mentalities, the structure of society, and institutional developments followed a different course in comparison with the other nations of the West. The German historian

Heinrich August Winkler Heinrich August Winkler (born 19 December 1938 in Königsberg) is a German historian. With his mother he joined the westward flight in 1944, after which he grew up in southern Germany, attending a Gymnasium in Ulm. He then studied history, pol ...

wrote about the question of there being a :

19th century

The term was first used by German conservatives in the imperial period, starting in the late 19th century as a source of pride at the "Golden Mean" of governance that in their view had been attained by the German state, whose distinctiveness as an

authoritarian Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic votin ...

state lay in taking the initiative in instituting social reforms, imposing them without waiting to be pressured by demands "from below". This type of authoritarianism was seen to be avoiding both the autocracy of

Imperial Russia The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...

and what they regarded as the weak, decadent and ineffective democratic governments of Britain and France.Hinde, John "Sonderweg" pages 934–935 from ''Modern Germany An Encyclopedia of History, People and Culture 1871–1990'' edited by Dieter Buse and Juergen Doerr Volume 2, New York: Garland Publishing, 1998 page 935. The idea of Germany as a great Central European power, neither of the West nor of the East was to be a recurring feature of right-wing German thought right up to 1945. Historian

Hans-Ulrich Wehler Hans-Ulrich Wehler (September 11, 1931 – July 5, 2014) was a German left-liberal historian known for his role in promoting social history through the " Bielefeld School", and for his critical studies of 19th-century Germany. Life Wehler was bo ...

of the

Bielefeld School The Bielefeld School is a group of German historians based originally at Bielefeld University who promote social history and political history using quantification and the methods of political science and sociology.Lorenz, Chris "Wehler, Hans-Ul ...

places the origins of Germany's path to disaster in the 1860s and 1870s, when economic

modernization Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and a partial reading of Max Weber, ...

took place, but political modernization did not happen and the old Prussian rural elite remained in firm control of the army, diplomacy and the civil service. Traditional, aristocratic, premodern society battled an emerging capitalist, bourgeois, modernizing society. Recognizing the importance of modernizing forces in industry and the economy and in the cultural realm, Wehler argues that reactionary traditionalism dominated the political hierarchy of power in Germany, as well as social mentalities and in class relations ().

20th century

During World War II

occupation of Czechoslovakia Occupation commonly refers to: *Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment *Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, th ...

in March 1939 and its invasion of Poland in September 1939 (the latter invasion immediately drawing France and Britain into

) provoked the drive to explain the phenomenon of Nazi Germany. In 1940,

Sebastian Haffner Raimund Pretzel (27 December 1907 – 2 January 1999), better known by his pseudonym Sebastian Haffner, was a German journalist and historian. As an émigré in Britain during World War II, Haffner argued that accommodation was impossible not on ...

, a German émigré living in Britain, published ''Germany: Jekyll and Hyde'', in which he argued it was

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

alone, by the force of his peculiar personality, who had brought about Nazi Germany. In 1941, the British diplomat Robert Vansittart published ''The Black Record: Germans Past And Present'', according to which Nazism was only the latest manifestation of what Vansittart argued were the exclusively German traits of

aggressiveness Aggression is overt or covert, often harmful, social interaction with the intention of inflicting damage or other harm upon another individual; although it can be channeled into creative and practical outlets for some. It may occur either reacti ...

and brutality. Other books with a thesis similar to Vansittart's were

Rohan Butler Rohan D'Olier Butler (21 January 1917 - 30 October 1996) was an English historian and civil servant. Butler worked on the multi-volume ''Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939''. He was an editor (1945–54) under Sir Llewellyn Woodward, ...

's '' The Roots of National Socialism'' (1941) and

William Montgomery McGovern William Montgomery McGovern (September 28, 1897 – December 12, 1964) was an American adventurer, political scientist, Northwestern University professor, anthropologist and journalist. He was a possible inspiration for the character of Indiana Jon ...

's '' From Luther to Hitler: The History of Nazi-Fascist Philosophy'' (1946).

Early postwar period

After Germany's defeat in World War II in 1945, the term lost its positive connotations from the 19th century and acquired its present negative meaning. There was much debate about the origins of this "German catastrophe" (as the German historian Meinecke titled his 1946 book) of Nazi Germany's rise and fall. Since then, scholars have examined developments in

intellectual An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or a ...

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

economic An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...

and

cultural history Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and history to examine popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past matter, encompassing the ...

to investigate why German

failed during the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...

and which factors led to the rise of

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

. In the 1960s, many historians concluded that the failure of Germany to develop firm democratic institutions in the 19th century had been decisive for the failure of the Weimar Republic in the 20th century. Until the mid-1960s, the debate was polarized with most non-German participants at one pole and German participants at the other. Historians like

Léon Poliakov Léon Poliakov (russian: Лев Поляков; 25 November 1910, Saint Petersburg – 8 December 1997, Orsay) was a French historian who wrote extensively on the Holocaust and antisemitism and wrote ''The Aryan Myth''. Born into a Russian Jewi ...

A. J. P. Taylor Alan John Percivale Taylor (25 March 1906 – 7 September 1990) was a British historian who specialised in 19th- and 20th-century European diplomacy. Both a journalist and a broadcaster, he became well known to millions through his televis ...

, and Sir

Lewis Bernstein Namier Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier (; 27 June 1888 – 19 August 1960) was a British historian of Polish-Jewish background. His best-known works were '' The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III'' (1929), ''England in the Age of the Amer ...

, echoed by journalists like the American

William L. Shirer William Lawrence Shirer (; February 23, 1904 – December 28, 1993) was an American journalist and war correspondent. He wrote ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'', a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly w ...

, portrayed Nazism as the inevitable result of German history, reflecting unique flaws in "German national character" that went back to the days of

Martin Luther Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Reformation, Protestant Refo ...

, if not earlier. During the Raleigh Lecture on History in 1944, Namier stated that the German liberals in the

Revolution of 1848 The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in Europea ...

were "in reality forerunners of Hitler", whose views about the Poles and Czechs presaged the great international crises of 1938–39, and called the 1848 revolution "a touchstone of German mentality and a decisive element in East-European politics" In his lecture, Namier described the 1848 revolution as "the early manifestations of aggressive nationalism, especially of German nationalism which derives from the much belauded Frankfort Parliament rather than from Bismarck and "

Prussianism Prussianism comprises the practices and doctrines of the Prussians, specifically the militarism and the severe discipline traditionally associated with the Prussian ruling class. History Prussianism had its origins with the rise to the thron ...

". Namier concluded "had not Hitler and his associates blindly accepted the legend which latter-day liberals, German and foreign had spun around 1848, they might well have found a great deal to extol in the of the Frankfort Assembly". Taylor wrote in his 1945 book ''

The Course of German History ''The Course of German History'' is a non-fiction book by the English historian A. J. P. Taylor. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Hamish Hamilton in July 1945. Origins In a review of G. P. Gooch's ''Studies in Diplomacy and Statec ...

'' that the Nazi regime "represented the deepest wishes of the German people", and that it was the first and only German government created by the Germans as the

Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire was a Polity, political entity in Western Europe, Western, Central Europe, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, dissolution i ...

had been created by France and Austria, the

German Confederation The German Confederation (german: Deutscher Bund, ) was an association of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe. It was created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as a replacement of the former Holy Roman Empire, w ...

by Austria and Prussia and the

by the Allies.Taylor, A.J.P. ''The Course of German History'', Hamish Hamilton 1945 page 213. By contrast, Taylor argued "But the Third Reich rested solely on German force and impulse; it owed nothing to alien forces. It was a tyranny imposed upon the German people by themselves". Taylor argued that Nazism was inevitable because the Germans wanted "to repudiate the equality with the peoples of eastern Europe which had then been forced upon them" after 1918. Taylor wrote that:

During the preceding eighty years the Germans had sacrificed to the all their liberties; they demanded as a reward the enslavement of others. No German recognized the Czechs or Poles as equals. Therefore, every German desired the achievement which only total war could give. By no other means could the ''Reich'' be held together. It had been made by conquest and for conquest; if it ever gave up its career of conquest, it would dissolve.

The American historian

Peter Viereck Peter Robert Edwin Viereck (August 5, 1916 – May 13, 2006) was an American poet and professor of history at Mount Holyoke College. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1949 for the collection ''Terror and Decorum''.National Liberal Party. Only an honorable few continued to oppose him and the militarist success-worship that followed his victorious wars.Hamerow, Theodore "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53–72 from ''The American Historical Review'', 1983 page 56. Shirer in his 1960 book ''

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany'' is a book by American journalist William L. Shirer in which the author chronicles the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1889 to the end of World Wa ...

'' argued for the view that German history proceeded logically from "Luther to Hitler","The notion that 'rectitude and authenticity ereintegrally German attributes in contrast to Roman or Latin influences which were degrading' held to have originated with Luther developed with German Romanticism in the 19th Century and culminated with National Socialism." Johnson 2001 seeing Hitler's rise to power as an expression of German character, rather than of the international phenomenon of totalitarianism. Shirer encapsulated this view with the passage, "...the course of German history... made blind obedience to temporal rulers the highest virtue of Germanic man and put a premium on servility." The French historian Edmond Vermeil wrote in his 1952 book ("Contemporary Germany") that Nazi Germany was not "a purely adventitious episode appearing on the fringes of the German tradition" Instead, Vermeil contended that German nationalism had an especially aggressive character, which had been restrained only by Bismarck. After Bismarck's departure in 1890, Vermeil wrote "It was after his fall, under William II, that this nationalism, breaking all barriers and escaping from the grip of a weak government, gave rise to a state of mind and a general situation that we have to analyze, for otherwise Nazism with its momentary triumphs and its terrible collapse will remain incomprehensible". Vermeil concluded that Germany will remain on a separate path, "always placing the spirit of its implacable technical discipline at the service of those visions of the future that its eternal romanticism begets". Poliakov wrote that even if not all Germans supported the Holocaust, it was "tacitly accepted by the popular will" In contrast, German historians such as

Friedrich Meinecke Friedrich Meinecke (October 20, 1862 – February 6, 1954) was a German historian, with national liberal and anti-Semitic views, who supported the Nazi invasion of Poland. After World War II, as a representative of an older tradition, he criti ...

Hans Rothfels Hans Rothfels (12 April 1891 – 22 June 1976) was a German nationalist conservative historian. He supported an idea of authoritarian German state, dominance of Germany over Europe and was hostile to Germany's eastern neighbours. After his appli ...

, and

Gerhard Ritter Gerhard Georg Bernhard Ritter (6 April 1888, in Bad Sooden-Allendorf – 1 July 1967, in Freiburg) was a nationalist-conservative German historian, who served as a professor of history at the University of Freiburg from 1925 to 1956. He studied u ...

, joined by a few non-German historians such as

Pieter Geyl Pieter Catharinus Arie Geyl (15 December 1887, Dordrecht – 31 December 1966, Utrecht) was a Dutch historian, well known for his studies in early modern Dutch history and in historiography. Background Geyl was born in Dordrecht and graduated ...

, contended that the Nazi period had no relationship to earlier periods of German history, and that German traditions were at sharp variance with the totalitarianism of the Nazi movement. Meinecke famously described Nazism in his 1946 book ("The German Catastrophe") as a particularly unfortunate ("on-the-job accident") of history. Although opposed to what they regarded as Meinecke's excessively defensive tone, Ritter and Rothfels have been joined by their intellectual heirs

Klaus Hildebrand Klaus Hildebrand (born 18 November 1941, Bielefeld, Germany) is a German liberal-conservative historian whose area of expertise is 19th–20th-century German political and military history. Biography Hildebrand is an intentionalist on the ori ...

Karl Dietrich Bracher Karl Dietrich Bracher (13 March 1922 – 19 September 2016) was a German political scientist and historian of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Born in Stuttgart, Bracher was awarded a Ph.D. in the classics by the University of Tübingen in 1 ...

, and

Henry Ashby Turner Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. (April 4, 1932 – December 17, 2008) was an American historian of Germany who was a professor at Yale University for over forty years. He is best known for his book ''German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler'' (1985) ...

in contending that though the Nazi dictatorship was rooted in the German past, it was individual choices made during the later Weimar years that led to the Nazi years. Though Bracher is opposed to the interpretation of German history, he does believe in a special German mentality () that emerged in the late 18th century.Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'', New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997 page 201. Bracher wrote that:

The German "" should be limited to the era of the Third Reich, but the strength of the particular German mentality [] that had arisen already with its opposition to the French Revolution and grew stronger after 1870 and 1918 must be emphasized. Out of its exaggerated perspectives (and, I would add, rhetoric) it become a power in politics, out of a mythic reality. The road from democracy to dictatorship was not a particular German case, but the radical nature of the National Socialist dictatorship corresponded to the power of the German ideology that in 1933–1945 became a political and totalitarian reality

In a 1983 speech, Hildebrand denied there had been a , and claimed that the only applied to the "special case" of the Nazi dictatorshipWinkler, Heinrich August "Eternally in the Shadow of Hitler" pages 171–176 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1993 page 174 In a 1984 essay, Hildebrand went further and wrote:

It remains to be seen, whether future scholarship will initiate a process of historicization of the Hitler period, for example by comparing it with Stalinist Russia and with examples such as the Stone Age Communism of Cambodia. This would doubtless be accompanied by terrifying scholarly insights and painful human experiences. Both phenomena could, , even relativize the concept of the German between 1933 and 1945

In response,

argued that there was a before 1933, and that Germany as a country deeply influenced by the Enlightenment meant there was no point of comparison between Hitler on one hand, and Pol Pot and Stalin on the other

Since the mid-1960s

Starting in the 1960s, historians such as

Fritz Fischer Fritz Fischer (5 March 1908 – 1 December 1999) was a German historian best known for his analysis of the causes of World War I. In the early 1960s Fischer advanced the controversial thesis at the time that responsibility for the outbreak of the ...

and

argued that, unlike France and Britain, Germany had experienced only "partial modernization", in which

industrialization Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econo ...

was not followed by changes in the political and social spheres, which in the opinion of Fischer and Wehler continued to be dominated by a "pre-modern" aristocratic elite. In the opinion of the proponents of the thesis, the crucial turning point was the

, when German liberals failed to seize power and consequently either

emigrated Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere (to permanently leave a country). Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another (to permanentl ...

or chose to resign themselves to being ruled by a reactionary elite, living in a society that taught its children obedience, glorification of

militarism Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mili ...

, and pride in a very complex notion of German culture. During the latter half of the German Empire, from about 1890 to 1918, this pride, they argued, developed into

hubris Hubris (; ), or less frequently hybris (), describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance. The term ''arrogance'' comes from the Latin ', mean ...

. Since 1950, historians such as Fischer, Wehler, and

Hans Mommsen Hans Mommsen (5 November 1930 – 5 November 2015) was a German historian, known for his studies in German social history, and for his functionalist interpretation of the Third Reich, especially for arguing that Adolf Hitler was a weak dictator. ...

have drawn a harsh indictment of the German elite of the period 1870–1945, who were accused of promoting authoritarian values, being solely responsible for launching

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, sabotaging the democratic Weimar Republic, and aiding and abetting the Nazi dictatorship in internal repression, war, and genocide. In the view of Wehler, Fischer, and their supporters, only the German defeat in 1945 put an end to the "premodern" social structure which had led to and then sustained traditional German authoritarianism and its more radical variant, National Socialism. Wehler has asserted that the effects of the traditional power elite in maintaining power up to 1945 "and in many respects even beyond that" took the form of:

a penchant for authoritarian politics; a hostility toward democracy in the educational and party system; the influence of preindustrial leadership groups, values and ideas; the tenacity of German state ideology; the myth of the bureaucracy; the superimposition of caste tendencies and class distinctions; and the manipulation of political antisemitism.

Another version of the thesis emerged in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in the 1950s–1960s, when historians such as

Fritz Stern Fritz Richard Stern (February 2, 1926 – May 18, 2016) was a German-born American historian of German history, Jewish history and historiography. He was a University Professor and a provost at New York's Columbia University. His work focused o ...

and

George Mosse Gerhard "George" Lachmann Mosse (September 20, 1918 – January 22, 1999) was an American historian, who emigrated from Nazi Germany first to Great Britain and then to the United States. He was professor of history at the University of Iowa, the ...

examined ideas and culture in 19th-century Germany, especially those of the virulently anti-Semitic movement. Mosse and Stern both concluded that the intellectual and cultural elites in Germany by and large chose to consciously reject modernity and along with it those groups they identified with modernity, such as Jews, and embraced

anti-Semitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

as the basis for their (world-view). However, in recent years, Stern has abandoned his conclusion and now argues against the thesis, holding the views of the movement to be a mere "dark undercurrent" in Imperial Germany. In 1990,

Jürgen Kocka Professor Emeritus Jürgen Kocka (born 19 April 1941 in Haindorf, Sudetenland) is a German historian. A university professor and former president of the Social Science Research Center Berlin (2001–2007), Kocka is a major figure in the new ...

wrote about the s theories:

Yet, at the same time, researches looked back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to uncover the deeper roots of the Third Reich. Through comparisons with England, France, the United States, or simply "the West", they attempted to identify the peculiarities of Germany history, those structures and processes, experiences, and turning points, which while they may not have led directly to National Socialism, nevertheless hindered the long term development of liberal democracy in Germany and eventually facilitated the triumph of fascism. Many authors made various contributions to the elaboration of this argument, usually without actually using the word .

Helmuth Plessner, for example, spoke of the "belated nation" (), the delayed creation of a nation-state from above. Other historians have argued that nationalism played an especially aggressive, precociously right-wing destructive role during the Second Empire. Ernst Fraenkel, the young

, Gerhard A. Ritter, M. Rainer Lepsius, and others identified powerful long-term weaknesses in the Empire's system of government: the blocked development of parliamentarianism, the severely fragmented system of parties that resembled self-contained blocks, and other factors that later burdened Weimar and contributed to its breakdown. Leonard Krieger,

and Kurt Sontheimer emphasized the illiberal, antipluralistic elements in German political culture upon which National Socialist ideas could later build.

Hans Rosenberg Hans Rosenberg (February 26, 1904–June 26, 1988) was a German refugee historian whose works influenced a whole generation of post-war German scholars. Life Rosenberg was born in Hannover. Though of Jewish ancestry, he was raised as a Protes ...

and others argued that preindustrial elites, especially the east Elbian landowners (the ''

Junker Junker ( da, Junker, german: Junker, nl, Jonkheer, en, Yunker, no, Junker, sv, Junker ka, იუნკერი (Iunkeri)) is a noble honorific, derived from Middle High German ''Juncherre'', meaning "young nobleman"Duden; Meaning of Junke ...

s''), upper-level civil servants and the officer corps retained great power and influence well into the twentieth century. In the long term, they represented an obstacle to democratization and parliamentarianism. As

has shown, their effort is visible in the pernicious role played by agrarian interests in the collapse of the Weimar Republic. The unification of Germany by means of "blood and iron" under Prussian hegemony expanded the political influence and social weight of the officer corps with its status-oriented claims to exclusivity and autonomy. Along with the old elites, many traditional and preindustrial norms, ways of thinking and modes of life also survived. These included the authoritarian outlook and antiproletarian claims of the petty bourgeoise as well as militaristic elements of middle-class political culture, such as the institution of the "reserve officer". The liberal

Max Weber Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profo ...

criticized the "feudalization" of the upper bourgeoisie, which seemed to accept both the disproportional representation of the nobility in politics as well as aristocratic norms and practices instead of striving for power on its own terms or cultivating a distinctly middle-class culture. Lacking the experience of a successful revolution from below, schooled in a long tradition of bureaucratically led reforms from above, and challenged by a growing workers' movement, the German bourgeoise appeared relatively weak and—compared with the West—almost "unbourgeois" Another variant of the theory has been provided by

Michael Stürmer Michael Stürmer (born September 29, 1938) is a conservative German historian best known for his role in the '' Historikerstreit'' of the 1980s, for his geographical interpretation of German history and for an admiring 2008 biography of the Russia ...

who, echoing claims of conservative historians during the Imperial and Weimar periods, argues that it was

geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...

that was the key to German history. Stürmer contends that what he regards as Germany's precarious geographical situation in the heart of

Central Europe Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the area' ...

left successive German governments no other choice but to engage in

authoritarianism Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political '' status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic vot ...

. Stürmer's views have been very controversial; they would become one of the central issues in the notorious ("Historians' Quarrel") of the mid-1980s. One of Stürmer's leading critics,

, himself a proponent of the view of history, argued that "Geography is not destiny",Kocka, Jürgen "Hitler Should Not Be Repressed by Stalin and Pol Pot" pages 85-92 from ''Forever In The Shadow of Hitler?'' edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1993 page 91. suggesting that the reasons for the were political and cultural instead. Kocka wrote against Stürmer that both

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

and

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

were also "lands in the middle", and yet neither country went in the same authoritarian direction as Germany.

Subdebate over Holocaust

In his 1992 book ''Ordinary Men'', Christopher Browning opposed the theory that Germans in the Nazi era were motivated by the especially virulent anti-Semitism that had characterized German culture for centuries. Analyzing the troops of the special police battalion units, who were the ones who directly killed Jews in the mass raids phase of the Holocaust (prior to the death camps), Browning concluded that these typical middle class workers were not ingrained with

, but rather became killers through peer pressure and indoctrination. The debate on the was renewed by American scholar

Daniel Goldhagen Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (born June 30, 1959) is an American author, and former associate professor of government and social studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two controver ...

with his 1996 book, ''

Hitler's Willing Executioners ''Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust'' is a 1996 book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen, in which he argues that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were "willing executioners" in the Holocaust because of a uniq ...

''. Goldhagen countered that German society, politics, and life up until 1945 were characterized by a unique version of extreme

that held the murder of Jews as the highest possible national value. His critics (e.g.,

Yehuda Bauer Yehuda Bauer ( he, יהודה באואר; born April 6, 1926) is a Czech-born Israeli historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University o ...

) replied that Goldhagen ignored most recent research and ignored other developments both in Germany and abroad.

Ruth Bettina Birn Ruth Bettina Birn (born 1952) is a Canadian historian and author whose main field of research is the security forces of Nazi Germany and their role in the Holocaust. For nearly 15 years, she held a position of chief historian in the war crimes se ...

asserts that Goldhagen "allow dhis thesis to dictate his presentation of the evidence". Nonetheless, Goldhagen is often held to have succeeded in reviving the debate on the question of a German "

collective guilt Collective responsibility, also known as collective guilt, refers to responsibilities of organizations, groups and societies. Collective responsibility in the form of collective punishment is often used as a disciplinary measure in closed insti ...

", and, in Germany, of bringing many Germans to a modern confrontation with, and a lively and fruitful debate about, the legacy of the Holocaust.

Criticism

In recent decades German historiography has shifted from nationalism to a pan-European viewpoint. Most recent scholars reject the old notion of separate national paths typified by models of the German "Sonderweg" or the French "singularité française." The leading critics of the thesis have been two British Marxist historians,

Geoff Eley Geoffrey Howard eoffEley (born 4 May 1949) is a British-born historian of Germany. He studied history at Balliol College, Oxford, and received his PhD from the University of Sussex in 1974. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Ar ...

and

David Blackbourn David Gordon Blackbourn (born 1949 in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, England) is Cornelius Vanderbilt Distinguished Chair of History at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches modern German and European history. Prior to arriving at Vanderbilt, Blackbour ...

, who in their 1984 book ''The Peculiarities of German History'' (first published in German in 1980 as ) argued that there is no normal course of social and political change; that the experience of

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

and

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

in the 19th century was not the norm for Europe; and that even if the liberal German middle class was disempowered at the national political level, it nevertheless dominated the social, economic and cultural life of 19th-century Germany. This embourgeoisement of German social life was greater than in Britain and France, which in the opinion of Eley and Blackbourn was more distinctly marked by aristocratic values than was Germany. They rejected the entire concept of the as a flawed construct supported by "a curious mixture of idealistic analysis and vulgar materialism" that led to an "exaggerated linear continuity between the nineteenth century and the 1930s".Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from ''The American Historical Review'', February 1983, Volume 88 page 71 In the view of Blackbourn and Eley, there was no , and it is ahistorical to judge why Germany did not become Britain for the simple reason that Germany is Germany and Britain is Britain. Moreover, Eley and Blackbourn argued that after 1890 there was a tendency towards greater democratization in German society with the growth of civil society as reflected in the growth of trade unions and a more or less free press. From the right, Otto Pflanze claimed that Wehler's use of such terms as "Bonapartism", "social imperialism", "negative integration" and ("the politics of rallying together") has gone beyond mere heuristic devices and instead become a form of historical fiction.Hamerow, Theodore S. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History" pages 53-72 from ''The American Historical Review'', February 1983, Volume 88 page 68 The German conservative historian

Thomas Nipperdey Thomas Nipperdey (27 October 1927, Cologne – 14 June 1992, Munich) was a German historian best known for his monumental and exhaustive studies of Germany from 1800 to 1918. As a critical follower of Leopold von Ranke's famous ideal of writing "h ...

in a 1975 book review of Wehler's , argued that Wehler presented German elites as more united than they were, focused too much on forces from above and not enough on forces from below in 19th-century German society, and presented too stark a contrast between the forces of order and stabilization versus the forces of democracy with no explanation for the relative stability of the Empire. In Nipperdey's opinion, Wehler's work fails to explain how the

occurred, since, according to Wehler, prior to 1918 the forces of authoritarianism were so strong and those of democracy so weak. Nipperdey concluded his review that a proper history of the Imperial period could be written only by placing German history in a comparative European and trans-Atlantic perspective, which might allow for "our fixation on the struggle with our great-grandfathers" to end. Many scholars have disputed Eley's and Blackbourn's conclusions, among them

and

Wolfgang Mommsen Wolfgang Justin Mommsen (; 5 November 1930 – 11 August 2004) was a German historian. He was the twin brother of historian Hans Mommsen. Biography Wolfgang Mommsen was born in Marburg, the son of the historian Wilhelm Mommsen and great-grands ...

. Kocka in particular has argued that while the thesis may not explain the reasons for the rise of the Nazi movement, it still explains the failure of the democratic

. This seems to entail that the issue of the is limited to an individual development (albeit of a type frequently encountered).

Detlev Peukert Detlev Peukert (September 20, 1950 in Gütersloh – May 17, 1990 in Hamburg) was a German historian, noted for his studies of the relationship between what he called the "spirit of science" and the Holocaust and in social history and the Weimar ...

in his influential 1987 (English translation 1992) work ''The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity'' suggested Germany's experience was a crisis involving socio-political phenomena common to all modernising countries.

German history before 1806

Schubert states that the history of the

is not to be confused with the , which can only be seen as a result of the concept of German identity, developing in the

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

of the late 18th century, reinforced by the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...

in which Germany was under French occupation. Previous events, especially those of the Holy Roman Empire,as attempted by Timothy Reuter, in: Anne Duggan, Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, London 1993, p.179-211 cannot be related to the evolution of Nazism.

Notes

References

* Berman, Sherri. 2001. "Modernization in Historical Perspective: The Case of Imperial Germany." ''World Politics'' Volume 53, Number 3, April 2001, pp. 431–462 in

Project MUSE Project MUSE, a non-profit collaboration between libraries and publishers, is an online database of peer-reviewed academic journals and electronic books. Project MUSE contains digital humanities and social science content from over 250 university ...

* Blackbourn, David & Eley, Geoff. 1984. ''The Peculiarities of German History: bourgeois society and politics in nineteenth-century Germany''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Revised and expanded translation of the authors' , 1980. * Browning, Christopher. 1992. ''Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland''. New York:

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...

. * Goldhagen, Daniel J. 1996. ''Hitler's willing executioners''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. * Grebing, Helga. 1986. . Stuttgart:

Kohlhammer Verlag W. Kohlhammer Verlag GmbH, or Kohlhammer Verlag, is a German publishing house headquartered in Stuttgart. History Kohlhammer Verlag was founded in Stuttgart on 30 April 1866 by . Kohlhammer had taken over the businesses of his late father-in-law ...

. * Groh, Dieter. 1983. " " , 38:1166–87. * Hamerow, Theodore S. 1983. "Guilt, Redemption and Writing German History." ''The American Historical Review'', February 1983, 88:53–72. * Heilbronner, Oded. 2000. "From Antisemitic Peripheries to Antisemitic Centres: The Place of Antisemitism in Modern German History." ''Journal of Contemporary History'', 35(4):559–576. * Jarausch, Konrad. 1983. "Illiberalism and Beyond: German History in Search of a Paradigm." ''Journal of Modern History'', 55:647–686. * Kershaw, Ian. 2000. ''The Nazi Dictatorship Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation''. London: Arnold Press. * Kocka, Jürgen. Jan 1988. "German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German '.'" ''Journal of Contemporary History'', 23(1):3–1
in JSTOR
* Moeller, Robert. 1983. "The Recast?: Continuity and Change in Modern German Historiography." ''Journal of Social History'', 1983–1984, 17:655–684. * Mommsen, Wolfgang. 1980. "Review of ." ''Bulletin of the German Historical Institute'', 4:19–26. * Peukert, Detlev. , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1987 translated into English as ''The Weimar Republic: the Crisis of Classical Modernity,'' New York: Hill and Wang, 1992 . * Smith, Helmut Walser. "When the Debate Left Us." ''German Studies Review'', May 2008, 31(2):225–240 * Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. 1985. ''The German Empire, 1871–1918''. Kim Traynor, translator. Leamington Spa: Berg. * Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. 1981. "" ''Merkur'', 5:478–487.

External links

Four paths explained
in a 2006 college lecture by Prof. Harold Marcuse at UC Santa Barbara

by Michael Brooks, then a graduate student at the University of Toledo, Ohio {{Authority control 19th century in Germany 20th century in Germany German words and phrases Historiography of Germany Historiography History of Europe Holocaust historiography Linear theories