The History of Germany in the 20th Century. Volume II

Ulrich Herbert examines the history of Germany in the 20th century from two seemingly contradictory perspectives. On one hand, the pages of this fundamental monograph will showcase great wars and political upheavals. Germany is the land where radical ideologies originated—both left and right; and it is the only land where both acquired a state form and imposed, each in its own way, a defining imprint on both the first and the second halves of the century. On the other hand, the author describes the formation of modern industrial society—a formation that led to decades of confrontations regarding social and political structures between various political systems. Wars and the longest peaceful period in European history, right and left terror, utopia and politics, capitalism and the welfare state, totalitarianism and democratic society, conflicts of genders and generations, culture and lifestyle, European integration and globalization—this book is about how all these contradictory events, processes, and phenomena were structured and interconnected in the history of Germany throughout the 20th century.
Ulrich Herbert is a historian and honorary professor at the University of Freiburg.