MixedThe Spectator (UK)Hoyer takes the tale by the scruff of the neck and gives it a good shake for the less demanding general reader ... her thesis is bold and simple. It is also one fit for these days, when the great nations seem to be putting up the shutters again ... while this is an entertaining enough read, if you seek true insight into the Prussian-German empire, Clarke’s Iron Kingdom remains the place to go.
Harald Jähner tr. Shaun Whiteside
RaveThe Spectator (UK)... a scholarly masterpiece which is also a good read ... The material is as grim as can be imagined, and Jähner pulls no punches. But he doesn’t allow his story to degenerate into a catalogue of horrors. Instead, we are offered anecdotes and incidents, each memorable, many illustrated by newly discovered photographs, which build into a history which reads like a prelude to Waiting for Godot, that great work of 1949. In vignette after vignette, people remain people, however apocalyptic the events they have just participated in or witnessed or had visited upon them.
Robert Gerwarth
RaveThe Spectator (UK)Splendidly researched, and with a striking new thesis, Robert Gerwarth’s book warns against assuming that the way things turned out was inevitable ... This book is full of surprises ... That\'s the definition of real research. But there is one glaring blind spot. Gerwarth repeatedly refers to Bismarck’s second German empire as ‘the German nation-state’, which is extremely dubious ... While encouraging us to look at the Weimar Republic in the light of the eastern European politics which half surrounded it, he misses that Germany was only enmeshed in those politics because of Prussia ... So should you buy this book? It’s fascinating, and the research ground-breaking, though be warned that there’s not much crowd-friendly shot-making. It’s more of a donnish slice of history, with extensive quotation and elucidation. But don’t be put off. This is a fascinating study, whose insights will stop you dead even if you thought, as I did, that you already knew this stuff.
