PositiveForeign AffairsThis magisterial study addresses the central question in modern German history: How and why did the country embrace a racial and cultural nationalism that ultimately led to war and genocide? ... for the last 75 years, Germans have developed what Smith describes as a \'compassionate, empathetic realism about belonging.\' The \'nationalist age,\' from 1914 to 1945, when the politics of identity turned horribly violent, is thus an exception. Smith describes its excesses—from the slaughter on the eastern front to the Holocaust—in moving detail, but he seems, like many historians before him, somewhat baffled by their ultimate cause.
