Study Questions
Otto von Bismarck, “The Polish Question” (1886)
As indicated in the introductory note, the immediate background for this long speech was a set of brutal expulsions of Poles and Polish Jews from the eastern provinces of the Kingdom of Prussia. These expulsions were carried out in 1885 as part of a program to "Germanize" the Polish-majority provinces of Prussia. Many of the victims had been resident in Prussia (and Germany) for years, but had not become citizens. Polish representatives in the Reichstag formally questioned the imperial government on these policies. Bismarck responded that the Reichstag had no business meddling in the internal affairs of the Kingdom of Prussia. Soon after, Bismarck laid out the principles of the government’s policy toward the Polish minority. Click here for background on Bismarck's policies toward Poles.
As you read, try to formulate answers to the following questions:
1. What was the nature of the “The Polish Question,” as Bismarck saw it? What was its cause? How did Bismarck characterize the nature of Germany's struggle with Poland? Bismarck consistently describes Germany as occupying the weaker position in these contests. What, in his view, makes Germans vulnerable?
2. What is the relationship between “The Polish Question” and religious conflicts in Germany during the 1870s and 1880s? How was “The Polish Question” related to democracy in Germany?
3. At bottom, Bismarck's speech was about the nature of Germanness as much as it was about “The Polish Question.” What, for Bismarck, did it mean to be German? Was Germanness an ethnic entitlement? Was it a matter of citizenship? What obligations did Germanness impose?
Heinrich Class, “If I Were Kaiser” (1912)
When it was published in 1912, this incendiary little essay caused an enormous uproar in Germany. It was composed by Heinrich Class, the leader of the Pan-German League, one of the single-issue pressure groups that were so characteristic of German society and politics during the decade prior to the outbreak of World War I. Founded in 1891, the Pan-German League advocated a “Big German” solution to the national question--in other words, the creation of a German nation state with borders that would embrace all the German-speaking peoples of Europe. For them, the Germany created in 1871 was incomplete, nothing more than a “pre-state” (Vorstaat), as they liked to call it. The views that Heinrich Class articulates in this essay open a window on the character of popular nationalism on the eve of World War I. Click here for a little background on the Pan-German League. As you read, try to formulate answers to the following questions:
1. For Marxists, social and economic class struggles were the driving force of history. What was the driving force of history for Heinrich Class and the Pan-German movement he led?
2. Class was perhaps the most strident German nationalist of the entire pre-war era. What are the characteristics of Class's particular brand of nationalism? Reading between the lines a bit, what label would you use to describe the sort of future that Heinrich Class envisioned for Germany? Would you call it an authoritarian? Fascist?
3. If it were up to Class, who would be excluded from the German nation, and why? What might explain, for example, his hostility to Jews? To Poles? Why is he so hostile to Socialists? Would you say that his hostility to Jews and Poles is racial?
4. Oddly, Class speaks the language of freedom, but he also seems to oppose the democratic aspects of German political life. What does he mean when speaks of the need for a "free press," for example?
Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis, pp. 11-82.
In this reading, Peter Fritzsche offers one historian's account of the "War Euphoria" in Germany during the July Crisis of 1914, when the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria escalated into a military conflagration of all Europe. In this chapter, Peter Fritzsche launches his explanation for why Germans (or so many of them, eventually) were transformed into Nazis; his fundamental assertion is that Nazism grew out of what he calls "populist nationalism" in Germany, of which the war euphoria in July 1914 was the first major manifestation. We will return to Fritzsche's argument many times over the rest of term. As you read through this first portion of it, try to formulate answers to the following questions:
1. Why does Fritzsche think that it is inaccurate to ascribe the "war euphoria" of July 1914 "to the bogeyman of German militarism, which somehow took hold of its victims and marched them off to war"? Are you persuaded by his reasoning?
2. In light of Fritzsche's narration, how would you say that German nationalism had changed since unification in 1871? Isn't it ironic that so many ordinary people were so enthusiastic about the outbreak of war, given the fact that so many of them had experienced the German state as oppressive?
3. From the perspective of ordinary Germans, much about the "war euphoria" of 1914 was new, much was old and familiar. How would you weigh the balance between old and new? Was the "war euphoria," in your opinion, a profoundly new departure from the past? Or was it an expression and continuation of older patterns of life and experience?
4. How would you weigh the same comparison from the authorities' point of view? What was new to them? How did their experience of the "war euphoria" reflect well-established patterns of thought and behavior?
Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis, pp. 83-136.
In this chapter, Fritzsche examines the transformation of German society, politics, and culture that attended the German Revolution of 1918-1919 and the emergence of a republic from the ruin of Bismarck's imperial order. Here Fritzsche develops his argument that Nazism grew out of what he calls "populist nationalism": now, the author shifts his focus to the moment when the German people intervened in national life, not merely to express spontaneous approval or dismay over the course of events, as in July 1914, but to grasp hold of events and shape them. But the popular takeover took many forms...left, right, and center. As you read, try to formulate ideas in response to the following study questions:
1. Fritzsche emphasizes the social breadth of involvement in the revolution of 1918-1919, insisting that people from all social classes participated actively. His point is that the revolution must be seen as an intervention by the whole people -- not just the right or the left -- in political life. Do you think his evidence bears him out?
2. Fritzsche emphasizes that in November 1918, the people experienced the breakdown of social barriers during the revolution with spontaneous excitement...much as they had done in July 1914 and would do again in 1933. How would you explain this yearning, in view of what we've learned in this course so far?
3. The workers' revolution of 1918-1919, as Fritzsche's observes, what one of far-reaching scope. And yet it failed to achieve its socialist goals. In light of his analysis, how do you explain this failure? Where were the middle classes in these events?
4. Like many other European revolutions before it, this one was followed by counterrevolution. Yet counterrevolution failed, too. Why? What might explain the resilience of the young German republic in the face of so many attacks?
5. After his abdication on 9 November 1918, Wilhelm II retired to the life of a country squire in Dutch exile, where he remained until his death in 1941 at the ripe age of 82. Why did so few people miss him?
Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis, pp. 137-214.
The reading for today is the third chapter from Peter Fritzsche's, Germans into Nazis, pages 137-214. Here, Fritzsche concludes his claim that Nazism grew from a seed-bed of "populist nationalism," prepared already before World War I, cultivated during that conflict, and sown during the upheavals of the Weimar Republic. The essence of his argument is that Hitler succeeded because a sufficiently large segment of the German population wanted him to succeed. The implications of this are weighty: if Fritzsche is right, then Hitler was more than just a parasite grown fat on crisis. Instead, Fritzsche argues that Hitler's was the vanguard, so to speak, of a "vast political insurrection" against "politics as usual." To better comprehend how he makes his case, try to formulate answers to the following questions:
1. As you know from the first pages of Fritzsche's chapter, the initial weeks of Hitler's chancellorship in February 1933 where characterized by an upsurge in political street-violence. And yet organized opposition to the Nazi takeover failed ultimately to materialize. Why? Was this mainly because of popular enthusiasm for the NSDAP? Or was it attributable to the Nazis' brutality? Some combination of the two?
2. How does Fritzsche account for the sudden rise of the Nazi party? Bear in mind that the NSDAP went from a mere 2.6% of the popular vote in 1928 to 37.4% in the July 1932 elections. Put it another way: the Nazis accomplished in 4 years what had taken the SPD 40 to achieve! Why does Fritzsche reject the contention that the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression were responsible?
3. If not war reparations and the Great Depression...what? Have a look at Fritzsche's argument about the presidential election of 1925, which you can find on pages 161-172. Why does Fritzsche think that Hindenburg's election in 1925 reveals the emergence of a grassroots nationalist rejection of the status quo? Why does he believe that Hindenburg's voters were more than just a "fair-weather coalition"?
4. How, in Fritzsche's view, were the Nazis able to transform this grassroots "political mobilization" of "previously inactive burghers" into the basis of its own astonishing success in the polling booth? (See his discussion on pages 183-196).
5. What do you make of the fact that the NSDAP, despite its spectacular successes, never managed to win an absolute majority in parliament? Doesn't this fact contradict the thrust of Fritzsche's argument? Why or why not, in your view?