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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
The author seemed very biased towards a "Western" and Catholic view, esentially blaming everything going wrong on "East Elbia" as he calls the Eastern part of Germany throughout the book. This bias was also very aparrant in his word choice and interpretations of shown maps. I think the difference between correlation and causation wasn't very clear to the author.
The book raised some interesting points and made good observations - but stating that there would have been no Führer without "East Elbia" seems far fetched to me. An interesting read, but very frustating in the end, because East Germany seems to be the scape goat for everything to the author and the Prussians are at fault - while the hard working, money making South-West Germany pays for everything. Someone listened to some grumpy old men in West Germany, I guess. This ignores the fact that Prussian monarchs (the Hohenzollern) originated from Schwaben (located in Baden-Württemberg in South-West Germany) and that these "East Elbian" Germans had originally come from the West, pushing back the Slavs.
The line of thinking is extremly simplfied and could potentially be dangerous, because one could come to the conclusion that the "brown east" can't be saved anyway. So why not abandon it.. (Which is essentially the fear the afd feeds on in East Germany.)
The book raised some interesting points and made good observations - but stating that there would have been no Führer without "East Elbia" seems far fetched to me. An interesting read, but very frustating in the end, because East Germany seems to be the scape goat for everything to the author and the Prussians are at fault - while the hard working, money making South-West Germany pays for everything. Someone listened to some grumpy old men in West Germany, I guess. This ignores the fact that Prussian monarchs (the Hohenzollern) originated from Schwaben (located in Baden-Württemberg in South-West Germany) and that these "East Elbian" Germans had originally come from the West, pushing back the Slavs.
The line of thinking is extremly simplfied and could potentially be dangerous, because one could come to the conclusion that the "brown east" can't be saved anyway. So why not abandon it.. (Which is essentially the fear the afd feeds on in East Germany.)
Not my sort of book, but interesting thesis.
The author's thesis is that the eastern parts of Germany are culturally different to the rest of Germany, and were responsible for starting (and losing) both world wars. Essentially - the parts of Germany that the Romans never occupied (and were outside the Holy Roman Empire) are the ones that caused all the problems.
The history in the book is superficial - a lot of ground covered in very few pages, very little detail, and only point supporting the thesis get a mention. As history, it's not much good.
I don't know enough about Germany to have a good idea whether or not the thesis is correct. I'm sure it would be offensive to a lot of people and that the people who disagree with the thesis could bring up a lot of facts against the thesis that were omitted here.
The author's thesis is that the eastern parts of Germany are culturally different to the rest of Germany, and were responsible for starting (and losing) both world wars. Essentially - the parts of Germany that the Romans never occupied (and were outside the Holy Roman Empire) are the ones that caused all the problems.
The history in the book is superficial - a lot of ground covered in very few pages, very little detail, and only point supporting the thesis get a mention. As history, it's not much good.
I don't know enough about Germany to have a good idea whether or not the thesis is correct. I'm sure it would be offensive to a lot of people and that the people who disagree with the thesis could bring up a lot of facts against the thesis that were omitted here.
This book is useful to understand the formation of Germany from the colonization by the Romans until the present day, as well as the recent events. History was a hard subject for me at school and I couldn’t absorb much of it, specially topics related to politics. For this purpose, the book was informative and easy to understand.
The author does assume previous knowledge and doesn’t go into details about certain topics, but I still could follow the main ideas and learn a lot from this book.
It doesn’t go very deep into present day dynamics, focusing more on the division between west and east.
The author does assume previous knowledge and doesn’t go into details about certain topics, but I still could follow the main ideas and learn a lot from this book.
It doesn’t go very deep into present day dynamics, focusing more on the division between west and east.
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
dark
informative
medium-paced
informative
An interesting and well presented overview of Germany's history and how it has effected its culture. Not sure I agree with his final argument though - it seems to suggest that if you ignore the far-right they'll go away. I agree with no longer trying to appease them, but ignoring the far-right has never done anyone in any minority group any good. Perhaps I am not quite understanding his argument - if all this history was leading up to a final thesis, I think that thesis needed more than the last few minutes to present itself.
informative
tense
medium-paced
Short run down of German history, slightly anti East German/Prussia but a great read
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
A good brief overview of german history in my opinion. Books like these make it much more easier to understand historical links throughout longer periods of time. Of course it's not an in-depth dive into German history, nor does it claim to be. I found the last pages to be focusing on the divide of East and West Germany to be a little out if place but apart from that I believe this is a great casual read if you're interested in german history.