Synopses & Reviews
Turning Points in Modern Times focuses on events after 1917: the rise of Nazism on the Right and authoritarianism on the Left. Bracher provides an incisive framework for understanding the great ideological confrontation of this century--democracy versus totalitarianism in the forms of fascism, Nazism, and communism. His analysis of the outcomes underscores the significance and power of democratic values and governments.
The doyen of German political history, Karl Dietrich Bracher extends the argument against dictatorship that runs through his life's work, offers a blueprint for dealing with the recent past of the communist East German State (DDR), looks at the true facts of the Stasi collaboration, and challenges misperceptions of Hitler, Stalin, and others. He demonstrates the kinship between fascism and communism, considers Weimar and liberalism, assesses the legacy of Nazism, and outlines the ethos of democracy. In all this Bracher exposes the twentieth-century threats to the democratic state so that they can never again subvert representative government.
A founder of the new history of Germany, which considers the larger context for Hitler and illuminates events through the theories of social science and the values of liberalism and democracy, Bracher writes in the tradition of Acton, Burckhardt, Croce, and Dahrendorf. This is a vital history lesson for our turbulent times, when once more democracy is on the march after a twilight century.
Review
An absolutely first-rate collection...A wise and thoughtful political philosopher...The essays are beautifully written...Elegant and profound. Stanley Hoffmann, Harvard University
About the Author
Karl Dietrich Bracher is Professor of Political Science and Contemporary History, University of Bonn.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Abbott Gleason
Preface
I. Historical Crises and Lessons
1. The Weimar Experience
2. History between Ideas of Decay and Progress
3. Thoughts on the Year of Revolution, 1989
4. The Janus Face of the French Revolution Today: On Understanding Modern Revolution
5. The Ideas and the Failure of Socialism
6. Reflections on the Problem of Power
7. The Dissolution of the First German Democracy
8. Liberalism in the Century of Ideologies
II. The Legacy of National Socialism
9. Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism: The German Dictatorship and Austria in the Antagonistic World of European Nationalisms
10. Totalitarianism as Concept and Reality
11. Resistance in "Right Dictatorships": The German Experience
12. The Place of World War II in History
13. The Dual Challenge of the Postwar Period
III. Democracy in Transition
14. The Ethos of Democracy
15. Problems of Orientation in Germany's Liberal Democracy
16. The Germans and Their Constitutions and Institutions
17. Germany in Europe: Historical Changes and Current Perspectives between National Diversity and Political Unification
18. Revolution against Totalitarianism: From the End of Division to the Renaissance of Europe?
19. Forty (and Nearly Sixty) Years of Dictatorship: A Challenge to a Government of Laws
Notes
Sources
Index