German and European History
German history cannot be understood without Europe, and today must also be conceived of in a global context. The history of Germany and Europe is one of conflict. It did not take long from the formation of the state in the nineteenth century to the imperial arms race that culminated in World War I in 1914. Defeat and revanchism provided fertile ideological ground for a second war that began from German soil in 1939, and in the shadow of which the horror of the Holocaust unfolded. In Germany more than elsewhere, the “imagined community” of the nation was one of aggression, exclusion, and violence.
Beyond war and nationalism, however, German history also exhibits an alternative path rooted in solidarity and internationalism. From the peasant rebellions of the Reformation to the universalism of the Enlightenment, the Revolution of 1848, the anti-war strikes of 1916 and the November Revolution of 1918–1919, to the Thälmann Battalion in the Spanish Civil War and the “other Germany” of resistance and exile in 1933–1945: it is these lines of left-wing history shape our view of the present.
