A Short History of Germany (1815-1945), by E.J. Passant

[p034] A Short History of Germany (1815-1945), by E. J. Passant (Cambridge University Press, 20s.) This study covers with great economy the rise and collapse of a modern national. State. The late E. J. Passant did well to trace Germany’s development from the Prussian reforms of 1807, although there is nothing noticeably original in his treatment. We are shown clearly the failings of the German political parties. The ‘extreme passivity’ of progressive forces in fight- ing through with their principles became a characteristic of the German political tradition, beginning with the incompetence and apathy of the middle-class Liberals in 1848, continuing through the whole of the last century and into the twentieth. On the eve of the first. world. -war the-expansionist:.Right was ..- -. boisterous, well organized, .and.-closely .knit: together,. while - ‘the Left Liberals, Centre and social democrats were too divided among themselves to pursue a consistent policy’. In 1918 it was ‘the Majority social democrats under Ebert, deeply imbued with the German love of order’ who rejected social revolution, and in'WMa¥ch'1933 there were more than a few Liberal deputies who voted in the Reichstag for Hitler’s Enabling Act. Moreover: a tradition. had: grown up: simul taneously in which the parties evolved as realms: of:abstruse political. theory, but shied at responsible political practice. The analysis here of: the’'failure ‘of. the Weimar’ Republic is. admirably comprehensive and concise. For his section, ‘Germany at War’, Donald Watt has made sound use of original official documents from captured German files; here, as throughout the book, first-rate sketch maps have been reproduced, and these are singularly helpful. PHILIP WIENER ‘Swift Was Sane