My favourite kind of history: sharply opinionated and controversial. A.J.P. Taylor is not afraid to reject conventional interpretations regarding the course of German history, nor to impose his own constructs in replacement of them. The two most salient arguments that Taylor repeatedly stresses in this book are:

1) Mere "ideals" are not substitutes for raw POWER.

2) Attempts at sociopolitical revolution without the broad support of the masses is folly.

In many cases, I found myself fundamentally disagreeing with Taylor's view of German history because of his overtly left-socialist political leanings. But that's okay, because his biases are not hidden nor obscured, and I was able to extract many relevant lessons from the book and add them to my own personal conception or "model" of German history. ( )

The history of Germany is a history of extremes. There are the best and worst of everything imaginable. Charlemagne, by establiishing the Holy Roman Empire, advanced German history from the stage of tribal legends. The Germans are geographically central to Europe, and, thus key to Europe.

Enduring for a thousand years has been their ethnographical position. To the West was the heir of the Roman Empire, the French, but to the East were the Slavs, the newer barbarian people, as the Germans had once advanced uponi the Romans. To the West, therefore, the Germans always appeared as barbarians and yet they are the most civilized of all barbarian groups. Charlemagne apes Caesar, as Hitler apes Napoleon. To the Slavs of the East though, the Germans appear to be the defenders of civilization. From Charlemagne to Hitler, the Germans attempt to convert the Slavs from barbarism into Christian civilization. The weapons are varied and yet the end is the same--extermination.

The Germans have been a people but a not a nation throughout this thousand year period originally forged and initially attempted to be united under Charlemagne.

For a thousand years the Germans have also had a political form, the Reich. Although not a fuly mature governmental form, the Reich characterizes Germania long before the creation of the modern nation-states of France and England. The paradox for Germania is that the German people, culture, language, and influence is not coterminus with the Reich but is represented by German leaders over this stretch of history.

The Empire which Charlemagne founded set the tone for German history from the beginning. It was not intended as a German national state but it claimed to be a universal Empire, a revival of the Empire of the Caesars. The only connection is that their ancestors attempted to destroy the Empire but now this was an echo of what they had torn apart. The Empire claimed to be universal as Charlemagne intended as well to speak for all Christianity.

Charlemagne's Empire claimed to be universal but in character it was a German institution from the very beginning. The official title was of course a betrayal of its very contradicition. It was not Holy, it was not Roman, it was not an Empire. It was an expression of Germanness: partly converted to Christianity, partly Roman, and in a manner of speaking an Empire.

12/4/22