Category Archives: Germany
Prussia: a ‘kingdom of shreds and patches’
From: Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, by Christopher Clark (Penguin, 2007), Kindle Loc. 8097-8136 (pp. 428ff): Prussia was therefore less juridically homogeneous in 1840 than it had been in 1813. It is worth emphasizing this fragmentation, … Continue reading
Filed under Germany, language, nationalism, Poland, religion
Prussian Progressivism: Hegel to Marx
From: Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, by Christopher Clark (Penguin, 2007), Kindle Locs. 8160-96, 8229-40 (pp. 431-434): The one institution that all Prussians had in common was the state. It is no coincidence that this period … Continue reading
Filed under economics, Germany, philosophy
Prussian Patriotism during the Napoleonic Wars
From: Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, by Christopher Clark (Penguin, 2007), pp. 374-376, 379, 386 (Kindle Locs. 7131-7182, 7231-7238, 7364-7376): The military reformers aimed above all to harness the war effort to the patriotic enthusiasm of … Continue reading
Filed under Germany, military, nationalism, war
Prussian Reactions to the French Revolution
From: Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, by Christopher Clark (Penguin, 2007), p. 285 (Kindle Loc. 5546-5584): Tensions between the two German rivals had risen steadily during the 1780s. In 1785, Frederick II had taken charge of … Continue reading
Crowning the First King of Prussia, 1701
From: Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, by Christopher Clark (Penguin, 2007), pp. 68, 70, 73 (Kindle Locs. 1574-1601, 1609-1619, 1672-1701): In terms of the proportion of territorial wealth consumed, the coronation of 1701 must surely be … Continue reading
Competitive Victimology in the Bloodlands
From Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010), Kindle Loc. 7393-7441 (pp. 402-403): Without history, the memories become private, which today means national; and the numbers become public, which is to say an instrument in … Continue reading
Soviet Contributions to the Holocaust
From Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010), Kindle Loc. 6313-6365 (pp. 343-345): During the war, the Soviets and their allies had been in general agreement that the war was not to be understood as … Continue reading
Half the People of Belarus Killed or Deported in WW2
From Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010), Kindle Loc. 4671-4686 (p. 250): Of the nine million people who were on the territory of Soviet Belarus in 1941, some 1.6 million were killed by the … Continue reading
Theatre of the Macabre in Minsk
From Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010), Kindle Loc. 4205-53 (pp. 225ff): Minsk was transformed by the Germans into a kind of macabre theater, in which they could act out the ersatz victory of … Continue reading
Uniqueness of the Minsk Ghetto
From Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books, 2010), Kindle Loc. 4295-4349 (p. 231ff): Minsk was an unusual city, a place whose social structure defied the Nazi mind as well as German experience in occupied Poland. … Continue reading
