Germany

A Nation in Its Time: Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000

By: Helmut Walser Smith

Narrated by: Paul Woodson

Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

For nearly a century, historians have depicted Germany as a rabidly nationalist land, born in a sea of aggression. Not so, says Helmut Walser Smith, who, in this groundbreaking 500-year history, challenges traditional perceptions of Germany's conflicted past, revealing a nation far more thematically complicated than 20th-century historians have imagined.

Contrary to widespread perception, the people who first described Germany were pacific in temperament, and the pernicious ideology of German nationalism would only enter into the nation's history centuries later. Tracing the significant tension between the idea of the nation and the ideology of its nationalism, Smith shows a nation constantly reinventing itself and explains how radical nationalism ultimately turned Germany into a genocidal nation. Smith's aim, then, is nothing less than to redefine our understanding of Germany: Is it essentially a bellicose nation that murdered more than six million people? Or a pacific, 21st-century model of tolerant democracy?

Smith recreates the national euphoria that accompanied the beginning of World War I, followed by the existential despair caused by Germany's shattering defeat. This psychic devastation would simultaneously produce both the modernist glories of the Bauhaus and the meteoric rise of the Nazi party.

©2020 Helmut Walser Smith (P)2021 Tantor

An informative and thoughtful history

The breadth of this history filled in so many gaps in my understanding of Germany— from its disparate parts at the start of the 16th century through to the 2000s. I appreciated the numerous examples used to illustrate many complex concepts & events. The narrative flowed nicely across 5 centuries, and did do smoothly and clearly.

I enjoyed the narration and was able to listen for hours at a time.

Stunning book

This book is fantastic. Deeply researched, engagingly written, and extraordinarily moral without taking sides or feeling preachy. Highest possible recommendation.

review response

the first review shown is a bit chilling. antisemitism still unfortunately exists. join modern society people

interesting but unbalanced and somewhat biased

most of the 500 years covered were very balanced and interesting, with considerable information new to me. That said, it would have been helpful to at least touch on the elements of German character and culture over time to help put the concepts of nationhood into perspective.

coverage of the Nazi period quite rightly emphasized the brutality of the Holocaust, German knowledge of it, and the ramifications. I learned much new and quite horrifying. that said, all else in post Weimar Germany got short shrift, including the discussion of German reactions to huge numbers of foreign immigrants.

there is than that to know about Germany, the German state and German people.

the impression is given that the authors discussion of modern n Germany is largely and expression of his disappointment that Germany has transitioned away from nationhood and into a progressive/left multicultural location. His favorable notice of theodor adorno and jurgen habermos of the Marxist new school for social research may be a window into the authors own yearnings.

He may understand the past but he does not comprehend the present.

Lost me at the end with his narrative that AFD is xenophobic. Makes me question what he said in the previous 16 hours of narrative.