Germany in the World

May 8, 2023
In this far-flung narrative, historian Blackbourn (The Conquest of Nature) loosely surveys Germany’s place in global history, from 1500, when the Holy Roman Empire began to be referred to as “the German
Nation,” through the 20th century. Among other topics, Blackbourn discusses the exploits of Germans in 16th-century Spanish and Portuguese empires as conquistadors, merchants, and financiers; the contributions to their adopted countries made by millions of German émigrés, who settled everywhere from America to Australia in the 19th century; and the academic and artistic movements that made Germany the global epicenter of philosophy and Romantic literature from the 18th century onward. In the book’s second half, a more detailed—and darker—account of the 20th century, Blackbourn again highlights international contexts, noting, for example, that Nazi antisemitic policies were inspired by British racial theorists and American anti-miscegenation and citizenship laws, and that the murder of Jews in German-occupied nations during WWII was often perpetrated by non-German locals. (On the other hand, he celebrates 1920s Berlin as a hothouse of inclusive modernism.) The book’s wide-angle perspective sometimes feels unbalanced—Blackbourn’s section on the Reformation discusses England more than Germany. Still, Blackbourn’s elegant writing and intriguing insights make for an insightful and stimulating take on German history.