Turning Points in Modern Times

Essays on German and European History

Karl Bracher

Translated by Thomas Dunlap

Abbott Gleason

    Foreword by Abbott Gleason

    Preface

    I. Historical Crises and Lessons

    1. The Weimar Experience

    2. History between Ideas of Decay and Progress

    3. Thoughts on the Year of Revolution, 1989

    4. The Janus Face of the French Revolution Today: On Understanding Modern Revolution

    5. The Ideas and the Failure of Socialism

    6. Reflections on the Problem of Power

    7. The Dissolution of the First German Democracy

    8. Liberalism in the Century of Ideologies

    II. The Legacy of National Socialism

    9. Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism: The German Dictatorship and Austria in the Antagonistic World of European Nationalisms

    10. Totalitarianism as Concept and Reality

    11. Resistance in "Right Dictatorships": The German Experience

    12. The Place of World War II in History

    13. The Dual Challenge of the Postwar Period

    III. Democracy in Transition

    14. The Ethos of Democracy

    15. Problems of Orientation in Germany's Liberal Democracy

    16. The Germans and Their Constitutions and Institutions

    17. Germany in Europe: Historical Changes and Current Perspectives between National Diversity and Political Unification

    18. Revolution against Totalitarianism: From the End of Division to the Renaissance of Europe?

    19. Forty (and Nearly Sixty) Years of Dictatorship: A Challenge to a Government of Laws

    Notes

    Sources

    Index

Karl Dietrich Bracher is Professor of Political Science and Contemporary History, University of Bonn.