GERMANY

This monumental and long-awaited work situates the German nation within a long and contextual history

Following a tradition begun around World War II, conventional historians of Germany depicted the nation, well before the rise of Hitler, as a rabidly nationalistic country, born in a sea of aggression, its upward momentued fueled by Bismarck, and then brought to horric and murderous vortex during the Nazi regime. Not so, argues Helmut Smith, the eminent historian of Germany, who in this monumental and long-awaited work situates the German nation within a much longer and contextual history. Whether discussing the Thirty Years War, the revolutions of 1848, or the rise of a German Enlightenment, Smith emphasizes both the pacific, as well as the martial, German past. Employing striking and original maps that visually portray Germany in novel ways, as well as using new analytical tools made possible by digital humanities, Smith propells the field of German history into the twenty-first century. Author of The Butcher's Tale, Helmut Walser Smith is Martha Rivers Ingram Chair of History and professor of German Studies at Vanderbilt University.