Germany The Long Road West [Hardcover]

Vivid, succinct, and highly accessible, Heinrich Winkler's magisterial history of modern Germany offers the history of a nation and its people through two turbulent centuries. It is the story of a country that, while always culturally identified with the West, long resisted the political trajectories of its neighbors.

This first volume (of two) begins with the origins and consequences of the medieval myth of the Reich, which was to experience a fateful renaissance in the twentieth century, and ends with the collapse of the first German democracy. Winkler offers a brilliant synthesis of complex events and illuminates them with fresh insights. He analyses the decisions that shaped the country's triumphs and catastrophes, interweaving high politics with telling vignettes about the German people and their own self-perception.

With a second volume that takes the story up to reunification in 1990,Germany: The Long Road Westwill be welcomed by scholars, students, and anyone wishing to understand this most complex and contradictory of countries.

Introduction
1. The German Catastrophe 1933-45
2. Democracy and Dictatorship 1945-1961
3. Two States, One Nation 1961-1973
4. Rapprochment and Estrangement 1973-1989
5. Unity in Freedom 1989-90
Farewell to Separate Paths: Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Heinrich Winkler's seminalGermany: The Long Road West, 1789-1933is destined to become a must-have for both scholars and students of German history...Winkler's excellent approach...makes this book a masterpiece of historical research. --Sandra Barkhof,History

Heinrich August Winklerwas born in 1938 in K?nigsberg. He studied history, philosophy, and public law in T?bingen, Heidelberg and M?nster. He was associate professor at the Freie Universit?t in Berlin in 1970-72 and then professor of modern history in Freiburg until 1991. He has been at the Humboldt-Universit?t in Berlin sinclsß