Abstract
The German problem, in Taylor’s view, was as old as the Germans themselves. However, it took the particular twist that led to the Second World War only after Bismarck unified Germany in 1871. The Bismarckian German Empire, achieved by what Taylor termed the Prussian will to power, furnished pan-German nationalism with the power-base denied to it by the Habsburg monarchy. Unification produced a formidable military and industrial state in the centre of Europe, and consequently the German problem broadened and deepened. The new German Empire pointed directly and unerringly toward the Reich created by Adolf Hitler, under which the pan-German dream was fulfilled to the extent it ever would be. Twentieth-century Europe was shaped to a considerable extent by a Germany wearing the face of an ‘intolerant exterminator and overlord’, in Taylor’s words, that had been imposed by Prussian militarism and barbarism upon the civilised and cultured Germany of the west.1KeywordsForeign PolicyGerman NationGerman PeopleGerman HistoryGood GermanThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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