Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500-2000 (Guest: David Blackbourn)
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Tim Benson:Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Illiteracy podcast. I'm your host, Tim Benson, a senior policy analyst at the Heartland Institute, a national free market think tank. We are in the episode a 140 something range, maybe even in a 100 and fifties by now. I'm not sure, but, anyway, it's a lot of podcast. But, for those of you just tuning in for the first time, basically, what we do here on the podcast is I invite an author on to discuss a book of theirs that's been newly published or recently published on somebody or something or some idea or some event, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, that we, think you guys would like to hear a conversation about.
Tim Benson:And then hopefully at the end of the podcast, you, you know, give the book a purchase and give it a read yourself. So if you'd like this podcast, please consider giving Illiteracy a 5 star review at Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to this show and also by sharing with your friends, because that's the best way to support programming like this. And my guest today is doctor David Blackburn, and doctor Blackburn is Cornelius Vanderbilt distinguished chair of history, Emeritus at Vanderbilt University, as well as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy. His books include class, religion, and local politics in Wilhelmine, Germany, populists and patricians, Marphingen, apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 19th century Germany, history of Germany 17 80 to 1918, the long 19th century, and the conquest of nature, water, landscape, and the making of modern Germany. I hope you guys sense a theme here.
Tim Benson:Anyway, he is here to discuss his latest book, Germany in the World, a Global History 1500 to 2000, which was published last June by LiveRent. So, doctor Blackburn, thank you so so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it.
David Blackbourn:Oh, thank you very much for inviting me. I look forward to our discussion.
Tim Benson:Oh, no problem. So I guess, you know, normal entry question, we ask everybody that comes on here is, you know, what made you wanna write this book? What was the the genesis of it? You know, it's this it's this a look at the German past from a a global perspective and, you know, basically, the connections between the the German speaking lands of Middle Europa or Central Europe, however you wanna call it, and the wider world is the central focus. So, yeah.
Tim Benson:So like I said, what what, what made you wanted to take take on this project?
David Blackbourn:I wish I had a really good origin story for you, but in some ways, it's it's a fairly banal story of of changes in the, it's partly changes in the surrounding world, the world of globalization that we're all familiar with, the world of sort of exchanges and migration and flows. And that's had its effect on the historical profession. And I think starting really 20 or so years ago, early in this century, German historians, including some good friends of mine, started thinking about what it would mean to look at Germany beyond its borders. And I contributed to some of their conferences and so on and decided I wanted to to write a book about this. I mean, I'll just add one other thing, which is not so much the impact of the wider world, but the impact of other historical debates.
David Blackbourn:I think I I you mentioned the book on apparitions, the Marpingen book. That's what historians call a micro history. So I really did a sort of deep dive into an event, an episode. And I'm interested in the different scales of history, so the very small scale, the very large scale. And having written this microhistory, I was intrigued by the idea of trying to write something that sort of uses the telescope rather than the mic microscope.
David Blackbourn:You know, it looks at something very large. So that's really where it came from some 20 years ago.
Tim Benson:Wow. So how long did it actually, so I know the idea that came 20 years or so. How long did because it's, it's a very like, it's we were talking about this earlier. It's it's a long book. It's in a very detailed book too.
Tim Benson:I mean, there's, you know, I don't even know how many footnotes, a 1,000, you know, and more than a 1,000. So how long did it take you to actually write the whole thing?
David Blackbourn:I mean, I know exactly when I started writing it, which was February 2014, but several years of very intensive reading went into it, especially for those, the earlier parts, you know, the 16th, 17th centuries. I'm by no means an expert. I know a lot more now than I did back then. But, you know, writing it, began in February 2014, and I finished it finished a draft in, November 2022. And it was you'll have to believe me when I tell you, it was quite a bit longer than this book.
Tim Benson:Yeah. I'm sure.
David Blackbourn:Yeah. 70,000 was longer, so I then cut it. So it was a it was a long it's by far the longest, time that I've ever taken over a book.
Tim Benson:Yeah. I'm always interested when especially when I have authors on who've written a very, long work, such as this is, like, when you realize that this is what you wanna do, you know, like, when you come, like, okay. This is the book I wanna write. Or is it then just, like are are you there just, like, thinking to yourself, like, oh, Lord, what what am I in for? Like, what what have I done?
Tim Benson:You know? Like, you know, how much, my god, this is gonna take up, you know, a significant portion of my life doing this book, you know.
David Blackbourn:That's a that's a good that's a good question. It gets close to, you know, the way scholars live because writing is so central to our identities. I mean, I've been very fortunate that I've I've never embarked on a book that I regretted being embarked on or, you know, let alone bailing on 1. I think this one, I was aware, that it was going to take a long time. And it was in some ways a hard book to to structure because there's so many different moving parts.
David Blackbourn:But I think, no. I was so I've been I've been lucky in this book as in others. I've been happy doing the writing as I did it. The cut making the cuts at the end was was tough, but that's that's always true. And it's the cuts always make something better.
David Blackbourn:I I tell tell students that too. You know, if every text can lose maybe 10% at least of its length, less is more.
Tim Benson:Yeah. No. I I'm with you, but I also there's something I don't know. When I see, like, a book is being published or has been published, and it's like, oh, this is 1100 words. Like, alright.
Tim Benson:That's I mean, 1100 pages. This is right up my you know, I'm always sort of, like, those very long books excite me for some reason, even though I know, like, but at the same time, I also think that, like, you know, there's much to be said for a book that's much shorter. You know, 300, 400 words that you can, you know, there's something to be said for Brevity as well, but I but I really do enjoy the the big, like, you know, lengthy tomes. You know?
David Blackbourn:Yeah. I mean, I I I I enjoy both opera and chamber music and the the difference. Yeah. And Right. And same with books.
David Blackbourn:In in some ways, I think we live in an era of big books. I mean, the the New York Times book review on Sunday, I was glad to see, had a review of a of a book by Frank Trentman, whom I know called Out of the Darkness, which is about post war Germans. It's a fine book and it's as long as my book, but it only covers the period since 1945. And and my friend Chris Clark at Cambridge in the UK wrote a book about 18/48. Again, it's as long as my book on justice revolution.
David Blackbourn:It's really, they're both really, really excellent books. So, yeah. But I like short books as well as a reader.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. There's something to be said for both for both ways of doing it. But, anyway, enough of that sort of talk.
Tim Benson:So, to the book itself. So what is what is new when we view German history through through a global lens to say, what what can we see, when we approach German history that way? Or what's what's fresh about what we can see when we approach German history that way?
David Blackbourn:Yeah. I mean, it's the that's the the big question, isn't it, to justify a book like this? And I I mean, my answer is really there are there are 2 things. One is that, you see things, especially looking over a 500 year period, you see things you haven't seen before, patterns, when you go beyond Germany's borders. And I they include this long history of Germans serving as mercenaries for other nations over centuries, you know, 16th, 17th, 18th centuries.
David Blackbourn:They include a long term pattern of political emigration. Now we associate this with Hitler's, Germany, the emigres, but it's this is something that goes back, and I talk about this in the book, 16th century, 17th century. So that's one part of it then is that you see things previously invisible. And the the one thing above all others, I think, that I'm quite proud to have made visible is something that I call the German Atlantic, because Mhmm. If you look at all the books of essays or the encyclopedias on Atlantic history, they have entries for the British, French, Dutch, Spanish, and so on.
David Blackbourn:But there's no German Atlantic because there are no German flags or Prussian flags flying. So that's one part of the answer in in short. And the other part of the answer of what's new is that you can take familiar things, and they look different if you stretch the history beyond Germany's borders. And to take just 2 very obvious mainstream examples of conventional German history, the reformation. What does the reformation look like when we take it beyond Germany?
David Blackbourn:And then secondly, then sort of the the darkest subject of German history, Is there a a global and transnational history of Nazism? And if so, you know, what does it look like? So there are other I mean, I would say, actually, it's also true of the creation of a German nation state in the 19th century when you were embedded into larger international and transnational, settings. It looks different. So that would be the, sort of short answer.
Tim Benson:Gotcha. Okay. So I guess let's start at the beginning, or somewhere close to the beginning anyway in the because you brought up the Atlantic, the Atlantic world. The age of exploration, I was sort of struck by how, or let's just say let's talk about wood as a commodity and as, like, a good starting point to sort of demonstrate how Germans, participated in a wider world and participated in this this era of colonial exploration and expansion even though that, you know, there is no German state at the time or, you know, what we think of as, you know, or unified Germany or anything like that. You know, there's dozens of principalities and whatnot.
Tim Benson:But, yep, so what does this so how does this show, how Germans moved about during this age of exploration in the in the Atlantic world?
David Blackbourn:So, that's interesting. You're a a close reader that you you've noticed that reference to wood being a good place to to start. It it's I I won't say it's tongue in cheek, but there's a, it's quite pointed saying that because traditional histories of of Germany, often talk about the way that Tacitus described the Germans as the people of the forest. You know, this kind of the hairy people of the forest. So when we think about, the Deutsche Wout, the German wood, we think about a very enclosed Germanic German history.
David Blackbourn:And so I wanted to point out that without German wood, there wouldn't have been the voyages of exploration because the Germans sent their best wood to the Iberian Peninsula to help build the Spanish and Portuguese fleets. And, also, they they floated it down the Rhine to the low countries to to the Netherlands as well. When you see those wonderful dramatic pictures of, of rafts, huge rafts of wood going down the big broad Rhine, No. They they end up in in the Netherlands, which doesn't have that many trees, and they end up in Dutch ships. So that's really a way of, a way of introducing an often invisible German contribution to exploration, which is actually building building the ships.
Tim Benson:Mhmm. Yeah. And you mentioned I'm sure most people are sort of familiar with the Germans' role as mercenaries in these different enterprises, and, obviously, we had that our own experience here in America with the, you know, the Hessians and all that stuff and the revolution. But one thing that's really lost that, you know, people don't realize that the role of German merchants, especially in the Spanish and Portuguese empires when these empires are really beginning to, you know, flower for lack of a better word. Could you talk a little about that, the role of German merchants and how they, financed these imperial, projects?
David Blackbourn:Yeah. Thank you. Yes. I mean, we're we're talking in this early period, mainly about merchants from so called upper Germany, which is cities like Nuremberg and, and Augsburg rather than sort of the later Atlantic ports like Hamburg. And, I mean, they are very active.
David Blackbourn:They set themselves up in Lisbon and Seville, and they're active, trading both in the, in the Portuguese and Spanish Atlantic world, but also in, in the in the Portuguese, Asian empire, in places like Goa, in in India, with significant numbers of German merchants on the Malabar Coast. So they're, they are, active in the spice trade. They're also, one of the ways in which, the fairly famous, House of Fugger, the Fuggers of Augsburg. One of the ways in which they play a part in this larger world of exploration and particularly in the Atlantic world is through their role as financing mining. They, they own mines in Central Europe, but also in in Spain.
David Blackbourn:And, through them, German miners end up in, in in the new world, in in in the Spanish empire. So they're active in all kinds of trades, in pearls and spices and and later in coffee, very active in mining. And, I guess I'll I'll mention this because I'm sure you'll you'll want to bring it up. They're also, German merchants who are also active in the in the slave trade.
Tim Benson:Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, I guess, we can just like, well, let's stay on that. So, what role, do Germans have directly or indirectly with the slave trade?
David Blackbourn:I mean, it's it's both direct and indirect. Directly, there are, German, slave ships which actually operate, in the triangular trade, which physically carry enslaved people to the Americas. Indirectly, they, well, they they write marine insurance for for, slave ships. They also provide trade goods, so that linens and metalware, which come from German speaking Central Europe, are sent to West Africa and traded in exchange for for for enslaved people. And then finally, they, the German consumers at home, consume the products of plantation slavery, sugar sugar and coffee.
David Blackbourn:Most obviously, those sort of great central commodities of, especially sort of the 18th century world of consumption. And so the the sugar and coffee gets shipped back from the, French and British and Dutch empires to Bordeaux or London or Amsterdam, gets shipped on to Hamburg, And from Hamburg, it's fine it finds its way into the coffee houses and into the kitchens of what an increasingly wide social class of of Germans. So the lots of lots of different ways direct and indirect that Germans are implicated in this trade. Although, of course, there is no there are no German flagged sugar islands. And so many Germans take a rather superior view that it's, you know, the other people who are doing this, that the Germans have clean hands, but not really true.
Tim Benson:There's this, especially later on, as we get closer to the 20th century, there's this sort of or before they but before they embark on their own colonial project, where the Germans have this, basically, again, this this view this morally superior view that, like, well, if if we were doing colonies, the Germans, you know, we would do them much better than the than the, the French or the, you know, the greedy class of shopkeepers over there in England. You know, if there if there were German colonies, you know, with with our wondrous, you know, German ideals that we would we would actually do these colonies properly and and not unlike our these other nations. And we would do them better because we are German, not, you know
David Blackbourn:Yes. I I think, of of the various things that I where my sense of things was reinforced by doing the work for this book, I think that's one of the things that most struck me was just how powerful and how long running this German idea of moral superiority was. Going back certainly to the to the to the 18th century and near the era of talk about emancipation. Whereas, as you say, Germans feel free to criticize the appalling institution of slavery as practiced by the British and the French and the Dutch and so on, and neglect their own complicity. But but stretching stretching through to this this strange identification of Germans with with Native Americans, in the 19th century, that that the the Germans feel a kind of kinship, so they claim, with these victims of the of the money grabbing, you know, Yankees and so on.
David Blackbourn:And and then in the 20th century and especially after World War 1, when Germany's short lived colonies are taken away by the victorious powers, including Britain and France, the the Germans sort of cast themselves once again as a victim people and like to imagine that they've shared the fate of the, of Egyptians and Indians and others who've people from South Asia who've been colonized by the British or by the French in Southeast Asia. So there's this long running this long running sense that, yep, the Germans are more sensitive, more sensitive to the literature, more as of of native peoples and that they it's very unattractive trait.
Tim Benson:Yeah. There's this, as you mentioned, there's this long I mean, stretching back at least to the to the 30 years war in 17th century, which, I think I don't really think Americans realize how particularly brutal that or that series of wars was, during that time. And, there's but it was particularly so in the in the German states, There's this narrative of German victimization that basically is gonna run from them through, you know, basically up to our period almost, but, especially but especially so before, Germany had before Germany unifies itself in 18/71. But that's a recurring theme in in, how Germans think of themselves as as a as a victim people.
David Blackbourn:It it it certainly is. I I I think you're probably right that, that most nonprofessional historians, in this country and elsewhere, they they don't recognize how very traumatic, was the violence, the death toll, the destruction, of the 30 years war, which was fought particularly on German territory. It's where, you know, one contemporary said you know, there were many flash points in the early 17th century, and one contemporary said all all the present day wars converge in Germany. And it's true. Germany was where French and Swedish and and, and other troops, Hungarians, fought.
David Blackbourn:The death toll was, depending on the area, anything from 25 to 40%. And there are some areas, in fact, where half the population dies, and it's it's not always a result of war. It's a result of the disease which comes in the wake of soldiers, and of malnutrition because the soldiers are stealing all of all the food and the crops in the field. And there is an enormous amount of of rape and violence and death. And Germans in the 19th century, German nationalists are still writing about the awfulness of the 30.
David Blackbourn:I mean, it was indeed awful, but it fosters this, narrative of, well, of of German vulnerability and victimhood, and and, hence, the need for, a nation state which will protect Germans from from others. And so it it, it's it's a genuine story of of suffering, which then gets coined into, a a narrative of victimhood. Mhmm. And yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Okay. Well, since we're sort of in the same time period and since you, brought it up earlier,
David Blackbourn:the
Tim Benson:reformation So how did the how did Germans influence the reformation or the the many different reformations, if you will, outside of Germany?
David Blackbourn:I mean, in in in many in many different ways, directly through, through preachers, for example. There were many German preachers, especially in geographically, contiguous areas in in Scandinavia, for example, along the Baltic coast and into into Eastern Europe, many many preachers. And then through, through, universities and especially Littendberg, and I think I point out in the book I do point out in the book that, in Hamlet, Hamlet and his two friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they will all be familiar to your to your listeners. You know, they're they're all alumni of Wittenberg, and Wittenberg had many, many non German students who went there and then went back and spread the word. And in the book, I tried to trace some of the their tracks.
David Blackbourn:So directly through preachers and through, through the great Lutheran University of Wittenberg. And then later, the the the great German Calvinist University of Heidelberg, which does something similar for that branch of Protestantism. But, also through the printing press, and there's a literature that goes back from many, many years on the link between, print and Protestantism, the impact of print spreading the reformation. So all of those are ways in which, sort of the the means through which the message spreads, but it also falls on willing ears, I mean, including the willing ears of princes who see in the new faith, an opportunistic means to to, to seize the assets of the Catholic church in the name of of religious reform. And that's, see, something which people are basically aware of.
David Blackbourn:So Henry the 8th and the, what happened in in England, but it's also true in in Scandinavia as well that that the reformation is taken up by local princes who see this as a as a chance to enhance royal power vis a vis clerical power. So many different ways and channels and motives too for for this faith. And then the the other aspect of that is the Catholic fight back, the counter reformation or Catholic reformation, which then in turn creates a kind of global competition between the new faith and the and the old, which stretches, well, not only beyond German borders, but beyond beyond European borders.
Tim Benson:Yeah. The German, the German Jesuits seem to be everywhere.
David Blackbourn:You you
Tim Benson:hear a lot you hear a lot about the, obviously, the Spanish Jesuits and the and the Italian Jesuits, but, you don't really hear as much about the the Germans. You know?
David Blackbourn:No. And and there's a you're right. And there's there's a reason for that, which is that, say, the order the order begins in Spain, and and it and it it grows initially in those, in in those, predominantly Catholic countries. And at the beginning, the counter reformation is something which, the Jesuits and other orders bring to Germany to try to win back territory that's been lost to Lutheranism and Calvinism. With some success, they roll back quite a lot of areas which had become Protestant.
David Blackbourn:So in initially, there's a lot of Catholic, seminarians who are itching to go where the Spanish and Italian and Portuguese Jesuits have gone, you know, to China, especially, which is, being a martyr in China was something that, seems to have been very close to the to the heart of many young seminarians. But but the, the Catholic church, including the Jesuit order, didn't initially want them, to to leave Germany because Germany itself was still seen as very vulnerable to to the to the protestants. But then then they when Germany itself has been, partly won back, they're permitted to go abroad. And especially in in China and in Latin America, I think the Chinese Jesuits have attracted quite a lot of attention from historians, partly because they were so well entrenched at at the Chinese court because of their expertise in, in astronomy, which was something that was important in, you know, the Chinese imperial ways of thinking. And, without wanting to talk at too great lengths, I mean, I think it's really fascinating that these the Jesuits in China, because they they dress in sort of Mandarin robes.
David Blackbourn:They they go native as we would
Tim Benson:Right. Right.
David Blackbourn:Say. And this yeah. And it attracts a good deal of derision from other Catholic orders. You know, the Dominicans, for example, see the Jesuits as total opportunists. But the Jesuits well, there's a reason why anti Catholics use the adjective jesuitical.
David Blackbourn:It's because the Jesuits play the long game. They're, they're sophisticated. They're well educated. In this case, they they wager on being able to convert from sort of within the citadels of power, but it doesn't work. And eventually, they're driven out of China.
David Blackbourn:But that's, that's an interesting episode. I mean, when you say they're everywhere, the other the other place where you do see German Jesuits quite a bit is South America. And the interesting thing there to me, it's almost the opposite of China because because the Spanish and Portuguese and Italian Jesuits got to Latin America first, they tended to be the ones who were in the towns and cities. And so what was left for the German Jesuits in Spanish South America was, well, and in Portuguese Brazil was, was the rural areas. And so you've got a lot of, a lot of Jesuit, contact with native, Native Americans, indigenous Americans, and the Jesuits.
David Blackbourn:I mean, that's a that's a complex story, that they're both paternalistic, but also they try to protect these indigenous peoples whom, in a paternalistic way, they think of as kind of children who deserve and need their protection. So, yep, they're they're very active in China and in South America, but in very different ways.
Tim Benson:Mhmm. And just excuse me. Pardon me. Just backtracking again a little bit. I'm sort of glad you brought up Hamlet, you know, since he is the sort of stereotypical, thinker or overthinker.
Tim Benson:You know, there's this idea, especially before the time of the unification that, you know, Germany is you know, some people lament it, some people agree with it that, or some Germans, I should say, that Germany is just you know, it's it's the land of the writers and the thinkers, and it's the, you know, and that the the real German empire is an empire of culture. It's an empire of ideas. Is that really the case in this time period, or is this sort of like a, you know, sort of romantic way to look at, you know, German culture sort of pre, pre unification?
David Blackbourn:I think you can. This is an instance of how, national character is mythical because things change, And we can date fairly precisely when this idea of Germany as the land of of poets and thinkers, writers and thinkers emerges. And it's the very end of 18th and the beginning of 19th centuries. I I would say before that, people admire, excuse me, admire German, skills in all kinds of practical endeavors, printing, gun making, soldiering, mining. But the Germans are not associated particularly with literature, culture, or or music.
David Blackbourn:No. Prior to the 18th century, most of the musical influences flow into Germany from Italy and the low countries rather than out. So this this is something that happens in the late 18th century with this great flowering. And it's hard to explain this extraordinary kind of flowering of German philosophy, literature, music too. This I think the age of of Haydn and Mozart and and then of of of Beethoven, but but the age of Immanuel Kant, of of Goethe.
David Blackbourn:I mean, the you could say people have said that there was nothing like it since, you know, ancient Greece, this sudden clustering of talent. And that's what leads foreigners, including, the fairly famous book by Germaine de Stael, Madame de Stael, who dubbed Germany the nation of of poets and and thinkers. That's when the reputation is established, and Germans many Germans, accept it. Other Germans in the 19th century are impatient with it and really for reasons which are implied in in in your question, which is that if the real German strength is in culture, music, philosophy, then it perhaps undercuts claims for a political nation state. And so German nationalists, including quite a few of them that I quote in the book, get very impatient with this idea that Germany is just a sort of literary and cultural land.
David Blackbourn:But it's certainly a reputation that's firmly established quite quickly around 1800 or a little bit earlier, and then survives through through the 19th century. And so, well, various things, weaken it, not least the impact of World War 1, but that's to that's to jump ahead. And I'm sure we have probably more things to talk about Yeah. In terms of the 19th century.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. But before we get to that, just more on, the German Atlantic and that idea. German migration, across the Atlantic, you know, in the 19th century the 18th century, 19th century,
David Blackbourn:at
Tim Benson:least in the United States, German migrant the numbers of German migrants is comparable in scope with the amount of immigrants that are coming from, Great Britain or Ireland. So who were these these migrants from Germany? Where where did they settle? You know, where were they coming from? You know, why did they leave, like, you know, that, etcetera, etcetera, that whole thing.
Tim Benson:Why why were they coming and going?
David Blackbourn:A note on you you're right that the numbers are comparable. What what's what sets the Germans apart, I think, from the British and Irish immigrants is that so many of the German immigrants, end up in the USA. It's about 5,000,000 out of 5 and a half 1000000 total. So it's virtually all of them. Whereas the British and Irishmen, the Scots Irish spread themselves obviously much more across sort of Canada and Australia and New Zealand and so on.
David Blackbourn:But where do the Germans come from? It it it depends when you're talking about because it it changes. Early on, if if there's anybody listening who's, who's got predecessors who came over in the 18 thirties and forties, there's a very good chance that they came from the southwest of Germany, Baden, Wurttemberg, the Palatinate. These were areas of small peasant farms that were subdivided into increasingly small, what contemporary called, dwarf holdings, tiny holdings. So there's kind of real land hunger, and that's the first big wave of immigrants to the US.
David Blackbourn:And they're the ones who come over and often, in fact, end up themselves farming. Later, after the middle of 19th century, and especially in the the last great wave of immigrants, in the 18 seventies eighties, They're much the the the Germans who came to the US are much more likely to have come from northern Germany and to have been farm laborers or from workshops or factories. And they are more likely to have gone into the cities rather than to become pharmacies. So there's a there are real differences about where they came from and where they went to. I mean, I, I could say more about where they went to, but that's that's an answer to your question really about the whereabouts in Germany.
David Blackbourn:And the answer is it it varies according to when you're when you're talking.
Tim Benson:And there's there's quite a few
David Blackbourn:I don't know if you call
Tim Benson:them exiles, but political refugees as well, sort of escaping this period for one reason or the other.
David Blackbourn:That's that's right. And, and that's, and that's, true of Germans who immigrate to places other than the US. The the first so it is definitely true of of of German immigrants to the US that some some of them, in the 19th century as well as in the earlier period, are essentially escaping religious persecution. That's the some of the first German settlers in Australia are dissident Lutherans who, without going into detail, they're dissatisfied with aspects of the Lutheran church in Germany, and they decide to start anew in Australia. And you can find other groups in in Canada too.
David Blackbourn:So there are there are religious emigres. And then, in 19th century, there are 2 really big waves of of political emigres. 1, after 18/19, the the Carlsbad decrees were a series of decrees against radicals, which clamped down on radical democratic and nationalist, especially students, And many of those went, fled abroad to Britain, to France, to Switzerland, and and to the US. And then again, after the 1848, 49 revolution, there's a a bigger group. So, I I would add actually so there's one other, religious group later on, which is Catholics who flee Germany during the so called Cortorghampf in the 1870s, which is Bismarck's.
David Blackbourn:This is post unification, immediately post unification. So that there are examples across the 19th century of religious and political, refugees, although think historians of migration, and this is a well researched area, are agreed that it's essentially social and economic factors that that drive this. But, of course, you can't make a clean separation because, people carry their folkways with them. And one of the interesting things is that German immigrants in this country, in the US, are both Catholic and Protestant, and they continue that that division continues in their in their new home.
Tim Benson:Mhmm. Alright. Well, in keeping with the 19 I guess we'll skip, since we've already gone for 40 minutes already. Wow. I guess I'll skip over Napoleon the Napoleonic wars and, that impact and everything.
Tim Benson:But, just keeping with more of, like, the the global theme of this, but, the massive impact in starting in the 19th century of German educational institutions and practices and the the emergence of the modern German university system and its, you know, sort of preeminent place in the world in 19th century. Can you talk a little bit about that how how this German system really starts to I mean, especially in the west, sort of just takes over, you know, pedagogy, instruction, etcetera, etcetera, basically, practically the entire western world.
David Blackbourn:Yeah. And and parts of the nonwestern world too. Well, thank you. Yes. I mean, I would add this there's another, German educational institution that has a global impact, which is the kindergarten at
Tim Benson:Yeah. I wasn't yeah. Sorry.
David Blackbourn:I was I didn't just mean the university, but also, yeah, just all the way, you know, k through Yeah. It really is k k through through tertiary education because, the, I mean, German secondary education also has a big impact on educational reformers like Horace Mann in Massachusetts. They the the, his idea for the ideal high school is very much based on the Prussian model of something rigorous, non religious, and so on. But the university is, it's it's a a classic instance of a, right, of a of a German global export, which establishes itself, really everywhere. And there's evidence of, of its impact in in Japan, for example, as well as, the the US is the is the example that I dwell on most in the in the book.
David Blackbourn:And in fact, I I a few years ago when I was still working on the book, I, had a one of the lectures I gave when I was invited to talk was about the German model and the American university. So there's a lot of that in the book for those who are interested. I mean, this is, it's very striking that the new universities, which are set up, and famous universities set up in postbellum America, Johns Hopkins and Cornell, most obviously, are very much based on German model of of rigor, lectures, seminars, of hiring faculty who publish in learned journals. State universities such as Michigan, Redeem, actually, even before the civil war, influenced by the German model. And then, there is the there are the many instances where traditional American universities are already recast and reformed in the German image, and Harvard is the obvious one there.
David Blackbourn:It's, it's it's great president, Elliott, from 18/69 to, what, for the next 40 years, he basically Germanizes what had been a kind of New England College into a great a great modern research university. So it's a powerful model, as powerful in its way as the model of the German Symphony Orchestra. And, so these are 2 of the great sort of cultural exports of 19th century Germany.
Tim Benson:Okay. Well, just move forward to, nationalism and unification. Was there any sort of global character to the formation of a German national identity? We know that, you know, a lot of a very important part of the debate on the idea of unification of the German states, comes outside of German borders because there's, you know, at this point, so many exiles and emigres. So, yes, was there this this formation of the German national identity, the the, the push for German unification, was there any sort of global character to this?
David Blackbourn:Good question. You're right that there are many there are many emigres, and they're watching closely what happens at home, and they're writing to their colleagues who've stayed in Germany. So the the role of the emigres, whether they're in Britain or Switzerland or in the US, it has an effect on German debates about what the nation should should look like. So that's one dimension of it. I would say, German German nationalists are also very, very aware of what's happening in, other countries, and and and they constantly draw comparisons.
David Blackbourn:Just as earlier, German nationalists in the era of Greek and Polish struggles, you know, in the 18 twenties thirties, just as they had lamented that there was nothing similar in Germany. So now, people are intrigued by, what's happening in Italy, for example. So there's a, I would say, a transnational and international dimension to German debates about, about unification. I'd let me say one other thing quickly about the 18 sixties, which is really the key decade. It's the pivotal decade of the of the of the whole of 19th century when it comes to nation building and rebuilding because it's when it's when Italy and Germany take their take their nation state form.
David Blackbourn:But it's also, it it it's also, when, the Meiji restoration reshapes Japan as a modern nation state. And, of course, it's when, the United States is remade as a nation because of a civil war between north and south. And I, in the book, argue and this is not original. This is, this is something historians have pointed out before that in Germany too, unification comes about as a result of a civil war between north and south, that is Prussia and Austria. And in this case, the north is the winner.
David Blackbourn:In this case, the North is just a pessimist. Basically, it's from the confederation. So there's a, I would say, an international context as well as sort of international and transnational influences on the making of the German nation.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Alright. We brought it up a little bit earlier when we were talking about this German idea of of moral superiority when it came to dealing with, you know, empires and native peoples and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So once Germany unifies, or not exactly right away, but shortly after that unifies, and, you know, Bismarck, among other people, is not a fan of this idea. The Germans embark on their own colonial project throughout, you know, in Africa and, in the Pacific.
Tim Benson:And, so give us your verdict on the, the German colonial project. Was it was it good? Was it bad? Was it horrific? Is it, you know, somewhere in between?
Tim Benson:Is it a mixture of all? I mean, if you could I don't know. I mean I mean, I know there there I mean, there's German colonies on the western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of Africa, so it's, you know, they're not exactly apples to apples comparisons and you know? But altogether, you know, what are your what are your thoughts on the, the legacy of the German colonial project across the world?
David Blackbourn:Some, you know, there's something that's often quoted by the English writer Thomas Hobbes, and he said that, life of man is nasty, brutish, and short. And the German colonial empire was nasty, brutish, and short. I mean, it's very short lived from the 18 eighties to to the end of World War 1. Actually, not even the end of World War 1 because most of the In the
Tim Benson:middle of World War 1, basically.
David Blackbourn:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the it it it only took the British, French, Belgians, and others, you know, a few months in some cases to overrun most of the, in fact, all of the German African empire except for East Africa. But, I mean, it's it's it's short lived, and, it it varies. It it it's it won't surprise you or any of your listeners to know that it was at its most brutal in Africa.
David Blackbourn:That's was also true of of the empires of other Europeans. Africa seems to have brought out the very worst instincts of of European imperialists. But it's generally conceded, I think, that the German rule in in Samoa, in the Pacific, had a much lighter touch and that, the German colony, Qingdao, in in China, that was complex, and it changed over time. And and, by the end of that, by the end of the imperial period, the the German colony in Qingdao was a good deal more liberal than it was at the beginning. But in in Africa, especially, it is extremely brutal.
David Blackbourn:And people refer, I think, rightly to, the genocidal behavior of the Germans in German Southwest Africa, present day Namibia, in their response to, to an an uprising by the Nama and Herero, and it was brutally put down. And in particular, it it's, it foreshadows the the Armenian genocide in one respect, which is that, the the Armenian genocide, many of the Armenians were simply left in the desert just to to to die of thirst and hunger. And so too with the, the the genocide in Southwest Africa, and the Germans controlled and blocked off the waterhole. So it was extremely brutal. But there are the the same could be said of other parts of the German empire.
David Blackbourn:Just say one other thing, about the German empire partly because it's so short lived. Whereas historians of of of the British and French empires have sometimes talked about those empires as sort of laboratories of modernity, places where you could try out, oh, urban planning or new kinds of hygiene, or agrarian reform. And I think that's some truth when it comes to the British and French empires. Not really any such thing in the German case. They, they were empires of exploitation, which which never turned out to be kind of laboratories of any kind of modernization.
David Blackbourn:So, you know, a dark episode in in in German history, and one which was in some ways has been overshadowed by the later darkness of National Socialism. And that you could say that only really in the 21st century, are Germans fully coming to terms with, with this? And debates, for example, over the Benin, the bronzes and returning the these yeah.
Tim Benson:Oh, I just I just wanted to hear. What about this idea of, you know, the the, quote, unquote, from Windhoek to Auschwitz he says, you know Yeah. Is there a straight is there a straight line from the German experience in Africa to what's gonna come later in what the Germans are gonna do in Eastern Europe, to the Jews and to others?
David Blackbourn:It's a it's it's an important question, and it's a difficult one to answer. I mean, the short answer would be no, but, no, I think there isn't a straight line, and the efforts of historians like Jurgen Schimmeler to argue that there have been, I think, are a bit a bit forced. But this is where the buck comes in. There are certainly, parallels and definiters between what the Germans do in Africa and what what the Nazis do in occupied Europe and, above all, occupied Eastern Europe. And it's I think it's now widely accepted that what that that Nazi occupied Eastern Europe was an empire.
David Blackbourn:It was treated as treated as an empire, and as a particularly, brutal empire, which did not seek to collaborate with local elites, but whose racism and exploitative, qualities were such that it produced, a reaction, which in turn was put down with extreme violence. So the pattern is very similar to the pattern in Southwest Africa, though I think the actual continuities of personnel and intellectually are are a bit forced. So it's a mixed answer.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Tim Benson:Okay. Now to, the 20th century, where everything just sort of the wheels just seem to completely fall off the bus here with Germany. So you asked the the question in the book, you know, the 20th century. When did it all start to go wrong? So when did it all start to go
David Blackbourn:wrong? Yeah. I I asked the question rhetorically, and then I give one of the classic answers, which is the one given by the great American diplomat and historian George Kennan, who said that the, sort of the original catastrophe of 20th century is is World War 1. And, I I don't doubt that for a moment.
Tim Benson:Yeah.
David Blackbourn:Communism and fascism and the holocaust, are unimaginable without World War 1. And, see, World War 1 in numerous ways, cast its shadow over Germany in post 1920 19 years. No.
Tim Benson:I was just gonna say, I think you're I mean, the more and more you look at if you study the 2, I think the aftereffects of or the side effects of the great war, what it unleashes, is far more of historical long term importance or it has more long term effects than, say, you know, what the 2nd World War unleashed. I think I I think we're still dealing with the great war in ways I think most people don't even really realize or fathom. But that seemed to me that the the the great war is sort of, like, the hinge moment of of modern history, and there's so many things that, fall upon it. But but especially, maybe most importantly, it seems like after the great war I mean, Europe as a whole seems to sort of lose faith in itself. You know what I mean?
Tim Benson:Like, you're, and it's just a completely different it's like a totally different world pre to post Great War than, say, pre to post World War 2. You know?
David Blackbourn:I think I I like that, that your description of it is a kind of hinge moment, a bit of pivot. I I think that's true. And interesting that you talk about Europe losing faith in itself. Because one of the byproducts of war is that because the participants and above all the British and French mobilized colonial troops, it it builds up ahead of steam behind the demand for decolonization. Mhmm.
David Blackbourn:And and that the the beginning of, until well after World War 2 and in the case of let me see. In some cases, well after World War 2. But the other the other aspect of it is, is this with the civilizational damage. And people like to quote the Mahatma Gandhi, you know, the famous possibly apocryphal quotation. When asked what he thought of western civilization supposedly replied he thought it would be a good idea.
David Blackbourn:A savage commentary on on a Europe, which had just, seen millions and millions of men murdered, my my paternal grandfather among them, and buried in mud and in which people had seen fit to to invent weapons like the flamethrower and mustard gas. So, the damage to Europe's idea of itself as a place from which progress, modernity, and enlightenment flowed, was very severely damaged. And we see that, Germans weren't the only ones who, behaved in inhuman ways, but because they were the losers in the war, in some ways they and because of the German reputation for for cultural advancement, you know, the land of of of Goethe and Beethoven was now the the the land of of of bayonets and raped nuns and destroyed cathedrals and all
Tim Benson:Fritz Haber and yeah. Yeah.
David Blackbourn:Yes. Fritz Fritz Haber and and gas. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. So can we talk about, as we sort of alluded to earlier, sort of before the war, German culture is really this colossus, astriding I mean, you know, science and medicine and, arts and music and, you know, literature, etcetera, etcetera, is it's really more or less dominating the world at this point culturally. But what are the effects the long term effects on this sort of German cultural outflow that happens because of, the great war and because Germany, loses the great war?
David Blackbourn:As, they are very negative. I mean, I'm tempted to say catastrophic. I mean, I think the reputation of German culture doesn't fully recover, and it stretches across German historians are not welcome at historical congresses for a long time in the twenties. Even German orchestras, do get back to playing in, you know, London and Paris after a few years, but it's not quite not quite the same. I mean, the only thing well, historians always like to complicate things having given a straightforward answer.
David Blackbourn:I would complicate this in 2 ways. 1, by saying that in all kinds of ways, developments before 1914 had already started to eat away at that kind of German cultural dominance, partly because, definitions of culture were themselves changing and mass culture came along and that was not Germany's strong point. They're more a kind of receiving than giving power. The same true of the avant garde in in literature and architecture. And I would say that insofar as the German reputation and culture rests on a kind of classic 19th century notion of high culture, the best that's been thought and written and composed.
David Blackbourn:Already, it's starting changing definitions of culture are starting to weaken that reputation. And the other way in which I would relativize it is to say that however great the damage was to Germany's cultural reputation because of the war, there was still Weimar Berlin. And if you wanted an example of a a sort of a glittering paradise of cultural experimentation, which was attractive at least to intellectuals and cultural figures all around the world, then Weimar Berlin's your place, and that's something that everyone recognizes. So it's not completely over as it were.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Have you seen that show? I believe it's on Netflix. It's on Netflix here in the United States. It's based it's a German television show.
Tim Benson:It's a battle
David Blackbourn:in Berlin?
Tim Benson:Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Have you seen it?
David Blackbourn:I I have. I don't I don't especially like it. I have to say, I think it's slightly overdrawn, But I like I like Weimar culture, but I don't particularly like that that I That series. Did did you like it?
Tim Benson:Yeah. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was very I mean, the production values are astronomically great. Yeah. It's very well shot.
Tim Benson:I mean I mean, there it it's the I mean, the show is based on basically a bunch of detective novels. But, so if you're in the I but it I think it I don't know. I'm not the historian or of, you know, of Weimar of Weimar, Germany, but it seems to me it does a very I don't know how accurate, but it seems to me to do a pretty good job of of bringing to light that sort of late Weimar period, you know, before everything's just sort of, you know, before everything's gonna fall apart with the Nazis, but, like, the, you know, the fighting, between, you know, the the different left factions and the communists and the, you know, the street fighting with the communists and the and the and the brown shirts and all that stuff and just the, that sort of thing. I think it I mean, it does it it brings to light a lot of the seedier side of the, you know, of Weimar, you know, the drugs and the, the cabarets and all that sort of stuff. But, I thought it was it's pretty entertaining.
Tim Benson:Like, for TV shows, I'll just say it's, it's a very entertaining show. I don't know. At least for me. But
David Blackbourn:You know, I would, it it is. And I'm probably, you know, the historian image is probably a bit a bit picky. I I there was there were a lot of contemporary Weimar films that I that I love, but that's a whole I've taught courses on film and history in 20th century Germany. I'm probably a bit picky when it comes to films in general. I I would say, I mean, it's it's hard in some ways to exaggerate the the, things like the street fighting and the seediness of IMR, but that that program in some ways manages it.
David Blackbourn:But, but no. It's it is But
Tim Benson:but I get you. I mean, like, the, the more you know about a subject and the easier it is to get frustrated by any sort of, sort of Hollywood or, you know, movie portrayal of, like, that period just because, obviously, they have to, like, you know, paint over things and, you know, blur stories together and stuff. So you'll watch something, you know, if you know something a lot of it like, there's this new, miniseries on Apple TV plus about Benjamin Franklin in Paris, trying to get the the French to, you know, join the American side during the war, and and Michael Douglas plays Benjamin Franklin. I've watched the first couple episodes of it now. And, I'm you know, things happen, and I'm just like, no.
Tim Benson:That didn't happen that way. It happened this way, and Franklin didn't talk to this guy about that thing. He talked to this guy, and, you know, Lafayette didn't approach Franklin about coming in. He approached Silas Dean, you know, like, blah blah blah. You know, that sort of thing, and it drives me nuts.
Tim Benson:Yeah. But, so it sort of pulls you out. You know, the more you know about it, it sort of pulls you out of what they're trying to do. So that's unfortunate. But I I love all the historical dramas and all those things.
Tim Benson:Like, it's like my catnip. You know? But, but the more I know about it, the the harder it is for me to, let things slide in that way. You know what I mean?
David Blackbourn:Yeah. I had put in a plug. I I I strongly sympathize, for a for a contemporary film, which I'm very, very fond of called, People on Sunday. Mention am Zontag. And it's, was made by a series of people who have very familiar names because they all ended up immigrating from Hitler's Germany.
David Blackbourn:Billy Wilder helped to write it, Robert Siodmak, directed it, and Fred Zinneman, was was did the camerawork.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Heavy hitters.
David Blackbourn:It's, Menshans Sontag, People on Sunday. You can get it's it's a film with musical accompaniment and sub and subtitles. It's set in the 1920s. It's made in the 1920s and it follows a group of young people and it has
Tim Benson:Oh, that's right. You mentioned it in the book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
David Blackbourn:I I I think I mentioned yes. I do. Yeah. I scatter a few films, through the 20th century parts of the of the book. So I strongly recommend Yeah.
Tim Benson:It's just a bunch of German young people sort of enjoying their day. Basically, I mean, that's the general
David Blackbourn:It it is. And you get a sense of what Berlin it said in Berlin, what Berlin was like, the transportation system, crowds, just it's, it captures that, the sense of brightness and consumerism of of Berlin, you know, before the curtain falls, before the darkness. Mhmm. So wonderful film.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Alright. Thank you. I actually will watch that because I'm I like, I like films of the period, especially, like, foreign films of the period because you get a very good, like you said, insight into a lost world, basically. But, now back to, Weimar and, you know, the curtain falling and that.
Tim Benson:So this idea of the 2 Germanys, there's there's a good Germany and, you know, the Germany of culture, the Germany of Beethoven and Geta and and, Kant and, you know, etcetera, etcetera, and then the bad Germany of, you know, the militarism and violence and hypermasculine just sort of, egoism, etcetera. This sort of comes about at that time. Is there did you give any credence to that, that the it's sort of like the Jekyll and Hyde version of Germany, or, do you think that's a little overblown, that that idea?
David Blackbourn:I think the idea arises in the minds of of non German critics of Germany pretty much straight after 18 71 and especially in in France, French intellectuals already in the 1870s is saying, ah, there's 2 Germanists. There's the good Germany we've always admired, but then there's, you know, the striped helmet. So it inevitably, lives on in the 20th century because of the 2 world wars, and their association with with German militarism. And it's something which, those who identify themselves as good Germans, in the wake of both world wars, obviously, emphasized because they want to believe that there is a Germany, especially after World War 2, that that the Nazis did not represent the real Germany. I mean, if if we take that, if we take what happens after World War 2 and the flourishing of Goethe societies and the this most desperate desire to show that the real Germany, the good Germany, is the real one.
David Blackbourn:It's it's it's a powerful and laudatory phenomenon, which tends to look past the the the fact that so many Germans were in fact complicit in the 3rd right, either directly or by looking looking another way. And, let me see. He's he's easy to say, easy to be critical, but, because this is also true of, also true of many of the occupied countries that, initially, we thought that most French people were in the resistance and Dutch people. And now it's clear how much complicity there was. But I think it it it was an inevitable byproduct of the sort of acrobrium, that Germany encountered after both World Wars that they would that others would emphasize the good the good Germany.
David Blackbourn:But it's it's obviously not it's not wrong, the it's not wrong that Germany has both been sort of the fountain head of great great culture and of its opposite. If I if I could quote another film, a document a British documentary film called the diaries of Timothy. I don't know if you've encountered this. It was a British documentary filmmaker left gleaning in that sort of immediate post World War 2 period. And it's documentary which shows a baby in a cradle and and the voiceover talks about the future in Britain for this baby, Timothy.
David Blackbourn:And it's that was the, talks about making Britain a better, fairer place. But there's a wonderful moment in it where they show Dame Myra Hess, a German Jewish pianist, playing a Beethoven sonata in London during the blitz. And the voiceover says to this baby Timothy, whichever says something like, here we have a German playing German music. Some of us think that this is the greatest music ever written, that Germany was our enemy. This is something you will have to figure out for yourself, Timothy, when you grow up.
David Blackbourn:And I think it's a very moving moment, that yes. Beethoven was played in Britain by a Jewish German pianist during the blitz. There you've got the 2 Germanists.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Staying on that, and I know you brought this up at the very beginning, of the podcast, so I just wanna ask you about that. And is there a transnational history of National Socialism that helps us, see the Nazi regime and see its crimes, more clearly or differently.
David Blackbourn:That's the tough one, isn't it? And I think the answer is yes, but I mean, the the yes the yes part is that, it it's wrong, I think, just to speak about Nazism or Hitlerism as if they weren't part of a kind of family of a family of ideas, of fascist ideas. I mean, I also in the book, as you as you know, I I I do compare and contrast Nazism and communism. And unlike some people, I do in fact think that there's some mileage in the idea of of totalitarianism. But above all, I I I think that there is it it helps us to see Nazism as one species of fascism, sharing many common features with Italian and other fascisms, and in fact, broadening that to recognize what the Nazis took from elsewhere.
David Blackbourn:Eugenics from, you know, Britain and Scandinavia, race theory from the US. And it's uncomfortable to to to learn how much Hitler admired Henry Ford because of his antisemitism or admired Madison Grant's passing of the great race and wrote him a fan letter or to recognize that Hitler admired strong men like Ataturk and Chiang Kai shek. So all of that is is true and and, you could say that there's not that much in National Socialism ideologically, which is completely original. I think most historians these days would say that the sort of the Germanic elements I'm doing for your listeners, I'm doing scare quotes around Germanic here. But the the Germanic elements were not Mhmm.
David Blackbourn:The central ones that they share a lot. Mhmm. But this is so so that's necessary to say, but it's just as necessary to say that the way National Socialism put these things together and the the radical genocidal way in which it, followed through those policies made it unique. The u eugenics was not unknown in Britain and Scandinavia and the US, but there were limits on how it was applied because these were essentially democratic societies. There were limits on fascism's brutality in Italy set essentially by the the fact that fascism had close connections with the Catholic church.
David Blackbourn:So no limits in Germany. So it's radically
Tim Benson:I I just wanna say no. It seems to me that that there, even in Germany, there were limits up to, I mean, up to a point. And, really, once you get to the once the invasion of the Soviet Union happens in 1941 and Hitler, fought down, sort of gives everybody free reign to just see, like, hey. This is a war of annihilation. You have to throw morality out the window.
Tim Benson:What you think, you know, you have to be ruthless and brutal, because it's either we destroy them or they are going to destroy us. And, once that happens, there is a significant shift in the German, you know, in in their brutality, not that they weren't brutal before, but they weren't as explicitly genocidal, before that. I mean, even the things that they did inside Germany with, you know, euthanizing, the mentally ill and stuff like that, that received pushback in Germany and that, you know, they, you know, had to sort of cancel that program
David Blackbourn:Yes.
Tim Benson:Because of that. But it's so I mean, even, even the Nazis, you know, up to a point, you know, had the limp had that limit until, you know, that that carnage, that that completely sort of sui generis, situation in the east took place, and then it was just like, gloves are off. We're gonna do whatever we think and, you know, that sort of thing.
David Blackbourn:Yeah. I I I I agree with that. I mean, I, you could say especially if we're talking about genocide, about holocaust, then 1941 is the key development. I I would say it's it's the last and most important of a whole series of, sort of thresholds that are crossed, starting with, starting immediately after the regime comes to power with the suspension basically of civil liberties, the sacking of Jewish and left wing and other critics of the regime, with the enabling law, and so on, and then with the Nuremberg race laws, bit by bit, slice by slice, the the tolerance for intolerable things grows in Germany. And when it comes to the war, I think 1939 and the invasion of Poland is also a very important threshold that's crossed because that's when these Einsatzkolten are are first employed behind the lines
Tim Benson:to hunt
David Blackbourn:out enemies and Jews and and non Jews alike. But but you're right that 1941 and the invasion of the Soviet Union, is the is is the final moment. Yes. The the yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Alright. We've already gone 80 minutes. Maybe just just sort of bring it up to the, present. Just, basically, one more question or one two part question.
Tim Benson:So in the years since I mean, granted it's been almost I mean, it's been at least 7 years, I guess, since the end of World War 2. How do Germans see themselves following the war? And, and then again, immigration as well into Germany, and specifically immigration into Germany, from outside of the, you know, the European lands or specifically Turkey and some other places, has that changed anything in the way, this sort of mass immigration is German? Has that changed anything in the way Germans think of themselves or think of what it means to be, you know, quote, unquote, German, that sort of thing?
David Blackbourn:I think that's the the Two parts to that question, but it's more like 20 parts to give. But let
Tim Benson:I know. I'm sorry. Is it
David Blackbourn:No. No. I yes. Yeah. I know you you you want to cover as much as possible and rightly so.
David Blackbourn:I spend a lot of time in the book trying to talk about sort of the shadow of World War 2. The the the very short answer would be that, over a period of 40 years prior to unification, the Federal Republic, ends up doing an admirable job of fessing up to what happened. It took a while, but then it becomes an admirable case of of coming to terms with the past, as the phrase goes, compared with, say, Austria or Japan. Most people would agree with that, I think. East Germany, not so much because, in some ways, by blaming everything on finance capital, you let the ordinary people off.
David Blackbourn:So that's that's the first 40 years. It it during which time there is already a significant number of non Germans immigrate Germany, the the who slowly bring their families with them, and as it were behind the backs of the policymakers, create, a multicultural Germany. Although it takes West Germany, and then after 1990, unified Germany, takes them a long time to come to terms with multiculturalism. And, that's not just true of Germany. I think it's been true of other European countries.
David Blackbourn:What when you talk about immigration, it it's there have been waves of, particularly of refugees. I mean, the Vietnamese bulk people, refugees from, Iran and Iraq.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
David Blackbourn:But then, you're probably thinking especially of the of the of the very many Syrians, who've left Syria because of the civil war, and the largest number of which is still in Turkey. But what about a1000000 settled in Germany and, Angela Merkel it's honey, Merkel Merkel, very cautious politician, made 2 remarkably radical decisions. 1 was to, stop all nuclear power after Fukushima, and the other was to say, let's accept a 1000000 Syrians.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Let's let them all in.
David Blackbourn:Yeah. Yeah. Let them all in. And it's it's been a bumpy ride. I mean, the the the striking thing to me is how many hundreds of thousands of Germans have gone out of their way to welcome, to to welcome, these, these asylum seekers and other other immigrants from the global south.
David Blackbourn:And I think a lot of that has to do with, making amends for the past, among people who were, you know, whose grandparents, weren't even alive, during the 3rd rush. So I I tend to be very, admiring, not uncritical, but admiring of the present day Federal Republic as a as a stable and by global standards, very humane, democracy with a robust social system. As is well known, the the worst, violence and threats, against foreigners have come in Saxony and Tauranga, that is safe in former, East Germany. And, the rise of AfD, the alternative for Germany, is worrying, but it's it's certainly no more worrying than than the National Front in France or the success of Gaertildes in, in in the Netherlands, which is more shocking and surprising to me. So a mixed I mean, I many genres do not accept the idea of multiculturalism, and, yep.
David Blackbourn:It's a much
Tim Benson:Yeah. I mean, it's I kind of I mean, I get it in a way. Like, I don't know. I mean, for as an American, I mean, you've lived here for it, you know, we're just a mutt people, basically. You know, we're from everywhere, but it's different.
Tim Benson:I don't know. Like, Europe is different. I mean, because, like, if you if you ask anybody, like, you know, if you ask them, you know, what is a Frenchman? What is a German? What is an Englishman?
Tim Benson:What is a what is an Italian? What is a Spaniard? You know, I mean, they think of, like, what is ethnic ethically or excuse me, ethically ethnically, you know, those are people. So if you lose your it I mean, I I see I mean, to a degree, I see the point of, you know, a lot of these, politicians on the right that say, like, oh, if we lose our ethnic identity, then we lose our identity as as France or as as the Dutch or as Spaniards or as Italians or whatever. I mean, I kinda get it, but as, like, an American, I'm also like, you know, like, who cares?
Tim Benson:You know what I mean? But but to but, I mean, but these but these cultures and these are so old and, entrenched, and I understand the desire not to lose that in a way. But I don't know if there's a way you can do both. And then at the same time, like, you know, all these Europeans are, mad about about immigration, and then they're also not having kids either. So, like, you know, you can't, you know, you can't have a you can't have a No.
Tim Benson:And they Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah.
David Blackbourn:No. No. And it's No. No. It's not only not not having kids, but they're but they're very resistant to raising the retirement age or increasing Social Security contributions.
David Blackbourn:So, you know, you you you can't have all those things. You can't, you can't have a a a a a a high retirement age, and continue to have the same social security payments out, and not have children and not have immigrants. Now something's got to give. And Right. Yeah.
David Blackbourn:I think the thing that will give, I I don't really see any rebounding in birth rates. It's it's actually demographically, it's a very interesting world we're living in now because there's only one part of the world where birth rates are actually above replacement level, and and and that's the continent of Africa. Not it's not in fact true of any parts of Asia now or Latin America or, of course, China. So No. Yeah.
David Blackbourn:The the the population of
Tim Benson:the globe is supposed to start shrinking after, like, 21100 or something like that. Like, we're we're rapidly coming to a point where it's it's gonna peak and go down. Yeah. Yeah. No.
Tim Benson:I'm sorry to cut you off if you had anything else to say.
David Blackbourn:No. No. No. You're no. Absolutely.
David Blackbourn:Right. I mean, this is this is to get beyond German history. I mean, I think, that Europe is the part of the world that, migrants driven by war, civil war, climate crisis, and so on, that that they're going to they're going to hit Europe before they hit any other part of the world. And that's where future growth population growth in Germany will happen as also in France and Britain and the Netherlands. And, like you, I I understand how, especially older people, but not just older people, when, when a society changes in front of you, you feel a sense of being bereft and, politicians should, try and address those anxieties.
David Blackbourn:I mean, I this this is, one of the things that I think is very, one of the political developments of the last decades that I think has been very damaging is the decline of traditional parties of labor, the Espidet in Germany and the labor party in Britain. Because those parties historically kind of inoculated their working class bases against
Tim Benson:Talking about the center left parties that
David Blackbourn:are And I think those the weakness of those parties. Yes. So basically center left parties. Yes. Yes.
David Blackbourn:Yeah. I mean, it's true actually that the social democrats are now in power with the with the Greens, but their share of the vote is much less than it used to be. And if you look at the French Socialists, they're in a very bad way. And and it's broadly true across across Western Europe. So I'm a I'm an old style, old star supporter of the old center left parties, because I think they played this role, which we only now recognize now that they don't play it so much, how important it was in trying to keep down, racism.
David Blackbourn:My 10¢ for this.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. No problem. Alright. Well, like I said, we've already gone let me oh my god.
Tim Benson:An hour and a half. I've got you a lot longer than I said it would. I apologize. But before we go, just one last question. You know, sort of the, again, normal exit question everybody gets on the show, and that's, you know, what would you like the audience to get out of this book?
Tim Benson:Or, you know, what's the one thing you'd want a reader to, take away from the book having read it?
David Blackbourn:Well, you know, the the the reviewer in The Economist said, readers will never see Germany in quite the same way again. I mean, I I I I think that anybody who reads the book or just dips into it will, by looking at at German history beyond its borders, will find histories, stories of migrations and mercantile activity and the transfer of ideas, whether it's the tango going into Germany or the university going out of Germany, just flows of ideas and people and goods that they probably won't have thought of before. And I hope they like the idea that looking at 500 years of German history makes sense too. I'll leave you with this. I I, some years ago, I gave a lunchtime talk at the German Studies Association.
David Blackbourn:I was worried that so much German history in universities and journals now is just 20th century history. So I did a talk called, honey, I shrunk German history. And the idea was to try and highlight the importance of German history, you know, be before Hitler, before World War 1. So I I I hope that, that your listeners will be intrigued enough to to dip into this book.
Tim Benson:Yeah. I I'm with you. I, I I think I definitely will now view, German history differently having read the book. I I like your idea of dipping in, because it's sort of a book where you can do that, where you don't I mean, one of the one of the regrets, about doing this podcast or trying to do it, like, once a week is, trying to read a book once a week or once every other week, And, obviously, a lot easier to do with others, but, just depending on size. But there's some books I wish I had more time to sort of let marinate in my brain before I moved on to the next book and had more time to, sort of chew on and, like, just think about and, that sort of thing.
Tim Benson:So this is, this book is something that definitely, for people out there, you know, you can, you know, maybe read a chapter a week and, just, you know, let it let it simmer in your head a little bit and give it some breathing room and some space to really think about, things. And then, you know, before moving on to the next chapter, you know, unlike me where I have to, like, you know, sort of cram it like I'm studying for a finals or something like that. So I wish I had more of an opportunity to do that with this book, and not that I won't continue thinking about it. But, you know, I wish it could have been, you know, could have done it more like a like a bottle of wine and let it breathe a little bit, in my head, but it's a it's a, really fantastic history of, of this, 500 year period in German history. And it's just the scope of it and the amount of information in it, it's really remarkable.
Tim Benson:It's a fantastic, fantastic, book. I highly, highly, highly recommend it for, everybody out there. So, if you're still listening to us after an hour and a half, which hopefully you are, again, the name of the book is Germany in the World, a Global History 1500 to 2000, and the author, doctor David Blackburn. So, doctor Blackburn, thank you again so, so much for coming on the podcast and discussing the book with me. Thank you for staying long, and, you know, thank you for dedicating almost a decade of your life to, producing this book so that we all, you know, have to get to enjoy the fruits of your labor, so to speak.
Tim Benson:So, we, I I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
David Blackbourn:Well, thank you very much. I I appreciate your attention to the book and and the great questions and, and the opportunity to talk to your listeners. So thank you, and and thank you to all the listeners who are who are still with us after 1 hour and 3 minutes. Thank you.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. It's my pleasure. And again, if you like this podcast, please consider leaving us a 5 star review and sharing with your friends.
Tim Benson:And if you have any, books you'd like to, that you think we should do on the podcast or have any questions, comments, anything like that, you can reach out to me at, tbenson@heartland.org. That's t b e n s o 0n@heartland.org. And for more information about the Heartland Institute, you can just go to heartland.org. And we do have the our little, Twitter account that you can follow, Twitter x, whatever you wanna call it. I'm just gonna always call it Twitter.
Tim Benson:You can reach out to us there at illbooks@illbooks. So make sure you check that out, you know, or send us a follow. Give us a follow. Send us a DM. Again, same sort of thing if you have any questions or comments or anything like that.
Tim Benson:And, yeah, that's, pretty much it. So, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you guys next time. Take care. Love you, Robbie.
Tim Benson:Love you, mom. Bye bye.
Speaker 4:Possible Germany, and likewise, Japan, wherever you go, wherever you land. Say what this means to me. Fundamental problem. But I know. You'll not listen.
Speaker 4:No. I know. You'll not listen. This was still new to me. I wouldn't understand.
Speaker 4:Impossible Germany, unlike Japan. This is what love is for, to be out of place, gorgeous and long, face to face. No larger problems
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