German History in Three Chapters

Thanks to Curtis Yarvin I got to watch a US propaganda film from 1945, warning of the danger of US right-wing politics using the Evil Germans as an example. 

There are three chapters of "German History" in the film:

Chapter 1: Führer #1, Blood and Iron (picture of Bismarck)

Chapter 2: Führer #2, Deutschland Über Alles (picture of Wilhelm II)

Chapter 3: Führer #3, Today Germany... Tomorrow the World (picture of Adolf Hitler)

Then, after pictures of mass graves, a swastika getting blown up, and the wreck of Hitler's Alpine retreat, we switch to the US of 1945 and "The ghosts of Berchtesgarten still walk. Right here in America..." and pictures of American politicians and activists that we are supposed to hate. Only I don't know who they are picturing. Presumably one of them is Charles Lindbergh. And another is Huey Long. And presumably Father Coughlin. But I can't be sure.

Bless their hearts.

When you know a bit of history it is interesting to see what the propagandists miss out. For instance, the whole point of Bismark's three wars, on Denmark, Austria, and France, was to force the various German states to unite. Bismark's genius was to understand that the only way to do this was with three nice little wars.

And why bother to unite Germany? Well, perhaps because of what had happened to the German lands before the film's Year Zero of 1870.

We could discuss the occupation of the German lands by France in the Napoleonic Wars. Friedrich Meinecke's book is called "The Age of German Liberation: 1795-1815." A lot of what we call German nationalism was born in that age when the Germans got together to decide how to stop the French from walking all over them every century or so.

Because in 1618-1648 was the Thirty Years War in which Sweden, France, and the Spanish/Austrian Hapsburgs pretty well devastated Germany. Thanks fellahs!

So if I were to write a History of Germany in three chapters, I would say

Chapter 1: Never Again. Leading intellectual lights in German lands during the Napoleonic Wars devise educational reforms to educate Germans to stand up against the French. The University of Berlin is the first research university. It leads eventually to Bismarck, who cunningly unites Germany in three short sharp wars.

Chapter 2: Age of the Idiots. After the fall of Bismarck Germany is ruled by the lightweight Wilhelm II, who makes enemies of France, Britain and Russia, while Germans invent the automobile, make a revolution in physics, and a revolution in ammonia fertilizer with the Haber process. After getting caught in a two-front war Germany -- Idiot! -- was humiliated and dismembered by the Treaty of Versailles, and that made young Adolf Hitler mad. So when the stumbling bumbling US Federal Reserve failed to act as lender of last resort in the 1929 crash Hitler rose to power, and then got Germany into another two-front war. Idiot!

Chapter 3: European Hegemony. Dismembered and humiliated again after World War II, Germany got smart and entered into a partnership with France to dominate Europe with the nominally supra-national European Union. So today Germany dominates Europe but does it through intermediaries. Sorry about the butcher's bill in the Age of the Idiots.

That's the thing about history. The more you know, the more you can stitch together a narrative to do anything you want. You can make the Germans the monsters of all time, or you can make them the helpless victims that finally got their act together. 

Your choice.