Turning Points in Modern Times: Essays on German and European History

by Karl Dietrich Bracher, Abbott Gleason

Turning Points in Modern Times focuses on events after 1917: the rise of Nazism on the Right and authoritarianism on the Left. Bracher provides an incisive framework for understanding the great ideological confrontation of this century--democracy versus totalitarianism in the forms of fascism, Nazism, and communism. His analysis of the outcomes underscores the significance and power of democratic values and governments. The doyen of German political history, Karl Dietrich Bracher extends the argument against dictatorship that runs through his life's work, offers a blueprint for dealing with the recent past of the communist East German State (DDR), looks at the true facts of the Stasi collaboration, and challenges misperceptions of Hitler, Stalin, and others. He demonstrates the kinship between fascism and communism, considers Weimar and liberalism, assesses the legacy of Nazism, and outlines the ethos of democracy. In all this Bracher exposes the twentieth-century threats to the democratic state so that they can never again subvert representative government. A founder of the new history of Germany, which considers the larger context for Hitler and illuminates events through the theories of social science and the values of liberalism and democracy, Bracher writes in the tradition of Acton, Burckhardt, Croce, and Dahrendorf. This is a vital history lesson for our turbulent times, when once more democracy is on the march after a twilight century.

338 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1995

About the author

Karl Dietrich Bracher was a German political scientist and historian of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Born in Stuttgart, he served in the Wehrmacht during World War II and was captured by the Americans while serving in Tunisia in 1943. He was then held as a POW in Camp Concordia, Kansas. He was awarded a Ph.D. in the Classics by the University of Tübingen in 1948 and subsequently studied at Harvard University from 1949 to 1950. During World War II, Bracher taught at the Free University of Berlin from 1950 to 1958 and at the University of Bonn, where he was a professor of politics and contemporary history from 1959 to 1987. Bracher married Dorothee Schleicher, the niece of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.