In light of twentieth-century experience the legitimacy of such a vision can hardly be denied in principle. Since 1945 it has formed an essential building block of the relative peace and prosperity established in Europe and East Asia.30 Furthermore, this vision of a new order in eastern Europe was tied to a programme of domestic reform that would not have left Imperial Germany unchanged. At Brest the Germans were arguing not only over a new order in eastern Europe. They were engaged in a struggle over Germany’s own political future.
