This collection of essays presents the most recent work on Germany's stormy and problematic encounter with mass politics from the time of Bismarck to the Nazi era. The authors--sixteen scholars from the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany--consider this problem from novel and sometimes surprising viewpoints. The history of elections, narrowly conceived, is abandoned in favor of a broader inquiry into roots of German political loyalties and their relationship to the historic cleavages of class, gender, language, religion, generation and locality. The essays not only present...

A critical re-examination by American, British and German historians of the history of German liberalism exploring the interconnections between liberal currents in culture, society, and politics.

By focusing on local and regional developments, this collection also suggests that the failure of German liberalism was by no means as complete or as widespread as the traditional literature has tended to argue.

Prominent historians provide insights into the social, political, and intellectual components of German conservatism from its origins in the late 18th century, through to the end of the Third Reich. These essays provide the basis for a collective reassessment of the role that conservatism has played in Germany's national development.