THE GERMAN RECORD: A Political Portrait

A basic book, for background and reference, in a serious, sobering study of the German tradition, as manifested in her history and culture, proving once again, how ineradicable the so-called Prussian pattern may be. Here is the ""perpetual disorder"" of her political life, the gap between culture and statecraft, her indeterminacy politically, socially, which has only made possible an authoritarian regime. The nature of Prussianism and its role in German life, the repression of liberty and the revolutionary spirit; the failure of the liberal movement in 1848; the all-pervasive, all-powerful militarism which governed the nation from that time on; the brief Republican experiment and failure after the last war. And then discussion of the future of Germany, a country whose people have neither democratic desires nor faith -- a future which America may view too leniently, as the least involved of all the warring nations. Certain outright suggestions include disarmament, weakening of industrial strength, lowering of living conditions to those of her victims -- and discounting the possibility of achieving a democratic Germany.