Ashgate Research Companion to Imperial Germany

After an avalanche of books and films about the Nazi regime, this volume deals with an earlier period of German history – the so-called “second Reich”. It ended ignominiously amidst military defeat in November 1918. Called by Germans the “Kaiserreich”, it was the stage on which two outstanding figures walked, Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II – the first of them justified his place by his abilities, the second was handed it through an accident of birth. As for terminal dates, although Bismarck became Minister-President of Prussia in 1862, strictly speaking the book covers the years 1871-1918.

Historians have agonised over...