German Sonderweg discussion

Every country has their own Sonderweg. It's a useless concept.

>>542436

This. It snowflakes Germany by generalising every other country. It achieves nothing.

>>542436
>>542444
Thats a common and valid argument against this theory.
However the thing which seperates Germany from the UK, France and the US is the astonishing success of industrialization which happened in a socially backward country. In coutries with comparable systems like Russia, industrialization wasnt even remotely successful.

>>542436
>>542444
A case could be made that it's a Sonderweg compared to other western countries. France, Britain and the Low Countries all had significant parliamentary and republican influences starting in the late middle Ages and the Renaissance which never really took root in Germany until after 1848.

>>542436
>>542444
These 2 factors lead also to a very strong form of militarism, since the military had its own social class thanks to the missing democratic elements, but was strong enough to had a foundation for this claim thanks to the industrialization

well Germany was always madman of Europe so it makes sense

>>542496
>>542507
Not like that made any difference for the plebs. In what way was Germany socially backward?

>>542511
It's funny how that militarism resulted in virtually no wars and low military spending, compared to France and Britain.

>>542535


'Socially backwards' is cuckspeak for having a sane and functional social coordination hierarchy.

>>542496
>In coutries with comparable systems like Russia, industrialization wasnt even remotely successful.

I'd see that as more a consequence of geography than philosophy. Russia has always been a difficult land to manage. Germany, simply by virtue of being smaller and therefore more logistically capable, was able to more readily benefit from advances in technology, which caused a compounding effect.

File: Maerz1848_berlin[1].jpg (154KB, 900x705px) Image search: [Google]

154KB, 900x705px

>>542535
>In what way was Germany socially backward?
Where did I imply that? Germany never had a powerful parliament like in the UK or the Netherlands to keep government power in check. It was always ruled by the top down, just look at the concept of enlightened absolutism where the ruler is supposed to keep himself in check.

In 1848 the first German Parliament got wrecked as well by the German Monarchs preventing a transition like had happened in other western countries from taking place. Because of this there was simply no democratic tradition which is why Weimar Republic failed with both the right and left (Comminist party & NSDAP) doing their utmost best to destroy it.

>>542507

But that seems to arbitrarily pick similarities between the Western nations over differences with the Germans; why is the UK's path to constitutional monarchy closer to, say, France's path to Republicanism than it is to Germany's path to oligarchic constitutional monarchy?