What's the most neutral history of Germany before and during

A world at peace?

Ayy lmao fuck this

>>3010242
The problem with a "neutral" perspective of Nazi Germany is even perspectives trying to be neutral sound biased because of how horrible the Nazis were in nearly every aspect

I'm in the middle of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer at the moment. He's about as neutral as one can be so far

>>3010264
Basically this. It's like trying to be neutral about genghis khan and the mongols. You can talk about his achievements.. but it's kinda hard to gloss over the fact that the mongols killed ~100 million people, as well as basically stated the Black Death

>>3010264
>William Shirer
A guy who bought 'le German/Prussian blind obedient mentality' meme should never be taken seriously.

>>3010276
have you ever actually read Shirer, or have you only read criticisms of him?

I haven't read rise and fall, but his book on third republic France was fantastic, and explored the breakdown of France's civil society from every conceivable angle.

>>3010283
I don't want to read a dishonest, and intellectually inept, writer like him.

>>3010287
and where did you become informed that he's "dishonest and intellectually inept" if not from reading him?

>>3010276
Some of his theories are a bit strange. I can't properly critique them as I don't know what others exist. There haven't been any logical flaws in his arguments though

The quality of his reporting is quite amazing however considering he was literally a journalist watching and recording all of the events he's writing about on top of having access to NATO's vault of all Nazi documents which allow him to comment on what he perceived to be the public mood at certain events. His work is incredibly in depth which is what OP was asking for

>>3010293
It's not because of logical flaws, but because the whole premise is stupid in the first place. Typical dumb historians (and academics usually) who can only data-mine shit but doesn't have the critical mind nor a correct conceptual framework to begin with.

>>3010293
Oh hey, I have a literature review that I wrote a while ago on just this topic.

Historians who have studied Nazism have largely focused on the causes of Nazism, the extent of support the regime enjoyed, and who held responsibility for its crimes. The first generation of historians in Germany emphasized the importance of political ideologies, identifying Nazism as an aberration that distorted the ideas of two major political movements in modern Germany: nationalism and socialism.

Friedrich Meinecke’s The German Catastrophe (1946) is perhaps the most influential example of this approach. The next generation of historians responded to Meinecke’s interpretation. They, by contrast, emphasized the continuities between Nazi approaches to foreign policy and those of its predecessors in Imperial Germany. Fritz Fischer’s Germany’s War Aims in the First World War best represents this wave in German historiography. In this work Fischer argued that a desire to dominate European neighbors was a German foreign policy goal well before the Nazis came to power. Furthermore, Fischer suggested that the disproportionate influence enjoyed by the military in Imperial Germany created a dangerous precedent, upon which the Nazis could build.

British historians such as AJP Taylor challenged Fischer’s “continuity thesis”, arguing that Hitler was more of an improviser, who responded to short term trends in an opportunistic, rather than ideological fashion. Which is to say he was a normal statesman, and not an extreme ideologue. AJP Taylor’s work was celebrated as a boldly revisionist interpretation but its central argument failed to persuade most of the historians working in the field.

>>3010316
While almost all of the historians cited so far tended to focus on political and diplomatic history, the generation of left-leaning historians that emerged in West Germany during the 1960s directed their attention to social history. Reflecting their interest in more bottom-up approaches to history, they were most interested in investigating how the Nazis could secure the consent of the German population. As a result, they did not primarily research foreign policy documents or statements of political ideology. They were more interested in how Nazism was experienced “on the ground” : they researched Nazi propaganda (for example posters and political rallies such as the Nuremberg Rally) and Nazi repression. Their work in this area allowed them to evaluate to what extent Nazis either secured the consent of Germans or had to rely on coercion

After Taylor historians such as Hans Ulrich Wehler argued that Germany followed a “special path” that meant it never modernized like other European powers.
Recent notable works have been written by Ian Kershaw, who suggested that Germans “worked towards the Führer”
There have also been economic histories of Nazism, for example Adam Tooze’s Wages of Destruction (2006)

>>3010314
>I have never read a single academic history book in my life, but I have VERY strong opinions about academia: the post

>>3010242
Frederick the Great is interesting, not only his general life, but also the way his image has been changed throughout Germany history.

Nazis used him as an image of Prussia/German enlightenment. East Germany used him as the example of a bourgeois who cared about the common man. Modern Germans have no idea who he is because they despise their own history.

>>3010291
I haven't seen Adam Sandler's latest movie, but I already know it's bad

>>3010334
what a preposterous false equivalence, you also didn't answer the question

>>3010324
Let's not forget about Hans Mommsen.

>>3010341
You know I've never actually read him. Now his central thesis is that the holocaust was a result of many different and disorganized actors just doing things they thought Hitler would approve of in the absence of actual direction, right?

>>3010347
Yes. Kershaw was clearly influenced by him.

>>3010264
I cant finish the first chapter. How do you do it?

>>3010427
Why not?

>>3010272
How is that hard? You just said
>mongols killed ~100 million people
>basically stated the Black Death
?
Just tell the facts and give possible explanations, how is that hard? Are you a journalist?

>>3011437
One way or another, when you give possible explanations you'd probably have to humanize the Mongols, in such a way that it might look like they can be redeemed or something like that.

>>3012524
Like, for example, thinking that A as an agency is naturally good as a human being, but only corrupted by their harsh historical conditions or contexts and so on. Things like that do happen in history, hence why the uncritical ones are stupid like I said before. Sadly, those spooked and bluepilled people seem to be the majority in the academia.

>>3012531
>Things like that do happen in history,
*in historical assessment.

>>3010316

Thank you for those recommendations. I'm surprised that you cited Meinecke because it was written so early. Did he have a unique vantage point that others couldn't improve on? I'm also curious about the WWI recommendation. Does it also detail the events of WWII?

>>3013775
>did Meinecke have a unique vantage point
well you could say that, since he had been a supporter of the Nazis, the invasion of poland, and was a self described anti-semite who had been in favor of the public policies of curtailing the rights of German jews. His attempts to explain the holocaust are quite interesting because of all the excuses he's (even in 1946) willing to make for the nazi regime, saying that the jews brought it on themselves because of their "character", pretty horrifying stuff.

>I'm also curious about the WWI recommendation. Does it also detail the events of WWII?
it doesn't go so far into detail about ww2, but more draws a line of continuity from Germany's foreign policy in ww1 to ww2 saying that to view the nazis as something isolated or unusual would be a mistake. In fact he takes it even further back and says that as early as 1897 Germany was actively working to achieve parity with or even surpass Britain so that it could be the dominant European power.

But really anon if you want to learn something you should get off 4chan, get yourself to your local municipal or college library and start reading.

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14KB, 674x270px

>>3010316