Customer Reviews

A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

"A Mighty Fortress" undertakes to narrate the history of Germany as a cohesive story, beginning at the beginning and ending today. It is a mammoth task, covering over two millennia from the days of the Roman Empire: That is ten times as long as the United States of America has been in existence. The result is a massive amount of information packed into one book, but it does give an intelligence to events, which is missing when we randomly examine short periods of historical time with the benefit, and distortion, of our knowledge of the future.

Fortunately, the book spends more time on some periods of history than others. We are taken at a fast clip up to the Middle Ages and through some less pivotal times. But the author slows the pace and looks in fine detail at such critical persona as Martin Luther and Otto von Bismarck, both complex and contradictory figures. Placed in historical context, much of what seems short-sighted or self-defeating today becomes understandable when approached forwards from the past, rather than backwards from the future. In this way, familiar names develop the immediacy and vivacity that they must have had to their contemporaries: Dürer, Kant, Goethe, Hegel, Beethoven, Marx, Nietzsche, Grass.

The book contains eight pages of photographs and six maps. That is really not enough to follow the constantly changing borders of Europe and I found it helpful to keep a historical atlas handy. Less easily resolved was the author's practice of Americanizing names. This may have been a conscious choice to isolate us from pre-existing judgments about historical characters, but it would have been more forgiving to map in a footnote, for example, Ludwig von Yorck to Generalleutnant Hans David Ludwig Graf Yorck von Wartenburg. In addition, converting every Heinrich and Henri to Henry (or Frederick or William) made it hard to separate the players, given the lack of imagination of the European aristocracy in naming their offspring. These are, however, all very minor items.

Judging from the reception "A Mighty Fortress" has received in Germany, Professor Ozment has correctly identified the frustration of modern Germans in being identified only through the dreadful years of the Third Reich. Ozment may be more willing than most to sound the all-clear on Germany's potential for belligerence, but he has served the interests of all of us in placing Germany in factual historical context.

I find Germany history of all ages and eras to be a fascinating subject. This book is both a great introduction to German history for those who know little abou the subject and an admirable synthesis of overarching themes that seem to consistently pop up throughout German history. That said, I did feel at times that knowing about certain people, wars, themes, etc. did help me to understand the context of discussion in this book. However, as a general history, it is useful in for identifying areas that interest one as a reader for further study. This book could have used more maps and there was room for some expansion on early and medieval German history. Overall, however, this was a very enjoyable read. I was particularly pleased with the author's fluid writing style and the fact that the author did not focus solely or predominantly on one era (read Nazi Germany) but rather looked at the entirety of German history since the 1st century BCE to the early 21st century.

The title to the book is somewhat misleading as there is very little in Steven Ozment's book that would be new to a student of German history and its history is not so much that of the German people, but rather of the great men of German history. Having said that, it is a very interesting read, capturing the scope and complexities of German history without being as dry as general histories often tend to be. Ozment is obviously very knowledgable about his subject matter and is able to convey that knowledge thoughtfully and succinctly. Some might argue that he does so a bit too succinctly as he seems to skim the surface of German history, never delving as deeply into any part of it as the reader might like him to. A novice to German history could easily become lost in his "Who's Who of German History" style and someone well-versed in German history could easily become frustrated by his lack of detail. Overall, it is a good read, but one might wish that he included more detail about the lives of the German people themselves and more detail on some of the events that he mentions rather than merely his theories about these events.

I have only half read this book but I find it falls short of my expectations. I've taken some European history courses in university and I find little so far that I wasn't already aware of. I was disappointed in the brief way in which the medieval period was dealt with (as if the 1000 years between the Roman Empire and Martin Luther could be summed up with one chapter of a book of German history). Also, I find it odd that the book never mentions the Hanseatic League and barely mentions the order of the Teutonic Knights and the effects of these institutions on German and Central/Eastern European history.

Professor Ozment's new book "A Mighty Fortress" was hard to put down. He writes in a very engaging manner which carried me along with great anticipation from event to event. His explanation of the lead-up to the Nazi regime and the motives and actions of Hitler is particularly excellent.
Ozment's condensed history of Germany from under the canopy of the primeval forests to its present stance against the war in Iraq with his hopeful message for the future is exactly what is needed for Germans and non-Germans alike today. Bravo!

I am astonished that Ozment is "McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History" at Harvard, winner of the Schaff History Prize, and a past finalist for the National Book Award. There are some amazingly incorrect statements in this book that, in my opinion, would be unacceptable if written by a high school instructor, much less a tenured scholar holding an endowed chair at one of the world's greatest universities. I've only got a BA in anthropology, and I find it hard to believe that I'm better informed about German history and geography than an award-winning specialist.

Several other reviewers have mentioned Ozment's bizarre contention that the Maginot Line was an obstacle to the German invasion of France in 1914. But there are numerous other incorrect statements that make one wonder if any of the people noted in the Acknowledgements ever read the manuscript, or what kind of input Ozment received over the book's three-year gestation from his students in History 1302.

I'll just point out a few misstatements from the latter part of the book here (besides Ozment's comment about the 1914 Maginot Line)...page numbers refer to the hardbound edition:

P. 237: "...Emperor Francis Joseph and his heir, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, surprised many of their fellow countrymen by pleading for a peaceful resolution [of the Serbian issue] short of war. Condemned as pro-Slavic, the two became targets of Austrian and Serbian militants." While Franz Ferdinand certainly was a target of radical Serbs, I know of no evidence that "Austrian militants" who opposed him marked him for assassination, which certainly is implied by the language. And while I'm not privy to Franz Josef's opinions about Serbia, it surely is incorrect to lump him with Franz Ferdinand on this issue, nor to state that he also was a target of "militants" of either nationality -- especially in Austria where he was deeply revered.

P. 238: "On July 19 Austria presented Serbia with a ten-article ultimatum..." The ultimatum was drafted on July 19, but not presented to the Serbs until July 23.

P. 240: "By war's end a third of the [German] male population had been killed, maimed, or incapacitated by injury or illness..." Not even a third of the German male population (ca. 35 million in 1914) was mobilized into the armed forces, so this cannot be true.

P. 246: "The [Versailles] treaty ended the Hapsburg, Hohenzollern and Ottoman empires..." The Treaty of Versailles dealt only with Germany. Austria and Hungary signed the treaties of St. Germain and Trianon, respectively. Turkey signed the Treaty of Sevres. And none of the treaties ended these imperial houses; that was accomplished solely by politicians in the home countries.

P. 246 again: "The Allies reconfigured attractive slices of Silesia and East Prussia to create a "Polish Corridor" to the North Sea..." The Polish Corridor ran to the Baltic Sea, not the North Sea; the small pieces of Upper Silesia which went to Poland weren't even close to the corridor; and it was West Prussia, not East Prussia, which was annexed by Poland. THREE errors in one-half sentence? Good Lord!

P. 275: "On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany, yet did little for the greater part of a year. Without defeating Britian and Russia, Germany could not win the war." Okay, this may just be sloppy editing...maybe. But still, as Russia was Germany's ally on September 3, someone should have noticed.

In addition to these huge errors, Ozment has the annoying habit of making sweeping statements without documentation, such as stating of Kaiser Wilhelm II, "A grand patron of the arts and a grander meddler in them..." It would have been interesting in a cultural history to learn more about how Kaiser Bill meddled in the arts (we aren't told), and it's also pretty well-documented that he was at best a lightweight dilettante when it came to the arts, with little interest in them, and certainly no "grand patron."

I won't belabor the point...as someone deeply interested in German history I was extremely disappointed in a book whose back cover featured very prominent historians such as Donald Kagan, Norman Cantor and Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto gushing such things as "a historian with the right credentials...with flair, pace, judgment and wit," "full of learning," "a triumph of intellectual clarity," and "a masterful narrative...a much-needed gift..."

Then there's the unintentional irony of Michael Burleigh, author of "The Third Reich": "...something fresh and insightful on virtually every page..." You can say that again -- if you consider obvious untruths and sloppy thinking fresh and insghtful.

"A Mighty Fortress" disappointed me, as I expected much better from a member of the Harvard University faculty. Ozment's narrative is uneven, putting emphasis in places where a summary would have been sufficient, and giving short shrift to topics that should have prompted extended discussion. Specifically, what comes to mind is the absence of insightful commentary on Postwar Germany, and in particular, how Germany was changed by the American and British occupation and continued presence of several hundred thousand American service personnel over the past sixty years.

I was also disappointed by Osment's lack of discussion concerning the effect of the Postwar dislocation of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans who were expelled from Central European countries east and south of Germany, including the Sudetenland Germans, and Germans from what is now Poland. What did it mean when entire cities had to be rebuilt from the ground up? Osment doesn't say. What did it mean when Germans were confronted for the first time of their complicity in the deaths of millions of people? Osment skips over that topic by saying that Germans by and large were more pro-German than anti-Semitic. How did Germans perceive the forced laborers in their midst during the War, and then after the war, when tens of thousands of foreign laborers came to Germany to work as "Gastarbeiters", first to do jobs that Germany lacked the manpower to do, and later to do jobs that Germans did not want to do. After the war, the Adenauer Government cut deals with war criminals to grant unofficial, and unpublicized amnesties in order to take advantage of their industrial expertise and managerial talents.

Osment also fails to discuss how the Cold War played into the hands of unrepentent Nazis by legitimizing fears of a Soviet invasion, and by implicitly justifying or playing down their criminal behavior toward civilian populations in Poland, Russia, and elsewhere during the war. There is a great deal of unfinished business that Osment fails to identify that has colored German attitudes since the war, things that in the United States have prompted formal apologies and recognition of wrongdoing.

If the German people are as religious as Osment would have them be, that would be a soul-searing experience. This is more than a recognition of the Holacaust; it has to do with the way Germany has been perceived throughout Europe.

Like Professor Ozment, I too went to live in Germany. This occurred some forty years ago when I got a student job working at the German subsidiary of Dunlop Tire & Rubber Company, in Hanau. My companions and co-workers were working class people, many of whom were Wehrmacht veterans, and there was a large contingent of foreign workers there, chiefly from Spain and Croatia. Germany, at least the western zone, was prospering, and yet Germans were still viewed with antipathy throughout the rest of Western Europe, nineteen years after the end of the war. Most of the negative comments I heard regarding Germans had nothing to do with the war; rather they focused on their behavior (youth groups, as I recall) as tourists, with a reputation of being rowdy and out-of-control when left to themselves, and their arrogance, and with a penchant for traveling in large groups that kept to themselves. How much this reflected reality can only be guessed at, but nevertheless, it was an accepted observation. The other point that merits attention, and again something Professor Ozment only alludes to, is the situation Germany now finds itself in with regards to its unassimilated muslim, many of them Turkish, minority, effectively replacing the tiny, and assimilation-minded pre-war Jewish population with one that has no intrinsic desire to become German. The irony is striking. This unassimilated and alienated muslim population is a greater threat to German social cohesion than the Jewish population could ever have become. Sadly, Professor Ozment offers nothing to his readers on this point, either, except to say that Germans, like other European peoples, do not want to be overrun by non-Europeans.

This is irksome. I can only conclude that on this and the other points I raise, the book is seriously deficient, almost to the point of saying that readers should look elsewhere for a competent discussion.

3 stars is too low and 4 is actually too high, but this book is above average so I generously went with 4 stars, given a context of contemporary and accessible writing on Europe.

The scope is overly ambitious for the length, but overall Steven Ozment is successful because of good organization, well chosen areas of focus, an even-handed approach, and solid references. The scope is basically to trace German history from roots to present and dissect what it is to be German. That is what I mean about overly ambitious. Emphasis is placed on continuity of cultural experience, that is, logical connections of events, themes, and behaviors over the long term, versus a more segmented view.

Ozment's even-handed approach, particularly in the 20th century, clearly follows from requirements of reality and objectivity as opposed to a bias towards either vilifying or exonerating the German people.

This book is not the best one for those brand new to Germany or those who are quite well-versed in German history. Ozment seems to assume that the reader has at least a basic grasp of German evolution and key historical events. At the same type, the book is to short to delve far into any one area. However, this leaves probably the middle 50% or so interested in the subject matter who will appreciate the book.

Some specifics:
-The Roman era thru middle ages is a decent though quite abbreviated rendition of the important events and figures. Since maps are provided of various chronological snapshots of central Europe, I could argue for more of them to more clearly track territorial developments. A strength is Ozment's identification of experiences that appeared to shape later German decisions and cultural identity. Readability is pretty good - pleasant lack of force fed references to tribal names, places, etc that are immediately familiar only to scholars.
-It is somewhat hard-slogging through some of the middle section where the Reformation is analyzed. Ozment obviously considers Martin Luther to be a key figure and tackles this era in somewhat more detail than others. Perhaps some re-read would be useful, but I found myself working harder than I like to pull out the salient points that are "keepers."
-I think the Bismark and pre-WWI era receive mostly appropriate coverage, but of course the overall brevity limits this. It would have been useful to look further into some the pseudo-anthropology going on internationally at the time, and Germany's role in that, with particular focus on the colonial scramble for Africa. In addition, Germany was making incredible scientific gains and these are lightly noted.
-WWII, Cold War, and post-Cold War discussions are certainly a strength of the book. Ozment walks a delicate path. There is a lot of inertia in 20th century history writings that starts with Nazi Germany as the ultimate realization of evil and then works backwards to show how this catostraphic conditions was the inevitable end result of German traditions and overall psyche. Ozment debunks this at multiple turns, yet does not push for some kind of revisionist view that the holocaust was just another bad thing in recent history.

What Ozment does well is convey the remarkable nature of German history in the large view, and the relevance and vitality of Germans and Germany in the 21st century. The most valuable insight discussed is the nature of duality in the German identity and the experience-based shift of priority given to security and thus central authority. There is a uniquely German philosophical balance between individual liberty and disciplined adherence to rule of law that is an important contrast to the US and other western societies.

A relatively quick and easy read--and something perhaps useful for someone with absolutely no knowledge of Germany history. It's commendable that he tries to write about the Germans without making the whole thing about the 12 years of the Third Reich--and he reminds us of that several times.

Three hundred pages is simply far too short to tell the history of this country--at least not the way he goes about it. I may be wrong, but I don't believe that the Hanseatic League was mentioned a single time.

Other factual inaccuracies: He talks about the Maginot line existing during World War I. It was not built until before World War II. He says the SS was founded by Himmler "the head of the Gestapo"--which he certainly wasn't in 1932. I guess that could be an editing error; more important is his mistake on Munich: he says that the Germany took over the Sudetenland and the western allies legitimized this at Munich; in fact, Hitler only was able to take the Sudetenland after the western Allies concurred at Munich. This is important because many historians believe that the fortresses in the Sudetenland could have held out against the Germans at that time at the Western allies chosen to stand firm.

A few errors like this may not matter much, but one has to wonder how seriously to take the rest of the book when this much stuff is obviously wrong.

I picked up this book because I have been taking several college level history courses in my spare time and I thought that except for Bismark and Luther, these courses give short shrift to German History until Hitler comes along. I also have been relearning German after a long hiatus. With that as background, the book seemed very difficult to read because there is an underlying tone that the reader already knows a good deal of german history and this is just a retelling. As an example, there are too many times where a name is mentioned just once in passing without any explanation as to who it is. On the other hand, I imagine a serious student of german history would be disappointed in its simplicity. So I am not sure who the intended reader is.
I do admit that I did learn some things from the book such as the importance of primogeniture in the formation, or lack of formation, of a german state. There was not enough though to justify the time spent in reading it.
Lastly, it did seem at first that at least Ozment had a vast knowledge of German history and that the problem was just getting it accross to the novice, but I soon even called that into question. In the chapter "The Last Empire" which describes World War I, Ozment states "Avoiding the Maginot Line fortifications protecting France's eastern flank, the Germans occupied Belgium ....." Seems odd since the Maginot Line fortifications weren't built until after World War I....every serious student of recent history knows this. I was shocked and shocked even more that no one else noticed this. I wondered how much more there was that was just incorrect that I was unaware of.
Overall, not worth the money or the time.