Germany's mythic titans
Conventional political history, with its story of elections won and lost, struggles to explain what happened to Germany between the unification of 1871 and the nemesis of 1945. Here we are at the furthermost limits of the usefulness of "facts". The consequences of nazism were so catastrophic that there is a gap of historical explanation that might link the possible factual causes with that final Götterdämmerung effect. This remains a mysterious question and it explains why the history of the Third Reich remains big business: a teasing psychodrama as well as a consuming Holocaust. It's at this point that the historian needs an artist's imagination.… Seguir leyendo »