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History of Germany from 1806 to Reunification
ponent of the notion that the world would be saved by German domination
and that God was an apparently secular deity to be invoked
in support of German nationalism. Although Winkler does not
regard the 1848 revolutions as a missed opportunity—the radical revolutionaries
lacked mass support and their programmes would have
led to anarchy and civil war on a horrendous scale—he does note that
the apparent failure of liberal reformers at that time encouraged an
acceptance of authoritarian attitudes amongst the educated sections
of the population. The Prussian victories in 1866 and 1870–1 were
hailed as defeats for Jacobinism and Ultramontanism at the hands of
Lutheran Untertanentreue. �rom then on German nationalism progressively
lost its connection with the concept of political emancipation,
as the National Liberals, deliberately divided by Bismarck, supported
repressive legislation against Roman Catholics and Social
Democrats. In 1902 Theodor Mommsen commented bitterly that ‘Bismarck
had broken the back of German Liberalism’.
�or Winkler the foundation of the German Empire in 1871 did
mean a shift in the direction of ‘Westernization’ or ‘normalization’—
in itself a challenging juxtaposition of concepts. Bismarck’s revolution
from above settled the question of unity in favour of the kleindeutsche
solution. However, it did not solve the issue of freedom. The
increasingly authoritarian nature of German nationalism militated
against the development of internal emancipation. Winkler cites the
remarkable discussion between the German theologian, �riedrich
Strauß, and Ernst Renan over the issue of Alsace-Lorraine, an area
which Strauß claimed was historically German and strategically necessary
for the Reich. Renan answered him with reference to popular
self-determination. Whatever the linguistic or ethnic background of
the people in those provinces, they wanted to remain part of �rance.
This was the difference between the �rench and the German
approach: ‘Our policy is the policy of the rights of Nations, yours is
the policy of races… The policy of dividing people into races, quite
apart from the fact that it rests on a scientific fallacy … is bound to
lead only to wars of destruction, to zoological wars. It would mean
the end of that fruitful mixing which has led to what we call
mankind.’ It would, of course, be wrong to suggest that the type of
nationalism presented by Renan was entirely �rench, and that more
rapacious attitudes were confined to Germans. The policy of many
�rench leaders towards the Rhineland after 1918 illustrated that
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