BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

during the 1980s aroused suspicions that Germany’s ties to the West could prove more tenuous
than hoped. These “straws in the wind” included an academic reaction against Enlightenment-
centered approaches to German history and revival of the nineteenth-century Mitteleuropa idea
which, even aside from its history of propagandistic exploitation by imperialists and Nazis,
hinted at an anti-western protectionist bloc along the lines of a German-dominated Central
European customs union or Zollverein. 6 Mitteleuropa also suggested the potential for an
enlarged neutral zone that could upset the paradigm of an East-West strategic balance in post-
Cold War Europe. Moreover, the collapse of Soviet power and influence brought back into
vogue talk of a German Sonderweg, or special path, applied specifically to Germany’s unique
geopolitical position and arguments for an increased leadership role in East Europe. 7 But
Germany discussed in Wolfram F. Hanrieder’s Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of
German Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Hanrieder blamed this
divergence on the U.S. “double containment” policy of keeping Germany and Europe divided
between the superpowers.
6 Craig, “A New, New Reich?” 33. German economist Friedrich List and others
advocated Mitteleuropa in the 1830's as a protectionist scheme to promote national unity and
economic expansion. Bismarck adopted the concept during the 1880s because it dove-tailed with
German colonial ambitions in its appeal to Pan-German nationalists and helped undermine
Anglophilic German liberalism. In concert with Franco-German colonial cooperation,
Mitteleuropa would provide a foundation for German Weltpolitik through both economic and
political protectionism, by isolating Britain and containing Russian expansionism. The Nazis
perverted Mitteleuropa into a German “Monroe Doctrine” justifying territorial annexation and
political domination in East Europe. See Bascom Barry Hayes, Bismarck and Mitteleuropa
(Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses,
1994), 18, 391-93.
7 Jorg Brechtefeld, in Mitteleuropa and German Politics: 1848 to the Present (New York:
St. Martin’s, 1996), 77, 88-89, 95-97, points out that the 1980s renaissance of Mitteleuropa
accompanied a shift from preoccupation with detente and defense issues to questions about
Germany’s foreign policy role in East Europe. While acknowledging its darker connotations, he
uses Sonderweg in a positive sense, applauding the notion of Germany as a “bridge” between
East and West, although not at the expense of Germany’s western connections and not without a
consistent and concise policy.
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