Contemporary German history

I remember now -- it's an essay by Timothy Garton Ash in the NYRB in May:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/05/23/big-germany-what-now-timothy-garton-ash/

Books Drawn on for This Essay:

Germany, A Nation in Its Time: Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500–2000
by Helmut Walser Smith
Liveright, 590 pp., $39.95; $22.95 (paper)

Discussing Pax Germanica: The Rise and Limits of German Hegemony in European Integration
edited by Emmanuel Comte and Fernando Guirao
Routledge (to be published in 2024)

Wie Wir Wurden, Was Wir Sind: Eine Kurze Geschichte der Deutschen [How We Became What We Are: A Short History of the Germans]
by Heinrich August Winkler
Munich: C.H. Beck, 255 pp., €25.00

Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500–2000
by David Blackbourn
Liveright, 774 pp., $45.00

Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942–2022
by Frank Trentmann
Knopf, 784 pp., $50.00

Thank you. Looks like interestig reading.

In November of 1989 I was working for the Department of Defence. We had a small group of Germans in town on business and to keep them occupied one weekend I took them out to the ranch to play with guns and horses. Back then Germans loved the notion of American cowboys. I will never forget the look on their faces when the news on the radio annoucned the wall was coming down. I congratualted them, they just kept say "no, whose going to pay for it?" They were not at all happy.

Beyond the Wall is a great read. I have kind of a nerd crush on Katja Hoyer, the author. I have her other book Blood and Iron on hold at my library. I follow her substack and listen to any podcast I come across where she's a guest.

I haven't heard of Out of Darkness, but it looks great. Add that to my list now.

I was in 2 eastern German towns prior to 9 June, the date of the European Parliament elections: Frankfurt an der Oder, which I had not visited in several years, ie, time for revisiting and the town of Prenzlau in the Uckermark region , which I had never visited but found intriguing. Finally got around on this trip to going there....yes , intriguing and worth exploring. especially if you're interested in Napoleonic history.

Both places, obviously , were decked with voter campaign posters of all parties . What struck me was a plethora of AfD posters...they were everywhere in both these towns. This is AfD country.

Later on in the trip I was in Magdeburg, (yes from the Oder to the Elbe), which I visited once before in 2009. Obviously, since the European Parliament elections , both rounds, had passed, the campaign posters had all been removed.

However, one can well imagine that Magdeburg, bigger than Prenzlau and Frankfurt an der Oder , would have been decked with AfD posters too, especially Saxon-Anhalt.

I got my unification history from watching Kleo on netflix