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Preface to the Fifth Edition

I have amended and added to the text for this expanded fifth edition in a number of ways. In particular, the analysis of the Berlin Republic has been extended to the end of August 2020; the section on the Holocaust has been amended in light of an ever-expanding historiography that has significantly enhanced knowledge and understanding; and there have been minor revisions to content and analysis throughout the text, more in some chapters than others. As before, I have resisted the temptation to engage in radical alterations of style and argument that would have turned it into a substantially different book. However, aware that in some areas debates and approaches have moved on considerably, I have updated by light rewriting where relevant. A few additions and alterations have also been made to what remains a highly select bibliography at the end; this is not intended to be comprehensive but merely to provide some starting points and suggestions for readers wishing to explore particular periods and topics in greater depth.

Preface to the Fourth Edition

The fourth edition includes substantially updated material for Chapter 14 on the Berlin Republic, as well as a number of amendments throughout the text, reflecting the changing emphases of the historiography over recent years. I have again decided against major restructuring and rewriting, although in many areas, if I were to start afresh, it would be a substantially different book. I would like in particular to thank the following for their helpful written comments on the previous edition, particularly relating to references to Poland throughout the work: Professor Daria Nałe¸cz of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Lazarski University; Professor Marek Wierzbicki of the Catholic University of Lublin; and Marcin Wodzin´ski of the University of Wrocław; as well as other participants in a meeting on ‘Recovering Forgotten History’ which took place in Warsaw in 2011.I would also like to thank the anonymous readers for Blackwell for their various suggestions regarding the whole text, and Carl for his characteristically perceptive and intelligent comments on aspects of Weimar culture.

Preface to the Third Edition

In making revisions for the third edition, I have added a separate chapter on Germany since unification, and have substantially updated the bibliography. In some sections of the book, I have also amended the text where I felt that there were significant omissions, or where the historiography has moved on so much that my previous remarks could not be left untouched. In making revisions, however, I have again had to resist the temptation to write a substantially new book, and have left the original lines of argument and organization intact.

Preface to the Second Edition

Revising this work for a second edition, ten years after its first appearance, has proved an interesting experience. I first completed the original manuscript as the GDR was in the process of implosion and collapse; I hung onto the manuscript, writing the chapter on the revolution and unification as events actually unfolded in the course of 1989–90. Not only was there no secondary literature at this time on the immediate events of 1989–90; there was also remarkably little of any depth on the longer course of GDR history, polarized as this field was between state-sanctioned Marxist–Leninist accounts in the East and a predominance of rather narrowly institutional, occasionally speculative political science analyses in the West, alongside dissident critiques and ambiguous literary interpretations. With the opening of the East German archives in the early 1990s this situation has now radically changed. There is a flourishing field of GDR historical research, with the emergence of whole new areas of inquiry, lively debates and conflicting interpretations. Meanwhile, research on the Third Reich has also moved on significantly, although perhaps – given the scale of what was already happening in this most controversial field before 1990 – proportionately less dramatically. While there have also been shifts of emphasis in the fields of the Weimar Republic and pre-1990 West German history, particularly in areas of social history and in studies seeking to cross the 1945 divide, these have perhaps not produced such a radically new intellectual landscape on the scale of that for the GDR.

I have therefore made willfully lopsided corrections to the original edition of this work. I have made amendments to those parts of the text which deal with areas where debates have moved on significantly in ways which cannot be ignored. I have added a brief epilogue to Chapter 13 on Germany since unification. I have substantially updated what remains a stringently selective bibliography, in order to guide readers towards further reading in English on areas which could not be discussed more extensively in the text.

But I have resisted the temptation to add too many minor amendments throughout the text which, by seeking to recognize recent research findings and accommodate all the current concerns of academia, would have effectively unbalanced the general lines of the original narrative. I have also resisted the temptation to embark on major rewriting in areas where I now would approach questions rather differently, which could in effect have turned this into a whole new book (and I am mindful of the question of whether a bicycle which, after having a total overhaul, from brakes, chain, pedals, gears and saddle to new forks and frame, is still the ‘same’ bicycle as the original). It also seems important to ensure that the historiographical as well as historical watershed of 1990 does not result in obscuring some of the major issues and perspectives which remain important. I am thus acutely conscious of the fact that I have not been able to do full justice, within the constraints of a volume of this length, to all the research that has appeared since the first edition. I can only hope that readers will be stimulated to follow some of the suggestions in the notes and bibliography to explore in greater depth topics which I have not been able to cover more fully in this particular compass.

Mary Fulbrook

London