Prussians, Nazis and Peaceniks

Changing images of Germany in International Relations

Jens Steffek, Leonie Holthaus

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526135735
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Germany looms large in international politics, far larger than its size and population would suggest. From images of Prussian militarism, to the Holocaust, the Nuremberg trials, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, changing perceptions of Germany in the twentieth century not only determined how Germans were seen and treated, but they influenced the concepts that scholars and practitioners used to theorise international relations in the English-speaking world. Today, 'civil power' Germany, an economic giant but a military dwarf, is seen as a puzzling aberration from normal state behaviour.Situated at the intersection of International Relations and international history, Prussians, Nazis and Peacenik s examines external perceptions of Germany and their implications for international theory. At crucial moments in the development of these disciplines, scholars cited Germany in debates on the nature and mechanisms of international politics: liberal internationalists contrasted cooperative foreign policies with an inherently aggressive 'Prussianism,' early realists looked to German revisionism and its fight against the Treaty of Versailles, and in the United States, German émigré scholars translated historical experiences into social-scientific vocabularies.The changing images of Germany in debates in International Relations demonstrate that it is not just the nation-state we often perceive it to be. Rather, Germany continues to be a contestable concept: a political construct that is both contingent and in constant flux.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures and tables
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction: changing images of Germany
• 2 Power as a German problem: a historical survey
• 3 The liberal internationalist self and the construction of an undemocratic German other at the beginning of the twentieth century
• 4 From emulation to enmity: the changing view of Germany in Anglo-American geopolitics
• 5 Federalism versus sovereignty: the Weimar Republic in the eyes of American political science
• 6 Germany’s fight against Versailles and the rise of American realism: Edwin Borchard between New Haven and Berlin
• 7 The tale of the ‘two Germanies’: twentieth-century Germany in the debates of Anglo-American international lawyers and transitional justice experts
• 8 The silent presence: Germany in American post-war International Relations
• 9 Deutschtum and Americanism: memory and identity in Cold War America
• 10 ‘Civilian power’ seen from abroad: the external image of Germany’s foreign policy
• 11 Conclusion: International Relations theory and Germany
• Select bibliography
• Index