Fritz Fischer (2) (1908–1999)

This book, "World Power or Decline" by Fritz Fischer, is important for anyone interested in Germany's geopolitical position and aims preceding and during the first world war. After that war, the government destroyed many of the relevant imperial archives and other records that showed their prior aims and intentions.

Fischer studied available records in detail and published his findings in 1961 titled in English "Germany's Aims in the First World War". The book caused great controversy, particularly in Germany. Fischer found that Germany entered the war with existing expansionist plans which included pushing east for postwar access to Ukraine and to enfeeble Russia, and through Romania towards the middle east and its petroleum; turning France into something of a vassal state principally to control its iron ore and permanently hobble its economy; undermining England's mastery of the oceans; and gaining control of central Africa, mainly for its copper ore: policies called Mitteleuropa and Mittelafrika. The plans took form before the war began. Some argued that Germany must soon expand into a world power or else suffer inevitable decline (thus the book's title), surely a Teutonic form of conviction in my view.

Many historians acknowledge Fischer as the most important German historian of the 20th century. According to Wikipedia, the American historian Klaus Epstein judged that the book rendered obsolete every previous book on German responsibility for the war.

Great was the anger of German historians, who generally acknowledged Germany's guilt for the second world war but argued that the first was an aberration, that Germany was being hemmed in by assertive policies of the surrounding countries, that imperial designs were put forth only by a small segment or more radical officials, that German aims were no different in kind from its neighbors', that Germany was drawn into the war by fate and against her will. These representations then appeared in postwar histories and textbooks in Germany.

Fischer's book showed through official documents that to the extent Germany was becoming hemmed in, it was primarily in reaction to Germany's increasing imperialistic and militaristic policies and actions towards its neighbors; that nearly every segment of Germany's society including politicians, industrialists, unions, the aristocracy, diplomats, the Kaiser, and the military, endorsed its official expansionist policies and imperial aims and that these plans were extended during the war; and that German leaders knew that the tinderbox of the Balkans would in short order offer a passable rationale for Germany to enter into war and effect these aims. Thus in general, German aims in the first world war foreshadowed those of the second world war. It should be noted in fairness that France and Russia had limited imperial hopes prior to and during the first war.

Fischer's publisher's office was firebombed. German historians took issue in several books. In 1974 Fischer replied with this book (about 130 pages), which serves both as a summary of his earlier book (over 600 pages) and for specific responses to objections raised by other German historians such as Gerhard Ritter. This (Fischer's) book is extensively documented and very persuasive.

I have lived in Germany and greatly admire the German people as well as their history of facing the horrors their forebears perpetrated in the second war, which (as I understand) is taught in their schools;* perhaps, if true, as penetrating an acknowledgement of evil as any in history. To the great extent that they appreciate the truth, and moreover to whatever degree they may wish to blame the second war on the despised Versailles Treaty that ended the first war, Germans might welcome the efforts of Fritz Fischer, however dreadful their significance to the violent history of the 20th century. If after the first world war Germans had acknowledged frankly their actual imperial aims in that war, then perhaps the second would have been avoided.

https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47042244

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/germany-targets-members-nazi-death-squads-bla...

I read the 1974 paperback edition of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., translated by Farrar and Kimber with an introduction by Farrar.

* Since writing the above, I have learned that Germany only began teaching its history of Nazism after the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials in 1965 but largely quit teaching it in its schools in the mid-1980s, understandable but unacceptable. Perhaps this explains in part the rise of Neo-Nazism there now (late 2018). It was only in 2004 that Germany acknowledged its responsibility for the 1904-1907 massacre, deemed by the U.N. as a genocide, of about 100,000 men, women and children in Namibia but has refused to make reparations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3565938.stm

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/07/31/africans-take-germany-court...

Oops. Now there's this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opinion/far-right-thuringia-germany.html?acti...

Then in March 2020:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/world/europe/germany-reich-citizens-ban.html?...

I learn in June 2020 that German police cadets now learn all about the Gestapo:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/world/europe/germany-police.html… (plus d'informations)

1580 Germany's Aims in the First World War, by Fritz Fischer (read 31 July 1980) I have wanted to read this since I first saw it in 1968. It paints a pretty devastating picture of what Germany was aiming at, and what things would have been like if Germany had won the first world war. It was really fantastic: what Germany expected to allocate herself in victory! It would have a different world. Nor does the fact that Russia has such a dominant position now mean things'd've been different if Germany had won the first World War. After all, Germany supported the Bolsheviks for months after Nov. 1917. The book was typically heavy German, and much of it was heavy going. But I am glad I read it.… (plus d'informations)