The tangled affairs in Bavaria at the close of World War I constitute a unique and important part of the early Weimar Republic. This study of the 1918 revolution, based on archival sources such as cabinet protocols and bureaucratic records, traces in detail the overthrow of the Wittelsbach dynasty and the foundation of the Bavarian Republic under Kurt Eisner. It also broadens and balances current understanding of the first Communist attempts to penetrate the heartland of Europe. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book is the first collection within political theory to examine the ideas and debates of the German Revolution of 1918/19. It discusses the political theorists and actors of the revolution and uncovers an incredibly fertile body of political thought. Revolutionary events led to the proliferation of new political strategies, theoretical insights and institutional proposals. Key questions included the debate between a national assembly and a council system, the socialisation of the economy, the development of new forms of political representation and the proper role of parliaments, political parties and trade unions. This book offers novel perspectives on the history of the revolution, a thorough engagement with its main thinkers and an analysis of its relevance for contemporary political thought.

As the Nazis staged their takeover in 1933, instances of antisemitic violence began to soar. While previous historical research assumed that this violence happened much later, Hermann Beck counteracts this, drawing on sources from twenty German archives, and focussing on this early violence, and on the reaction of German institutions and the elites who led them. Before the Holocaust examines the antisemitic violence experienced in this period - from boycotts, violent attacks, robbery, extortion, abductions, and humiliating 'pillory marches', to grievous bodily harm and murder - which has hitherto not been adequately recognized. Beck then analyses the reactions of those institutions that still had the capacity to protest against Nazi attacks and legislative measures - the Protestant Church, the Catholic Church, the bureaucracies, and Hitler's conservative coalition partner, the DNVP - and the mindset of the elites who led them, to determine their various responses to flagrant antisemitic abuses. Individual protests against violent attacks, the April boycott, and Nazi legislative measures were already hazardous in March and April 1933, but established institutions in the German State and society were still able to voice their concerns and raise objections. By doing so, they might have stopped or at least postponed a radicalization that eventually led to the pogrom of 1938 (Kristallnacht) and the Holocaust.

A history of Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the collapse of democracy in Nazi Germany explains why Nazism's ideology of hatred flourished in a country embittered by military defeat and economic disaster following World War I.

The first comprehensive biography in English of the leader of the Bavarian Revolution and Republic of 1918/19, the first Jewish head of a European state and a man who embraced and embodied modernity. At the end of the First World War, German Jewish journalist, theater critic, and political activist Kurt Eisner (1867-1919), just released from prison, led a nonviolent revolution in Munich that deposed the monarchy and established the Bavarian Republic. Local head of the Independent Socialists, Eisner had been jailed for treason after organizing a munitions workers' strike to force an armistice. For a hundred days, as Germany spiraled into civil war, Eisner fought as head of state to preserve calm while implementing a peaceful transition to democracy and reforging international relations. He rejected another central German government dominated by Prussia in favor of a confederation of autonomous equals, a "United States of Germany." A Francophile, he sought ties with Paris in hope of containing Prussia. In February 1919, on the way to submit his government's resignation to the newly elected constitutionalassembly, Eisner was shot by a protofascist aristocrat, plunging Bavaria into political chaos from which Adolf Hitler would emerge. At the centenary of the Bavarian Revolution and Republic of 1918/19, this is the first comprehensive biography of Eisner written for an English-language audience. Albert Earle Gurganus is Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages at The Citadel. He is the author of The Art of Revolution: Kurt Eisner's Agitprop (Camden House, 1986).

Essays on German fiction writers whose works are representative of the pre-World War I Germany and Austria through the decade after the end of World War II. Focuses on writers of prose fiction as well as poets and dramatists who also wrote significant prose fiction. Frequently includes previously unavailable information on these writers.

In his biography of Stalin, Kotkin rejects the inherited wisdom about Stalin's psychological makeup, showing us instead how Stalin's near paranoia was fundamentally political and closely tracks the Bolshevik revolution's structural paranoia, the predicament of a Communist regime in an overwhelmingly capitalist world, surrounded and penetrated by enemies. At the same time, Kotkin posits the impossibility of understanding Stalin's momentous decisions outside of the context of the history of imperial Russia.