The Vanished Kingdom: Travels Through the History of Prussia

Rating:
Summary: A pack of nationalistic lies
Review: This book should never have been published. One thing we do not need is nostalgia for Prussia - a state that was hated, while it existed, by all its neighbours, that expanded by systematic aggression and banditry, and that became joyfully identified with a doctrine of extreme immoralism in politics and military aggression as the basis of international relations. The author feels the need to slander the Poles in order to make us forget not only what Hitler did, but what Prussia had been doing to them since the First Partition; so he represents them as drunks and congenital Jew-baiters (but Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe - until Germany decided to do something about it). Other reviewers have said what needed to be said about the rotten double standards, the lousy history and map, the racism, the single-minded intention to rewrite history - but I have one more thing to say: find me another country in European history that ever drew, throughout its history, the hatred and contempt that Prussia drew from the age of Frederick the so-called Great to Hitler. If Prussia was so great, why did it manage the unusual feat of (for instance) making Chesterton and Kipling unanimous in their detestation? Is there another nation that has so managed to unify Europe, uninting it three times over - in the Seven Years' War, and in the two World Wars - in war, and uniting it constantly in dislike? And it is always those who knew Prussia and Prussian Germany best, that hated it the most: unlike France in the age of the Sun King and of Napoleon - where people fought French aggression but imitated French art and administration - and unlike the USA today, nobody ever wanted to imitate Prussia once they had seen what it was like. People like F.D.Roosevelt, who spent one year there as a young man, went back home with a rooted dislike to the whole Prussian/German system that was to have long-lasting results. Believe me, Mr.Roy, the biggest favour anyone ever did to Germany was done in 1945 and included the complete territorial destruction of Prussia. As for the Hindenburg family vaults being used as a garbage dump - well, it hardly counts as a change of use, does it?

Rating:
Summary: What of Prussia Today?
Review: This is the first time I've read this author, and was impressed at the handling of the topic. Far from a dull citing of historical fact, he has brought a perspective on Prussia into the relevance by his "travels through the history of Prussia". As a modern Germany attempts to define itself in Europe, the look back at Prussian history may provide foundation or a map for the certain aspects of a new German future. Topics including the importance to Germany of Konigsberg, and the "ethnic cleansing" of the German territories after the war I've heard mentioned, but never in the first person as dramatically in the book's interviews. The photos further add to his "travels" quite well.