According to Wehler, what is the problem with modern German history?.
Context for the piece: This week we will be reading two historians who have proposed different interpretations of the long-term trajectory of German history in the twentieth century. The fundamental question they ask is whether German social and political history was fundamentally different from the history of Western countries (a special path) or whether similarities outweigh the differences. Is there something unique in German history that led to two World Wars and the Rise of Nazism? Please read the below document and answer the following question, taking into account the context of the question: According to Wehler, what is the problem with modern German history? DOCUMENT 1: HANS-ULRICH WEHLER The German Empire 1871-1918 reproduced in Neil Gregor (ed.). Nazism (Oxford, 2000) pp. 63-65 In the concluding passages to one of the classic texts advocating the Sonderweg thesis, Hans-Ulrich Wehler argues for the need to understand National Socialism through analysis of authoritarian structures and culture going back to the ‘configuration of 1871’. The unbroken tradition of government by pre-industrial power-élites, the prolongation of absolutism among the military the weakness of liberalism and the very early appearance of deliberalising measures suggest on the surface a depoliticising of society, but one which deep down favoured a continuation of the status quo. The same can be said of the barriers to social mobility the holding over of differences and various norms between separ¬ate estates, which is such a revealing aspect of Imperial Germany, and the essentially elitist character of education. Much of this resulted from the political weakness and defeats suffered by the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century, and all these factors, which are given here only as examples, had assumed their importance during a phase of historical development which was uninterrupted by a successful revolution. They were further strengthened by the success of Bismarck’s policies for legitimising the status quo.
According to Wehler, what is the problem with modern German history?