Description
Book SynopsisHow History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace looks at how historical thinking shaped decisions for war and peace in Germany and the United States during the twentieth century. It examines the writing and public careers of the leading historians in each nation. Robert J. Norrell suggests it is useful to analyze where the discipline of history has succeeded and failed to understand war and the many attempts to institute lasting peace. The narrative of this book testifies to the avid commitment of historians, statesmen, and the public to understanding the past and how these lessons and perspectives can influence the present.
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1: The War that Will End War
Chapter 2: Versailles: Riot in a Parrot House
Chapter 3: Die Kriegschuldfrage: German Historians in the 1920s
Chapter 4: American Revisionism: Three Accounts of War Guilt
Chapter 5: German Historians under Hitler
Chapter 6: Berlin Diary
Chapter 7: The Shape of Things to Come: Appeasement and Isolationism
Chapter 8: German Catastrophe: the Second World War
Chapter 9: Cold War: The Bewitchment of Analogy
Chapter 10: The 1960s: Revisionism and post-Revisionism
Chapter 11: Kissinger’s Revision of American Foreign Policy
Chapter 12: The Holocaust: The Past That Did Not Pass Away
Chapter 13: The End of History
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
About the author
