Germany’s Grand Strategy

Abstract Germany’s grand strategy—historically associated with two world wars as well as several genocides—is certainly one of the most impactful but also most difficult phenomena in the history of international relations. Why, despite its geographical, military, and economic limitations, did the country, at least until the mid-twentieth century, perceive military might as the most effective means to shape its environment and ensure its security? Why did its political elites often fail—as in the Weimar Republic—but sometimes succeed in changing grand strategy, including after 1945? This book argues that perceived lessons from national history, ranging from the Napoleonic Wars to the Nazi past, have been the most influential source of German grand strategy. Contrary to established accounts, however, the book argues that successful change in German grand strategy has depended on resonance between strategic narratives based on historical lessons at the elite level, and memory discourses in society. To illustrate this argument, the book combines a historical analysis starting with the Napoleonic Wars with a more elaborate discussion of contemporary means of German grand strategy. While most existing accounts of German foreign policy start with 1945, this book develops an account that enables readers to make sense of the evolution of German grand strategy across the various regimes and wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The increasing fragmentation of German collective memory of the Nazi past since the 1980s helps to understand the puzzle of the contemporary gap between elite ambitions of universalist responsibility and hesitant and at times isolationist practices.