Gordon Craig recently deplored the fact that political history, and particularly diplomatic history, no longer attracts the attention of historians or the public as much as has been the case up to now. In his opinion there is no proper reason why this should be so; foreign relations and diplomacy matter very much indeed, and deserve to be studied by historians on their own merits, at least up to a point. However, there are valid reasons why diplomatic history nowadays is in a sort of crisis, and why more and more historians have come to believe that it is not enough to study the diplomatic files, however diligently this may be done, and to inquire about the deeds and motives of the fairly small groups that monopolize decision-making in foreign relations. Most historians nowadays are agreed upon the principle that foreign policy must be explained just as much by finding the social and economic factors conditioning it, as by analyzing the activities going on the level of official diplomacy.

Scholars upon occasion have spoken of the “crisis” of the arts in Reformation Germany. It has become increasingly clear, however, that such terminology, when left unqualified, may be excessively ambiguous, and perhaps even misleading. At least one influential historian is arguing today that the true crisis situation is that where a threat is followed by a final regaining of strength, or where there is a “successful resistance or adaptation to a vital challenge.”

The church to which this paper is devoted was the Unity of Czech Brethren, Unitas Fratrum; the state in which it was founded, in 1457, and existed for some hundred and seventy years, was the kingdom of Bohemia.

In the last analysis Prussia is ruled by the Landräte.” Such was the opinion of Georg Gothein in 1910. His judgment, which was corroborated by other observers of the Prussian scene, reflects the singular influence of the Landrat in the government of Prussia, an influence which derived from his being both the Prussian official who governed the rural population for the state and the head of the self-government of the rural Kreis or county. His unique dual position gave him extraordinary opportunities for influence and initiative and for the co-ordinating and reconciling of state and local interests. Although low in the hierarchy of higher administrative officials, the more than 450 Landräte, charged with the actual administration of the countryside, were key figures in that formidable Hohenzollern institution, the Prussian bureaucracy, which may be said to have governed Prussia before 1918. In the last years of the Prussian monarchy the Landratsamt was renowned as the most powerful and the most desirable post in the Prussian administration, short of the top-ranking offices. It was the most coveted. It was also the most criticized.

In his book, George of Bohemia: King of Heretics, Frederick G. Heymann characterized the early Hussite movement as “the first and thus the most daring and pioneering of the great European revolutions,” “one of the greatest dynamic movements for socio-political and spiritual freedom in all history”

The emergence and general acceptance of polycentrism in the communist world since the late 1950's has brought the difficulty of defining communism in either ideological, organizational, or programmatic terms out into the open. That difficulty had always existed but had been concealed since the early 1920's largely by the impact of the successful Bolshevik Revolution and by the subsequent bolshevization and Soviet domination of most non-Russian communist groups and movements through the Comintern and the Cominform. The Western cold-war theory of the monolithic nature of a Moscow-centered and -controlled expansion of world communism has perpetuated a widespread identification of communism as such with bolshevism.

Since World War II Reformation scholarship, both in Germany and outside it, has tended increasingly to turn away from an all too exclusive concentration on Luther and Saxony in order to look at other reformers and other areas. Johannes Brenz (1499–1570) is one of those reformers, and the Duchy of Württemberg, where Brenz's career reached its fulfillment, is one of those areas.

Among the international community of scholars, journalists, and laymen who share an interest in the history of Nazi Germany, one of the most frequently discussed and persistently controversial subjects of that era is the Waffen SS. Attempts to define what the Waffen SS was lead invariably to questions about the extent to which the Waffen SS was or was not an integral part of the overall SS organization and the degree to which it was or was not involved in the criminal acts attributed to the Schutzstaffel.

Sudden defeat on the battlefields of Jena and Auerstädt in 1806 inflicted a crushing blow on the Hohenzollern state. The ensuing devastation resulting from the Napoleonic war left Prussia with a crushed military organization, a bankrupt treasury, a shattered economy, and a government in chaos. The Treaty of Tilsit, dictated by Napoleon, humiliated Prussia and made it a rump state with half its former territory. To all observers, the defeat represented not only Prussia's military weakness, but also her social, political, and economic backwardness compared to Napoleonic France. Liberals inside and outside the government saw the crisis as a long-awaited opportunity to reform their government and society. The situation was so critical that it convinced the timid, indecisive King Frederick William III to summon Baron Karl vom Stein, whom all Prussia knew as a resolute advocate of reform, to head a new ministry. Stein's government, which lasted from October 1807 through November 1808, produced volumes of draft legislation designed to restructure the civil and military administration as well as the economy and society of Prussia.

It is a commonplace that the National Socialist assumption of power in Germany in 1933 was to a large extent made possible by a clever manipulation of irrational fears provoked by the economic, social, and political tensions of the time. More than once since the Frankfurt School's famous study on authority and the family it has been suggested that the authoritarianism of the German family contributed to the susceptibility of the population to the siren call of the leadership principle and that threats to the traditional structure of society, especially the family, made people fearful and desperate enough to see a savior in Hitler. Certainly his call for women to return to hearth and home found a responsive audience. The Kinder, Küche, Kirche issue in Nazi propaganda implied that women were deserting their homes, their children, and their morality, challenging men's authority by asserting their independence and by flooding the labor market to such an extent that honest Familienväter found themselves without “work or bread,” to use the compassionate terms of the otherwise dispassionate 1933 census. Carl Gustav Jung, in his pamphlet Die Frau in Europa, was only one of the more distinguished spokesmen for the widely held view that women's emancipation was responsible for endangering not only the institution of marriage but also the whole spiritual balance between the masculine and feminine principles.

A Few years ago Ernst Nolte concluded a discussion on the role of big business in German politics with these words: “History in a modern sense begins at the point where passionate thinking is ignited by new realities related to economics.” Nolte meant modern historiography—especially the Marxist variety—when he spoke of “history in a modern sense,” but one may claim validity for an even more literal meaning of his statement. Is it not true that the course of modern history has been shaped significantly by “passionate thinking” applied to economic affairs? And are not good examples of this kind of thinking provided by the political leaders who rose above the era of the worldwide depression of the 1930's to direct its fate—Stalin, Roosevelt, and Hitler? These men, one might argue, saw “economic realities” in new ways and made their insights into economic affairs the core of the national response to the crisis of their day.

Since 1945 and the worldwide revelation of the horrible brutalities culminating in mass murder perpetrated against Europe's Jews and other groups in Nazi camps and by the mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) of Heinrich Himmler's SS, there has been considerable contention regarding the extent to which the German people knew about these crimes while they were being committed. The various responses given to this question, and their implications, have significantly influenced historical interpretations of Nazism and, in turn, popular attitudes among foreigners toward postwar Germans. Although doubtless a definitive answer will never be possible, it is therefore all the more important that the question of general German knowledge and hence at least passive complicity in Hitler's crimes be posed precisely and that all of the surviving documentary evidence bearing upon it be brought to light. A recently uncovered report in the voluminous Records of the Reich Leader of the SS and Chief of the German Police offers both an opportunity to redefine the issue and perhaps a partial solution to it.