A nation given a bad name

Thirteen years ago, I was driving with a German friend through the Russian city of Kaliningrad (until 1945 the east Prussian city of Königsberg) when my friend said, ‘There’s the old German army barracks.’ As we stared glumly at the bleak building, darkness settled on me, brought on by three words, each — on its own — innocuous: German, army, barracks. The old clichés rose again: discipline, efficiency, inhumanity, conquest — images, I realised, not of Germany but of Prussia.

There is, however, another view: that the austere but enlightened Prussian ethos — that of an impartial civil service, a liberal penal code, an excellent education system — was, under the Nazis, corrupted by uncouth Bavarians and Austrian sentimentalists. After all, were not many of those involved in the plot to kill Hitler in July 1944 Prussians, and from the castigated Prussian military caste? Yet July 1944 was never a mass movement but an affair of the elite whose fastidiousness and judgment had been suspended during Hitler’s successes: conservative, romantic nationalists, physically immensely brave but morally nebulous.

When one talks to Prussian aristocrats about Hitler, the chief impression received is that their parents and grandparents thought him an outrageously common little man — which he certainly was, although he had worse characteristics. Their opinion is interesting because, as Christopher Clark shows, the aristocracy retained an astonishing degree of influence in Prussia. The collapse of the Weimar Republic and the coming to power of Hitler happened at least partly because of the influence of a group of Prussian landowners over Hindenburg, President of Germany at the time. Bismarck came from a Junker background, retaining the contemptuous self-confidence of that class. He created the first welfare state primarily to emasculate the socialists, to preserve the status quo. Prussia did not become a constitutional state with an elected parliament until 1848.