Iron Kingdom

[chickenfeet2003]

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 is a brilliant book. It's a really nuanced and comprehensive account of the rise of the Kingdom of Prussia from the Mark Brandenberg to the dominant player in the German Reich. Like most English speaking people of my generation (who know anything at all about German history) I was brought

Comments

[chickenfeet2003]

He has a point. The sheer ineptitude of British foreign policy since 1900 is really quite staggering.

[chickenfeet2003]

Not just the run up to WW1. It gets worse. Post 1918; the complete Horlicks of a Middle east Settlement. Cancelling the Japanese Alliance. Not knocking out Hitler early. Selling out the Czechs with a modern army of 50 divisions and the third largest rmaments industry in Europe.

Post 1945. Trying to hang onto the Empire. Staying out of the EISC until it was too late to get in on equal terms. The delusion of the 'special relationship' with the USA. And now Iraq and Afghanistan.

[frumiousb]

Oh, that looks really interesting. Thank you.

[shezan]

See, my problem with you is that you're costing me too much at Amazon. *orders*

re: militaristic Prussia, have you read Benoist-Méchin's absolutely first-rate Histoire de l'Armée Allemande? (Yes, you want both tomes, trust me.)

[chickenfeet2003]

I think the Benoist-Mechin might be a bit more than I could get through in French and, sadly, the translation is long out of print.

[shezan]

It's absolutey pellucid French - the old bastard Collabo wrote like a dream. I'm pretty confident you could.