Anschluss as the culmination of a thousand-year struggle for German national unity. Despite the merits of this meticulous study, further discussion of continuities in German history—and specifically of why arguments based on völkisch thinking eventually trumped traditional German state interests—is necessary. Vermeiren is right to see 1918 as a caesura: the scope and duration of ideas about the Nibelungentreue were limited, but their consequences were not. The rhetoric of Anschluss exerted a lasting fascination on later generations of Germans, as Social Democrats and Pan-Germans both sought to appropriate its appeal for their own purposes. But these are only minor criticisms. The First World War and German National Identity contains much of interest for scholars and readers interested in transnational European history, nationalism, and the complexities of history and memory in twentiethcentury Austria and Germany. Vermeiren’s work is convincing, in the end, not only because of the wealth of material it draws upon and the author’s mastery of the mass of literature on World War I, but also because it questions established notions about the dynamic reciprocal relationship between war and society—something that had far-reaching implications for the further course of German history.

中文翻译：

---

民主之死：希特勒上台与魏玛共和国的垮台。本杰明·卡特·赫特 纽约：亨利·霍尔特（Henry Holt），Pp。xvii +267。纸张$ 28.00。ISBN 978-1250162502。

安施卢斯（Anschluss）是争取德国民族团结一千年的斗争的高潮。尽管这项细致的研究有其优点，但仍需进一步讨论德国历史的连续性，尤其是为什么基于伏尔基希思想的论点最终胜过德国传统的国家利益。韦尔梅伦（Vermeiren）正确地将1918年视为一幕幕：对尼伯龙根街的想法的范围和持续时间是有限的，但其后果却没有。安施卢斯（Anschluss）的言辞对后世的德国人产生了持久的吸引力，因为社会民主党人和泛德国人都试图根据自己的目的调整其吸引力。但这只是些小批评。第一次世界大战和德国的民族认同感引起了对跨国欧洲历史，民族主义，以及20世纪奥地利和德国的历史和记忆的复杂性。最终，Vermeiren的作品令人信服，这不仅是因为其所用的材料丰富以及作者对第一次世界大战期间文学作品的掌握，而且还因为它质疑关于战争与社会之间动态对等关系的既定观念-这对德国历史的进一步发展具有深远的影响。