The Weimar Years

In this prequel to the McDonough’s “Hitler Years” series (The Hitler Years: Disaster, 1940–1945), he offers a year-by-year account of the creation and failure of the Weimar Republic. Unlike other books that cover German’s interwar period focusing on the cultural or foreign policy of the young republic, this one offers an account that traces the interplay between politics, economics, culture, and foreign policy and how they led to the rise of Nazism. The narrative throughout is one that tracks poor leadership in a young democracy. When Adolf Hitler appears in the first half of the book, he is portrayed as a failed firebrand, a prisoner, and the subject of much gossip. McDonough’s narrative history straightens out the tangle of parties and policies from this period, but the cultural history, when McDonough addresses it, feels more like a distraction. The book includes several photographs that reflect the themes of the chapters.