Every national historiography seems to have its own ‘exceptionalism’ thesis. The underlying structure of these theories is roughly similar: one's own history is shown to deviate from a standard model of development in ways that produce some unique outcome. But most exceptionalism theories become visible to a non-academic public for only a brief moment, and are otherwise only interesting for a narrow circle of specialists. Discussions of the ‘open frontier’ or the ‘absence of socialism’ in the United States are not likely to quicken the pulse of the contemporary reader. Debates over France's ‘delayed’ economic development probably seem even more recondite. By contrast, the thesis of the German Sonderweg, or special path to modernity, has continued to capture the imagination of a much wider audience, seemingly impervious to the waves of criticism directed against it.

The Sonderweg can best be understood as a complex and changing field of discourse held together by certain core ideas and texts, rather than a single, unified statement. At the core of most contemporary discourse on the Sonderweg is a problem and the outlines of an answer. The central question is: why did Nazism come to power in Germany, or, why did a system like Nazism come to power in Germany and not in other advanced industrial countries? The basic answer focuses on the deviation of Germany's developmental path from its western neighbours.