Central European History appears in response to a widespread demand for an American journal devoted to the history of German-speaking Central Europe. The need for such a periodical has been especially great since S. Harrison Thomson's Journal of Central European Affairs, which published studies dealing with this along with other areas, ceased publication in 1964. The Conference Group for Central European History, after two years of study, voted in December 1966 to sponsor a new journal, Central European History, to meet this need. Together with such periodicals as the Austrian History Yearbook (also published in collaboration with the Conference Group) and the East European Quarterly, which have also been founded in recent years to meet similar needs, Central European History should help fill a serious gap in the ranks of American scholarly periodicals.

The question of Luther's relations with Bohemia is not a new one. It has been treated by a number of distinguished scholars of different backgrounds. In 1953 S. H. Thomson gave a clear description of Luther's attitudes and actions in relation to Bohemia and its religious bodies. But the emphasis of this most valuable presentation was more on Luther than on the country of Jan Hus, and the same has been true of most recent treatments, e.g., the three articles published in 1948–49 by Jaroslav Pelikan. While it is impossible to separate strictly the changing attitudes of Luther himself toward the Czech religious bodies from the corresponding events in Bohemia, the main emphasis of the present article rests on the reception which Luther and his teaching found in Bohemia, rather than on Luther's own actions and reactions.

This essay seeks to defend the contention that in the years between 1749 and 1754 Austria actively and successfully sought to retain its ties of friendship with Great Britain. The operative words in the preceding sentence are “actively” and “successfully.” They are used to emphasize certain positive aspects of Vienna's policy in these years and to dispel the notion that the Anglo-Austrian entente persisted after 1748 merely because a nascent diplomatic revolution had not yet matured. It is well known that Britain sought Austria's friendship at this time; it is likewise well known that in Vienna Count Kaunitz urged an Austrian rapprochement with France. But it is less widely realized that Austria acted with some skill and considerable patience, uncomplainingly enduring a variety of apparent insults, to maintain and then fortify its traditional bonds of cooperation with the island kingdom. What Max Braubach has demonstrated for the Franco-Prussian alliance in 1753 may also be said of the Anglo-Austrian entente in 1754: at no time since the conclusion of the peace had the two powers acted so closely and unitedly.

The private fortunes of great men form a subject usually neglected by their biographers. The more idolizing the biographer, the less apt he is to consider it, as if such a hero's fortune were a partie honteuse in his life. In Bismarck's case, the forms and size of his fortune and the ways he acquired it, matters about which he himself was never reticent, were the object of hostile contemporary pamphleteering and much gossip then and later among friends and foes, high and low, princes and underlings.

The experiences and catastrophes of the second World War fundamentally affected European political attitudes. Particularly intensive was the reconsideration of fundamental problems that went on in the non-communist resistance groups in the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe. What were their political plans? Research on the resistance movements is still in its early stages; however, there is already general agreement that the resistance movements did not fight for a return to prewar conditions, but for a new European society. In particular, as several writers have pointed out, the goal of a democratic federation of all European nations appears repeatedly in the newspapers and proclamations of the Resistance. To describe the ideas of the Resistance on European federation requires a thorough study of the documentary material on the various European resistance movements, with particular attention to those texts concerned with the future relationships of the European states; the following pages are a first report of the findings of such a study.

The extent to which German big business aided Hitler in his rise to power is still a matter of controversy. For Marxists, or at least those who follow the Moscow line, there is no problem, since they regard Nazism as a manifestation of the monopoly stage of capitalism. Non-Marxists, however, are widely divided. Some have reached conclusions similar to those of the Marxists; others have exonerated the capitalists. Most have concluded that big business gave some support to the Nazis but have not specified its extent or significance. In part, this wide range of opinion is the result of ideological differences. But just as importantly, the evidence on which existing studies of the subject rest is scanty, sometimes ambiguous, and often of questionable validity. Few aspects of National Socialism have been so inadequately researched. Even the most basic facts remain in doubt, and before any further general interpretations can usefully be put forward toward a resolution of the controversy, it is necessary to return to the fundamental task of setting the record straight. A great deal more evidence is available for this purpose than is generally recognized, enough, in fact, to clear up many disputed issues and produce more than a few surprises. A case in point is that of Emil Kirdorf, long universally regarded as an early and loyal backer of Hitler and National Socialism in the camp of big business.

In acknowledging the congratulations of Lord D'Abernon, British Ambassador to Germany, upon the successful outcome of the Locarno negotiations, the British Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain, wrote: “… we have owed much to your action and influence in Berlin—exactly how much I want some day to learn. I have been discreet in asking no questions about the origins of Stresemann's initiative.” Lord D'Abernon has long been recognized as the god-parent of the 1925 reciprocal security pact between Germany, France, and Belgium, guaranteed by Britain and Italy, which appeared to have stabilized the West European status quo. He and Carl von Schubert, the State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry, were in the habit of referring to it in its initial stages as “das Kind,” and the Ambassador watched over its development with tender care. This paper examines D'Abernon's role in the drafting of the proposals which were to lead to the West European security pact.

Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz-Rittberg is generally recognized as the principal architect of the “Diplomatic Revolution” of 1756 and as one of the greatest statesmen of his day, yet there have been curiously few attempts to describe and analyze the process by which he rose to such eminence. In the available historical literature Kaunitz usually first appears on the scene at the peace congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), although there are occasional references to his earlier diplomatic career. Nineteenth-century historians assumed that Kaunitz's experiences at Aix-la-Chapelle provided the insight which finally led him to propose the reversal of alliances. Adolph Beer, for example, asserted that Kaunitz's enmity towards England was born at Aix-la-Chapelle and that the policy of 1755 first entered his mind in 1748. Though twentieth-century historians have tended to de-emphasize the revolutionary nature of the reversal of alliances and so have been less willing to accept the easy equation that Aix-la-Chapelle produced the diplomatic change of 1756, there has been no systematic examination of the development of the new diplomatic policy in Kaunitz's own mind. While it might be said that the development of that policy represents merely the ordinary maturation of a diplomat, the growth of understanding, the fact is that few of his contemporaries possessed such understanding. It therefore seems of some value to know how this master diplomat matured.

On August 22, 1866, a month and a half after the disaster of Sadowa, Francis Joseph I of Austria wrote to his mother: “If you have the whole world against you and absolutely no friends, chances of success are few, but we must resist as long as we can, do our duty until the last, and finally perish honorably.” To his council of ministers he put it less dramatically and less plaintively on September I: For a long time to come Austria would have to eschew war in all forms and for all purposes.

The bleak wintry days of November and December 1918 were filled with ominous events for the new men in Berlin. On November 9, 1918, they had found themselves unwilling keepers of a crumbling edifice. Revolution had compounded the disaster of military defeat. The Kaiser had fled. His government had resigned. A weary, bloodied army was straggling back to a blockaded country on the verge of starvation. The Reich seemed in total dissolution: the Poles were rising in Silesia, the French demanded at least Alsace-Lorraine, the Bavarians were trying to negotiate independently with the Entente, and the entire Rhineland seemed to be on the verge of secession. During these dark days of confusion and fear it became the task of the German socialist movement, the Reichsfeinde of yesterday, to restore some semblance of order and to lay the foundations for the future German state. Crucial to the fulfilment of these tasks would be the attitude of the Provisional Government (Rat der Volksbeauftragten) toward the former Imperial Army, and especially toward the officer corps.

For Adolf Hitler the problem of constructing a loyal and reliable instrument of force for employment not only against external enemies but also for intra-party discipline was a frequently recurring one. In the summer of 1921 what was to become the Sturm Abteilungen (Storm Troops, “SA”) had its genesis under the camouflage of so-called “gymnastic societies.” The SA, however, soon developed into a mass organization with an internal dynamism of its own which sometimes operated in opposition to Hitler's own aims. Friction between Hitler and Ernst Roehm began, in fact, at least as early as 1925 and precipitated Roehm's temporary self-imposed exile in Bolivia. The problematical loyalty of the SA prompted Hitler during the general party reconstruction of that year to order the organization of a special troop under the command of one of his bodyguards, Julius Schreck. This new body, at first termed Stabswache (Staff Guard), was assigned the tasks of protecting Hitler and other prominent Nazi personages and, somewhat anomalously, of securing new party members and subscriptions to the Völkischer Beobachter. Other similar groups, always small and carefully selected, made their appearance and were accorded the collective designation Schutzstaffeln (Protection Squads, “SS”).

On New Year's Eve 1890 Hildegard, Baroness von Spitzemberg recorded these reflections in her diary:

The end of 1890: the year in which Bismarck left the global stage, not called by death but dismissed against his will. That in itself would be sufficient to make this year unforgettable; who knows if this experience, this past year will become a milestone in German history.… We confront the last decade of the century under the banner of a new generation which rushes with full sail into the heavy sea of time, its impetuous emperor prematurely in command. Towards what? That we may know all too soon—or better all too late—when the reefs rise threateningly before us and there is no experienced mariner at the helm.

A Literature designed to express discontent with political or social conditions, rally public support, and sometimes threaten revolution has as much of a tradition in Germany as in other countries, and it was not the German authors' fault that their efforts remained on the whole without decisive achievements. Until 1918, this genre of literature had been nearly exclusively the preserve of what may loosely be called the political Left. But with the establishment of the republic the forces of the Right appropriated to themselves this time-honored intellectual weapon in their efforts to destroy the hated "Weimar System." Under these circumstances, no responsible independent left-wing journal could afford to do more than criticize the new German state for its shortcomings, and while in this respect some of them were less restrained than others, all of them wanted to reform and strengthen, not overthrow, the republic.

The semi-official Kölnische Zeitung of December 16, 1888, unleashed a violent attack upon Sir Robert Morier, the British Ambassador to Russia. After alluding to his friendly relations with the recently deceased Emperor Frederick, the article stressed Morier's hostility to Germany. This was substantiated by the charge that, in August 1870, he had sent news of the German crossing of the Moselle to the French commander, Marshal Bazaine.