Stručné německé dějiny – Hawes James (2020)

In the book "A Brief History of Germany," the author presents an overview of two thousand years of the history of the Germans and Germanic peoples. In a relatively small space, he manages to pinpoint key moments in German, or rather Germanic, history, considering the geographical distribution of Germanic and German settlements as one of the main factors. The German Mittellage implies the fateful positioning of the Germans between the West and the Slavic East, which corresponds to the internal German struggle from the 16th century between Catholic Western Germany and Protestant Prussia in the East. Hawes is convinced that the Prussian and Protestant elements bear responsibility for the catastrophes of modern German history. He supports his opinion with many dozens of maps from Roman times to a geographical analysis of the Bundestag elections in 2017. Almost all of them emphasize the key role of the Elbe, which the author considers the fateful German river: to the west of it, there has been civilization and progress since Roman times, while to the east, with a grain of salt, there is darkness and barbarism. The author's style is very readable, and the book's illustrative quality is enhanced by an exceptionally successful and rich selection of photographs, images, graphs, and sketches, as well as quotes from contemporary documents that substantiate the author's claims.