Germany

The history of the Bayreuth Festival, the annual celebration of the music of Richard Wagner, is mired in controversy and scandal, as Mark Ronan reports.

J. Garston describes how for eleven years, amid political and economic storms, first from Cologne and then from Wiesbaden, the British Army kept watch over the Rhine.

The long Allied occupation of France after Waterloo provides a striking example of how soon a country can return to normal; J. Garston explains how it also offers parallels and contrasts with the state of affairs in Germany today.

The intervention of Mr. Churchill and the Royal Naval Division at Antwerp in early October, 1914, failed to save the city, writes David Woodward, but the vital Channel ports were thereby saved.

As it has fallen to the lot of our generation to relive the experiences of a Jeremiah and Josephus, writes Martin Braun, it is not surprising that a literature of historical self-analysis has sprung up in post-war Europe—most notably in Germany.

By victory in the war of 1870, writes Harold Kurtz, Bismarck secured German unity at the expense of France.

Harold Kurtz offers the background to the Franco-Prussian War.

David Mitchell describes the postwar peace-making efforts employed by Woodrow Wilson in 1919.

Defeated in the field, Germany sought peace. But, writes John Terraine, her proposals for a negotiated peace were rejected by the Allies.

Disastrous battle raged on the Somme from July until November, 1916; John Terraine describes how it marked the ‘ruddy grave’ of the German field army.