Dreams and Delusions: The Drama of German History

Fritz Stern's 1988 book Dreams and Delusions: The Drama of German History (republished with a new forward in 1999), relies on a series of loosely-related essays in order to deal with Germany's ongoing legacy of World War II and the Holocaust. The book was chosen because of its particular subject matter and methodological approach, because its series of essays makes for a more varied and interesting read than would be possible with a more straightforward approach. Stern divides his book into four sections, with each section discussing a different feature of German history surrounding World War II and its aftermath; Stern includes sections for "The Dream of Peace," "The Lure of Power," "Peace and the Release from Greatness," and "Historians and the German Past" (Stern vii-viii). Stern's position seems to be that the rise of National Socialism in Germany was the product...
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