![\"4.5](\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-4-5.gif\" "\\"4.5")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Richard M. Watt, 1968, Barnes and Noble Books.<\/p>\n
Quite a few years ago my son showed me a box of books that he had been assigned to read when he was studying for his master’s degree in Eastern European History at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.\u00c2\u00a0 I managed to grab a few of the books from the box and this was one of them.\u00c2\u00a0 It sat on my shelf in the den for many years until I decided to pull it off and read it.\u00c2\u00a0 The covid-19 quarantine added to the time I had on my hands to read it.<\/p>\n
I had no idea what it was about.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought it had to do with the demise of kings in many countries after WWI, but it dealt entirely with Germany.\u00c2\u00a0 As I read the book I was amazed at how good the book is.<\/p>\n
First of all, I had no idea of what went on in Germany during WWI, during the Armistice, and immediately after until the signing of the treaty.\u00c2\u00a0 It turns out that few others did as well, notably, the French, British, and Americans who were tasked with the drafting of the treaty.\u00c2\u00a0 When the book refers to “The Kings Depart” it refers to the multiple kings that were still in power in Germany prior to WWI.\u00c2\u00a0 Germany was a collection of small kingdoms knit together by the sheer will of the Prussians.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, the German constitution dictated that the King of Prussia, was also the Emperor of Germany.<\/p>\n
I also was not aware that Germany suffered a violent Bolshevik revolution right after the Armistice went into effect and many of the cities were, for a time, under the rule of Bolshevik parties. The revolution was put down by more moderate forces of the remnants of the German Army and the militias that sprung up throughout Germany.<\/p>\n
One thing I took away from reading this book is how fragile a democracy can be in a country where the culture is not conducive to a democratic form of government.<\/p>\n
I can’t begin to describe all the history and events that this book contains.\u00c2\u00a0 The really outstanding feature of this book was the way in which the author brought it all together.\u00c2\u00a0 His writing style is excellent and his conclusions and opinions as to why things happened the way they did seem very well thought out.<\/p>\n
The book is somewhat long (530 pages) and there is a lot of detail, but, overall, an excellent work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Richard M. Watt, 1968, Barnes and Noble Books. Quite a few years ago my son showed me a box of books that he had been assigned to read when he was studying for his master’s degree in Eastern European …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14,2],"tags":[20,16],"class_list":["post-2575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-four-star","category-politics","tag-history","tag-non-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2576,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}