Debating the German Path: The Sonderweg

After the catastrophe of Nazism, historians asked whether the way Germany was unified helped explain what came later. The Sonderweg ('special path') thesis, associated with historians such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler, argued that Germany industrialized rapidly but kept a political system dominated by aristocrats, the army and the monarchy, because unification came from above and liberals had compromised with Bismarck. On this view, Germany lacked the successful liberal revolution that other Western nations had, leaving its democracy weak.

In 1984 the British historians David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley challenged this, arguing that there was no 'normal' Western path, that German society had a vigorous middle class and civil society, and that Britain and France were not models of smooth democratization either. Most historians now reject a simple straight line from Bismarck to Hitler, while agreeing that features of the 1871 settlement shaped later politics. The debate shows how historians test big explanations through comparison.