know I’ve been on this topic for more than 40 years and have published screeds on it in both English and German. Unfortunately, neoconservatives are not likely to let go of this obsession; and I therefore go on expatiating on it. By now Germanophobia may be in the neocon DNA. Yes, I fully understand why the Nazi dictatorship in Germany would upset neoconservative publicists; and as someone whose family suffered under that regime, I can sympathize with their concern that something like the Third Reich should never return to Central Europe.

But what this idée fixe has produced is a distorted or overgeneralized view of the German past that seems to have infected the American right, or at least that part of the right that enjoys a widespread media presence and social respectability. There also seems to be a special fixation among neocons and their dependents on the evils of Imperial Germany. Apparently Nazi tyranny was only a replay of the horrors of the German monarchy.

Having made a far from exhaustive collection of some of the expressions of anti-German rage syndrome coming from recognizably neoconservative sources over the last two decades, allow me to list some of them. (I avoid mentioning the misinformed by name lest I cause unnecessary offense.)

1. American populism was sidetracked by “philo-German” representatives like H.L. Mencken and Robert LaFollette, who recklessly opposed American entry into World War One to fight German military autocracy.
2. Mencken, by opposing American intervention in the two World Wars, exhibited his hatred of democracy and his Nietzschean fascist inclinations. This journalist’s particularly obstinate reaction to Wilson’s crusade for democracy is hard to justify considering that Imperial Germany had drawn up plans to invade the U.S. If the U.S. had not preemptively declared war on Germany in 1917, a German invasion of the U.S. might have been imminent.
3. The Germans were entirely responsible for the outbreak of the Great War, which was launched by German autocrats to achieve world domination. While countries like Britain should be encouraged to express national sentiments, we should prevent the Germans from doing so.
4. Although the present German government has suppressed free speech, this is entirely understandable given “Germany’s horrific history.”
5. The deeds of Hamas are attributable to German influence in launching pan-Arab movements in the late nineteenth century. Apparently, the Second German Empire was an early, energetic sponsor of Arab terrorist movements.

Allow me to note, in stating my position, that I have never claimed that the Germans and Austrians deserve no blame for the outbreak of the Great War. But like Christopher Clark, Niall Ferguson, Sean McMeekin, Rainer Schmidt, Thomas Nipperdey, and a host of other respectable historians, I have argued (I think quite reasonably) that the blame for the catastrophe that erupted in the summer of 1914 was fairly well distributed between the two sides.

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