The Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch, hastily begun on March 13, 1920, and ingloriusly ended with the resignation of Dr. Wolfgang Kapp on March 17, has already been the subject of significant study. The details of the putsch itself, the character of the conspirators, and their motives, the positions taken by the political parties and leaders, and the reasons for its failure are fairly Well known. It is generally agreed that the circle of conspirators had too narrow a social base and was too divided in its purposes to be successful. In essence, it was a revolt of unemployed reactionary East Elbian officials like Kapp himself and his “Minister of the Interior,” Traugott von Jagow, disgruntled conservative military officers, the most important of whom was Freiherr von Lüttwitz, and military adventurers like Colonel Max Bauer, Major Pabst, and Captain Ehrhardt. Where Kapp sought far-reaching constitutional and political changes, Lüttwitz strove for more short-term goals, i.e., reconstruction of the cabinet to give it an “expert” character, new elections, and a larger army. The Kapp regime was doomed because of the refusal of the government bureaucracy to serve it and because of the general strike called by the trade unions on March 14.

One of the most important analyses of the rise of German nationalism was Koppel Pinson's Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism (1934). This study was one of the first to apply the methodology of Tawney, Dilthey, Troeltsch, and Weber to the analysis of early nationalism. Pinson held that the intellectual and social content of seventeenth–century Lutheran pietism “unknowingly” created many preconditions of the peculiar type of German nationalism that appeared in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pinson argued that the qualities of pietism which were transferred to later German nationalism were strong emotional fervor, moral purity, the experience of conversion, and the cultivation of the German language. All social classes would be able to cultivate these spiritual aims, producing what Pinson called a general priesthood of believers, or salvation within and through the group. The identification of the qualities of the good German with those of the good Christian was for Pinson the crux of the process.

In 1866, as the result of the Seven Weeks' War with Prussia and Italy, the Austrian Empire lost both her primacy in Germany and the last remnants of her position on the Italian peninsula. The historical dualism of the empire as both a German and a non-German power was, of course, not ended by the conflict—nor, because of Bismarck's prudent moderation, was Austria destroyed as a great power. But the half-century of Austria's predominant influence in European politics was over. The leadership of Germany passed decisively into the hands of Prussia—as would the leadership of Europe in a few short years—and although Austria retained Italian-populated territories, her dominance over the peninsula was irretrievably lost.

In “Reparations Reconsidered: A Reminder,” in the issue of December 1969, Sally Marks argued that the reparation issue was misunderstood and deserved new thought. I agree, but for diametrically opposed reasons. Miss Marks believes that the German hardship was exaggerated. I suggest that the destrucive effect of reparations has never been appreciated. Not even the Germans, however much they complained, realized just how bad reparations were.