Am Anfang war Gewalt by Mark Jones

ISBN: 9783549074879

Publisher: Propylaen , 2016

Hardcover, 431 pages

Historian Mark Jones presents the dramatic founding phase of the Weimar Republic for the first time as a history of violence. He shows how an initially peaceful revolution ended in a series of taboo violations, including the murder of women and children by soldiers of the Social Democratic-led government. This experience shaped the subsequent fate of Germany—culminating in the unleashed violence of the Nazi regime.

Using newly discovered archival sources, including numerous eyewitness accounts, Mark Jones takes the reader to the sites of the state-sanctioned and instigated excesses of violence during this period and brings to life the voices of the perpetrators, their victims, and their families.