Why did Bismarck's new German State Degenerate into Hitler's Third Reich? What happened to Europes leading industrial nation -- cultural heirs to Kant, Goethe, Durer and Bach? How did East and West Germany diverge after 1945? In this unique and controversial study the author -- Prussian aristocrat, writer, scholar, historian and patriot -- fearlessly explores German social mores, political structures and national psyche over several centuries. V. Krockow draws some sobering and novel conclusions about the unfolding drama in general and the Holocaust in particular. First published in 1990 to coincide with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German edition sold widely. This first translation now makes it available to English-speaking readers worldwide.