Week of 8/24 - 8/28

Coming from a background of American and Latin American history, the first week of this class has been very informative. Personally, I have always thought of Germany as having its own unique identity, and while I'd always know it was essentially a collection of different countries some of the material still came as a surprise. I do agree that this is one of the main reasons why the French were able to invade Germany as well as the lack of any true form of rebellion, despite the oppressive conditions the people were facing. The Frankfurt Parliament in particular seemed to suffer from the different regions of Germany having their own specific interests to look out for, in addition to any political divides between the peoples. I found the discussion on the German middle class to be particularly fascinating, it reminded me a lot of Nixon's "silent majority" and it seems like in almost every society there's this large group of the population that is not part of the more extreme and radical groups, both right and left. For me the failures of the 1848 rebellions is still a little bit difficult to get my head around, as it seems like everything that could have gone wrong for Germany did. I guess if you want to have a successful rebellion, the conditions need to be absolutely perfect, or you just have to have enough luck.