German foreign policy from Bismarck to Adenauer

These studies of the history of international politics in the 19th and 20th centuries offer an interpretation of the relationship between statesmanship and state systems by a leading German historian. The book is divided chronologically to cover the European order between the unification of Germany and World War I, the revolution in international order before and during World War II and the Federal Republic of Germany and its policies towards the West and the East in the 1960s. It explores the possibilities and dangers inherent in the decisions and conduct of statesmen which crucially affect the life of states and nations as well as of societies and individuals.