The Paradox of German Power

A ‘German Europe’ seems to have emerged from the euro crisis. During the last few years, Chancellor Angela Merkel has been compared with Hitler in the European media and on the streets of European capitals. There has been much debate about German ‘hegemony’ and some have even perceived the emergence of a kind of German ’empire’ within Europe. And yet Germany is clearly a different country than it was in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. So is there a new ‘German question’ and, if so, what is it? In The Paradox of German Power Hans Kundnani explores the transformation of Germany since reunification in 1990 and puts it in the context of Germany’s pre-1945 history. He examines a series of tensions in German foreign policy — between continuity and change, between ‘normality’ and ‘abnormality’, between economics and politics, and between Europe and the world — and concludes that the ‘German question’ has reemerged in geo-economic form.