1. The dream of peace Einstein's Germany -- Fritz Haber: the scientist in power and in exile -- Ernst Reuter: the making of a democratic socialist -- The burden of success: reflections on German Jewry -- 2. The lure of power Germany 1933: fifty years later -- National socialism as temptation -- 3. Peace and the release from greatness Germany in a semi-Gaullist Europe -- Germany and the United States: visions of declining virtue -- 4. Historians and the German past Americans and the German past: a century of American scholarship -- Capitalism and the cultural historian