German History

Despite having just begun another series, I am going to be embarking on a second multi-part series which has to do with nineteenth century German history. The goal of the project will be to give a survey of nineteenth century German history. You may ask why I am going to be pursuing such a project … more »

One of the research papers I am currently working on for my German literature class is about the ad hominem style of argumentation in the rhetorical dialog Der Ackermann aus Böhmen, or The Ploughman from Bohemia. While I am not going to go into the style of argumentation used in the text on this blog, … more »

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve probably noticed by now that today marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was on this day, November 9th, in 1989 that the Wall was breached and East Germans finally allowed into West Germany. This was the result of a long, complicated … more »

I’ve been contacted by the person running the online journal of Dieter Finzen and asked if I would be willing to do translations for the site. The idea behind the site is to post journal entries made by the German World War I solider, Dieter Finzen. Each entry is posted 93 years after it was … more »

I have finally finished up my paper on Reinhard Gehlen. The final version was due today and it is a great relief to have it finished. I wrote up a brief summary of how the Gehlen Organization came to be on my German blog, but I will write a rough translation of it here. Gehlen … more »

As I have discussed before, I am doing a research project on the former German spymaster Reinhard Gehlen and the organization that he established after the second World War which eventually became the West German (and now just German) Bundesnachrichtendienst, or Federal Intelligence Service. The relationship between Gehlen and his spy ring had with the … more »

For anyone who is going to be working with the memoirs of Reinhard Gehlen, do not use David Irving’s translation of it, entitled: The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen. For a project I am working on, I have been dealing with both Irving’s translation as well as the original book in German written … more »

This semester I am taking a historical methods class in which the focus is the history of espionage. In this class, we are required to choose a topic related to the history of intelligence and do a research paper based on that. The topic I have chosen to do is Reinhard Gehlen who held a … more »