The Thirty Years War of 1618 to 1648 killed up to 7m soldiers and civilians. Parts of the German lands over which Europe’s armies fought lost more than half their populations. If there was a ...

At the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Katarina Witt, the figure skater once dubbed “the most beautiful face of socialism,” took to the ice to perform a routine set to Bizet’s opera Carmen.

The final capitulation of Nazi Germany after years of devastating war, brutal repression and genocidal persecution left the country a ruin. The horrors the regime had inflicted on the continent were ...

How is it that the culture of German-speaking Europe has so profoundly influenced and shaped Western civilization—and especially the culture of the United States—through the centuries and into today?

Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. A New History of German Literature actually delivers far more than its title suggests. It consists of some 200 ...