ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the German historical experience, reflected in culture and political tradition, helped shape particular traditions and orientations in German foreign policy. It looks at a variety of "-isms" as a way of acquiring a sense of the orientations that have guided German foreign policy, both in the pre- and post-World War II periods: Liberalism, Conservatism, and Socialism, nationalism and supranationalism, and militarism and antimilitarism. The chapter focuses on the formative and the normative aspects of traditional German foreign policy. It also focuses on interaction of questions of identity, position, and role in German foreign policy before and after World War II, and the impact of the Nazi legacy on West German foreign policy after 1945. A consideration of the importance of historical experience for postwar West German foreign policy is particularly useful, however, since that foreign policy could in many ways be best understood as a conscious response and reaction to past German foreign policy.
