German Imperialism, 1914-1918 does not have one official "author." Gerald D. Feldman calls himself the editor and his book is a collection of primary sources with interpretations thrown in. Feldman also "wrote" over 20 other books in the Major Issues in History series.
Since 1970 Gerald D. Feldman has been a Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated with his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in March 1964. (website: University of California, Berkeley)
In his book, German Imperialism, 1914-1918, he tends to focus on the political side of German government. It was copyrighted about thirty years ago in 1972. The book itself was probably written even before that time. For events like World War I that happened fairly recently (still in this century) thirty-three years is a lot of time for views to change, and new evidence to come up.
"Few historical issues have attracted more attention, debate, and even acrimony in recent years, for example, than the subject of this book, German war aims in the First World War." (p. 1) Feldman goes on to suggest that because the imperial German government never declared specific war aims, it led to "heated controversy over war aims, which destroyed the last vestige of internal unity created by the outbreak of war" (p. 152) As a solution, the author suggests that "The German government, therefore, should have drawn up a realistic program of war aims, moderate in scope but specific in character" (p. 152)
The author uses primary sources such as speeches and letters to support his thesis. He also occasionally uses secondary sources such as quotes from books other people have written. He quotes sources like "Address of the Imperial Chancellor to the Reichstag, May 15, 1917" that have lines like "To force me to speak, various parties and tendencies have interpreted my silence on the declarations of war aims, as giving my assent to their programs" (p. 35)
Overall it sounds like Gerald Feldman has analyzed his sources well. He makes statements like "the report... seems to lend weight to the latter position." (p. 124) He also says things like "the discussion below is critical of both Fischer and Ritter and takes a middle position." (p. 195)
To make his thesis clearer Feldman divided the book into four different sections that also make it easy to go back in and get information out later. These four sections are:
- Pre-1945 Sources and Documents
- Pre-1945 Interpretations
- Post-1945 Sources and Documents
- Post-1945 Interpretations
He also breaks down the sources into further subsections like "The Reichstag and the Treaty of Brest-Liovsk, March 18, 1918" (p. 55) and then gives 3-7 primary documents on each with a brief forward on each on why it is important.
I have never read anything specifically on German Imperialism, or German war aims during WWI, but his whole "theory" seems a little hard to swallow. Germany may have suffered from lack of specific war aims, and it might have contributed to its downfall, but I seriously doubt lack of aims was the main reason Germany failed to conquer the world (or at least Europe and Russia) in WWI.
The author does present lots of good information supporting his thesis in that the imperial German government had trouble declaring specific war aims. However, it seems like the book is grossly mistitled. While the book does deal with German Imperialism, it deals with only a very small part of Imperialism. Also, the author does not even attempt to stick to the date on the title. More than half the book is outside the 1914-1918 time period mentioned. If this were anything but a book, the "author" would be in big trouble for false advertising.
In my opinion the author is taking too many liberties with his sources. My overall impression is that he looked for documents and sources that would support his theory rather than trying to evaluate each piece of evidence. He uses lots of evidence, and I believe the documents he uses are reliable, but they aren't used in the correct context.
works cited
Feldman, Gerald D. German Imperialism, 1914-1918: The Development of a Historical Debate. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1972.
University of California, Berkeley (4/17/2002) UC Berkeley Dept. of History [WWW document]. URL http://history.berkeley.edu/faculty/Feldman/feldman.html