The Weimar Republic has long held a special fascination for the modern historian and many studies are now available on its internal development, its cultural life and its eventual destruction by Nazism. Meanwhile, although diplomatic history has been less in the limelight, a great deal of fresh and important work has been done on Weimar foreign policy. Both authors have been in the forefront of this research and have now pooled their intimate knowledge of German domestic and foreign affairs to produce this brilliant synthesis which at the same time raises major questions of continuity from the Kaiser to Hitler.