In early 1973, Deere and Company of Moline, Illinois, transferred my father to its European headquarters in Mannheim, West Germany. My parents, with two daughters, aged 7 and 1, and one son, aged 4, decided to live in a relatively remote village in the hills of the Odenwald forest, a village called Wilhelmsfeld, instead of settling among many of the American expatriates in nearby Heidelberg. Without having ever studied the language, without any near relatives who had even so much as been to Europe, and with the experience of only one brief trip outside of the United States, my mother and father resolved to “plunge” into Germany. They deliberately sought out German friends, rapidly learned the German language, and sent my sisters and me to German schools. We returned to Illinois during the summer of 1976, but our experiences in Germany made an indelible impression upon all of us. Unlike my parents, I have grown up with a relatively privileged access to Germany and Europe, a plethora of German friends, and the opportunities to indulge my interest in German history that so many have not had, and that neither of my parents had had at the same age. From the outset, then, I wish to express my appreciation for our experiences in Germany from 1973 to 1976, which greatly shaped my intellectual interests, and perhaps even more important, my intellectual opportunities in the years to come.