The Treaty of Belgrade, concluded in 1739, ended over fifty years of Austrian expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. From the siege of Vienna in 1683 to the Peace of Passarowitz in 1718, the Austrians enjoyed almost absolute supremacy on the battlefield and at the peace table, forcing the Turks deep into the Balkan peninsula and adding to the Habsburg possessions such cities as Buda, Pest, Timişoara, Cluj, Debrecen, and finally Belgrade, guardian of the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers and bastion of Austrian might in southeastern Europe. Given these successes and the apparent decline of the Ottoman state, in the 1720's and 1730's Austria appeared capable of establishing its hegemony over most of the remaining Turkish possessions in Europe.

The recent controversy over Germany's war aims during World War I has centered primarily around the positions taken by the Kaiser, the Foreign Office, and the army high command. The views of the navy have been largely neglected. This is unfortunate because the navy was, in a way, the status symbol of the German Empire. It was not, like the various armies, a divisive, particularist force, but rather a national Reich institution—the “melting pot” of Germany. It flew the Imperial black-white-red banner, was funded by the Reichstag, had a state secretary in the Imperial cabinet under the chancellor, recruited its officer cadets from all the German states and cities, trained them in the national naval school at Mürwik, and swore an oath of allegiance to the German Kaiser. Yet as the junior service, the navy struggled to escape from the shadow of the Prussian army and to establish its own identity. The issue of war aims provided it with just such an opportunity.

In April 1920 Friedrich Ebert admitted to a Swedish socialist that Social Democracy had failed to create a consolidated democratic republic for Germany. The president of the Weimar Republic noted that the social divisiveness which he and his colleagues had tried to overcome had increased. Though he left it unmentioned, he knew also that socialist democracy which he had outlined as the main goal during the German Revolution of 1918–19 had not been realized. However, in explaining why the army and administration still required reforming, why the universities remained “breeding stations of reaction,” Ebert blamed solely the Treaty of Versailles. He did not acknowledge that he and his party had contributed to the legacies left for the Weimar Republic by the critical period 1917–20.

One of the ideological appeals which the Nazis used to capture the petit-bourgeois and peasant vote in Germany was that of “middle-class socialism.” In this catchall term, the alienated “little man” in modern German industrial society saw an expression of both his strong anticapitalist feelings and his yearnings for economic independence. The concept also reflected a romantic proclivity for a preindustrial artisan economy. In directing themselves to these people who felt most ill at ease in modern industrial society, the Nazis promised low interest rates, curbs on big business, benefits to the small entrepreneur, and a return to a society free of large industry, department stores, and a vocal proletariat. The Nazis made this appeal partly for reasons of political expediency, partly because many of Hitler's followers took the tenets of middle-class socialism quite seriously. Several years in power, however, indicated to the more realistic Nazi leaders that it was quite impossible to reincarnate a utopian past in highly industrialized society gearing for war. As a result, after abortive attempts at realizing some of the ideas embodied in middle-class socialism, the Nazi regime made the necessary compromises with big business, and middle-class socialism became pretty much a dead letter. What is seldom realized, however, is that the Nazi regime betrayed middle-class socialism not once, but twice: initially, to economic exigency in the Reich, and then, once again, to political expansion among German ethnic groups outside Germany's borders.