The question of Luther's relations with Bohemia is not a new one. It has been treated by a number of distinguished scholars of different backgrounds. In 1953 S. H. Thomson gave a clear description of Luther's attitudes and actions in relation to Bohemia and its religious bodies. But the emphasis of this most valuable presentation was more on Luther than on the country of Jan Hus, and the same has been true of most recent treatments, e.g., the three articles published in 1948–49 by Jaroslav Pelikan. While it is impossible to separate strictly the changing attitudes of Luther himself toward the Czech religious bodies from the corresponding events in Bohemia, the main emphasis of the present article rests on the reception which Luther and his teaching found in Bohemia, rather than on Luther's own actions and reactions.

Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz-Rittberg is generally recognized as the principal architect of the “Diplomatic Revolution” of 1756 and as one of the greatest statesmen of his day, yet there have been curiously few attempts to describe and analyze the process by which he rose to such eminence. In the available historical literature Kaunitz usually first appears on the scene at the peace congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), although there are occasional references to his earlier diplomatic career. Nineteenth-century historians assumed that Kaunitz's experiences at Aix-la-Chapelle provided the insight which finally led him to propose the reversal of alliances. Adolph Beer, for example, asserted that Kaunitz's enmity towards England was born at Aix-la-Chapelle and that the policy of 1755 first entered his mind in 1748. Though twentieth-century historians have tended to de-emphasize the revolutionary nature of the reversal of alliances and so have been less willing to accept the easy equation that Aix-la-Chapelle produced the diplomatic change of 1756, there has been no systematic examination of the development of the new diplomatic policy in Kaunitz's own mind. While it might be said that the development of that policy represents merely the ordinary maturation of a diplomat, the growth of understanding, the fact is that few of his contemporaries possessed such understanding. It therefore seems of some value to know how this master diplomat matured.

The bleak wintry days of November and December 1918 were filled with ominous events for the new men in Berlin. On November 9, 1918, they had found themselves unwilling keepers of a crumbling edifice. Revolution had compounded the disaster of military defeat. The Kaiser had fled. His government had resigned. A weary, bloodied army was straggling back to a blockaded country on the verge of starvation. The Reich seemed in total dissolution: the Poles were rising in Silesia, the French demanded at least Alsace-Lorraine, the Bavarians were trying to negotiate independently with the Entente, and the entire Rhineland seemed to be on the verge of secession. During these dark days of confusion and fear it became the task of the German socialist movement, the Reichsfeinde of yesterday, to restore some semblance of order and to lay the foundations for the future German state. Crucial to the fulfilment of these tasks would be the attitude of the Provisional Government (Rat der Volksbeauftragten) toward the former Imperial Army, and especially toward the officer corps.