Word: prussianize
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...Other Prince. Thrifty Dutchmen also noted disapprovingly that Beatrix, the richest heiress on the Continent,* picked a fiance with no private fortune. Son of an impoverished Prussian Junker, Von Amsberg worked his way through the University of Hamburg and up through the German Foreign Service to an administrative post in Bonn. Known to fellow diplomats as a Streber (go-getter), he is fond of fast cars-though an aging Porsche is all he can afford on a $400-a-month government salary. Thus, in many ways he resembles the penniless German princeling and junior executive who married Juliana...
...subject, the phenomenon essentially remains a mystery. But part of the answer had to do with national identity. Though Hitler behaved like a nationalist possessed. Germany's sense of nationhood was always a fragile and insecure state of mind. In 1871, Bismarck belatedly forged German unity under Prussian hegemony from the anachronism of myriad principalities, but he sent Germany marching into the 20th century as little more than a feudal relic in modern dress. German society never experienced a nationalist, middleclass, democratic revolution or evolution comparable to those of France or Britain. The last and only real German revolution...
Even Hitler knew he would need an exceptionally loyal man to carry out his orders. He was sure he had found that man in General Dietrich von Choltitz. The stubby, impassive Prussian had led the blitzkrieg on Rotterdam, and later, on the Eastern front, had earned the reputation of a "smasher of cities," starting with Sevastopol which he had leveled for Hitler on Hitler's orders. He was the scion of a Prussian family that in three generations as officers had never disobeyed an order. On Aug. 7, 1944, Hitler summoned Von Choltitz, put him in command...
...spat: "Prussian tactics!" And six years passed. Finally, last June, at the instigation of mutual friends, the Metropolitan Opera's Rudolf Bing went a-courting in Paris. This time he said pretty please, and she said yes, and they made a date...
...fellow Junkers to be overly stiff and inbred. He recommended that they loosen up and get some elan by marrying Jews; an ideal match, he said, "would bring together a Christian stallion of German breed with a Jewish mare." His whole life was dedicated to making the once lowly Prussian monarchs the most powerful kings of Europe; yet he lied to them and fought with them, sneered that the Hohenzollerns were Johnny-come-latelies from Swabia...