"That Theory of Races". Henri Pirenne on the unfinished business of the Great War.

In November 1919, the Belgian medievalist Henri Pirenne interpreted wartime Germany as an empire led astray by a "pernicious race theory," which continued to sway postwar German perspectives. This article argues that Pirenne was correct in criticising Weimar-era essentialism and links the völkisch perspective to the German military occupations of the First World War.