"The primary purpose of this study is to show, first, how, before 1914, the machinery of Junker protectionism in agriculture, coupled with the Junker philosophy -- the true forerunner of the Nazi ideology of our days -- delayed the development of democratic institutions in Germany ; and second, how the Junkers contrived to escape almost unscathed the German revolution in 1918 and this fact contributed to the constitutional weaknesses and subsequent disintegration of the Weimar Republic"--P. viii.