Fritz Stern argues that the best way to describe the character of Imperial Germany after 1878 is "illiberal", which describes the German commitment in mind and policy against any further concession to democracy. Stern argues that from Bismarck to the end of World War II, German society embraced the impulse toward totalitarianism that this illiberal stance fostered. He also examines the efforts of German scholars to explain the phenomenon of Nazism, the attempt of the German people to come to terms with their past, and the failure of illiberalism in the 1950s.