Newly published for the first time in English translation, Carl Schmitt’s 1934 tract, State Composition and Collapse of the Second Reich: The Victory of the Bourgeois Citizen over the Soldier, is an important addition to the corpus of Schmitt’s work in English. Written and published at the height of Carl Schmitt's entanglement with National Socialism, this work outlines Schmitt’s historical and propagandistic account of the collapse of the Second German Empire and of Germany’s defeat in the First World War and sets the stage for his account of what should come next.  In this swiftly paced polemical history, Schmitt locates the roots of Germany’s defeat in the First World War in constitutional compromises between the Prussian soldier state and the liberal bourgeois citizenry forged in the course of the nineteenth century.  These compromises left unresolved the tension between liberal constitutionalism and an executive-led strong state built on military power, preventing the Reich from