the major threat to Western Europe. By the late 1840s he was convinced that Russia would conquer Constantinople and the Balkans, and perhaps further the Slavic lands of the Habsburg and Prussian Empires. In the mid-1850s he was overjoyed by the success of the European/Ottoman coalition in the Crimean War. Fallmerayer's account of East and West represented a crucial break from Hegel's idealistic philosophy of history, and has been characterized as a precursor to Samuel P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis. Political impact of Fallmerayer's racial theories In the 1830s, philehellenes who had recently supported the creation of the modern Greek kingdom suspected political motivations in his writings; namely an Austrian desire for expansion southwards into the Balkans, and Austrian antagonism to Russian interests in the area reflected in his other writings. In this context, the calls by English and French intellectuals for a revival of "the glory that was Greece" were seen by Austrians in a very negative light, and any Austrian theory on the Greeks was looked on with suspicion by the philhellenes in the West. Fallmerayer was first among his contemporaries to put forward a ruthless Realpolitik on the Eastern Question and the expansionist designs of Czarist Russia. He was a Slavophobe and "argued vehemently that only a strong Ottoman State could prevent Russian expansion into Western Europe." Fallmerayer's theory was popular as part of the Nazi propaganda in Axis-occupied Greece (1941–1944) during World War II, when classically educated Nazi officers used it as an excuse to commit numerous atrocities against the Greek population. Selected works 1827: Geschichte des Kaisertums von Trapezunt (History of the Empire of Trebizond) (Munich). Available online 1830: Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters. Teil 1: Untergang der peloponnesischen Hellenen und Wiederbevölkerung des leeren Bodens durch slavische Volksstämme (History of the Morea Peninsula during the Middle Ages. Part one: Decline of the Peloponnesian Hellenes and repopulation of the empty land by Slavic peoples) (Stuttgart). 1835: Welchen Einfluß hatte die Besetzung Griechenlands durch die Slawen auf das Schicksal der Stadt Athen und der Landschaft Attika? Oder nähere Begründung der im ersten Bande der Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters aufgestellten Lehre über die Enstehung der heutigen Griechen (What influence did the occupation of Greece by the Slavs have on the fate of the city of Athens and of the countryside of Attica? Or, a more detailed explanation of the theory regarding the