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West Germany and the Iron Curtain

West Germany and the Iron Curtain PDF Author: Astrid M. Eckert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190690062
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445

Book Description
West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of Cold War Germany and the German reunification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. These border regions constituted the Federal Republic's most sensitive geographical space where it had to confront partition and engage its socialist neighbor East Germany in concrete ways. Each issue that arose in these borderlands - from economic deficiencies, border tourism, environmental pollution, landscape change, and the siting decision for a major nuclear facility - was magnified and mediated by the presence of what became the most militarized border of its day, the Iron Curtain. In topical chapters, the book addresses the economic consequences of the border for West Germany, which defined the border regions as depressed areas, and examines the cultural practice of western tourism to the Iron Curtain. At the heart of this deeply-researched book stands an environmental history of the Iron Curtain that explores transboundary pollution, landscape change, and a planned nuclear industrial site at Gorleben that was meant to bring jobs into the depressed border regions. The book traces these subjects across the caesura of 1989/90, thereby integrating the "long" postwar era with the post-unification decades. As Eckert demonstrates, the borderlands that emerged with partition and disappeared with reunification did not merely mirror some larger developments in the Federal Republic's history but actually helped to shape them.

West Germany and the Iron Curtain

West Germany and the Iron Curtain PDF Author: Astrid M. Eckert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190690062
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445

Book Description
West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of Cold War Germany and the German reunification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. These border regions constituted the Federal Republic's most sensitive geographical space where it had to confront partition and engage its socialist neighbor East Germany in concrete ways. Each issue that arose in these borderlands - from economic deficiencies, border tourism, environmental pollution, landscape change, and the siting decision for a major nuclear facility - was magnified and mediated by the presence of what became the most militarized border of its day, the Iron Curtain. In topical chapters, the book addresses the economic consequences of the border for West Germany, which defined the border regions as depressed areas, and examines the cultural practice of western tourism to the Iron Curtain. At the heart of this deeply-researched book stands an environmental history of the Iron Curtain that explores transboundary pollution, landscape change, and a planned nuclear industrial site at Gorleben that was meant to bring jobs into the depressed border regions. The book traces these subjects across the caesura of 1989/90, thereby integrating the "long" postwar era with the post-unification decades. As Eckert demonstrates, the borderlands that emerged with partition and disappeared with reunification did not merely mirror some larger developments in the Federal Republic's history but actually helped to shape them.

The Miracle Years

The Miracle Years PDF Author: Hanna Schissler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069122255X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510

Book Description
Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and society. In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist activists, from surviving Jews to Turkish "guest" workers, from young hoodlums to middle-class mothers. We learn how they experienced and represented the institutions and social forces that shaped their lives and defined the wider culture. We see how two generations of West Germans came to terms not only with war guilt, division from East Germany, and the Angst of nuclear threat, but also with changing gender relations, the Americanization of popular culture, and the rise of conspicuous consumption. Individually, these essays peer into fascinating, overlooked corners of German life. Together, they tell what it really meant to live in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Volker R. Berghahn, Frank Biess, Heide Fehrenbach, Michael Geyer, Elizabeth Heineman, Ulrich Herbert, Maria Höhn, Karin Hunn, Kaspar Maase, Richard McCormick, Robert G. Moeller, Lutz Niethammer, Uta G. Poiger, Diethelm Prowe, Frank Stern, Arnold Sywottek, Frank Trommler, Eric D. Weitz, Juliane Wetzel, and Dorothee Wierling.

A History Shared and Divided

A History Shared and Divided PDF Author: Frank Bösch
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785339265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 620

Book Description
By and large, the histories of East and West Germany have been studied in relative isolation. And yet, for all their differences, the historical trajectories of both nations were interrelated in complex ways, shaped by economic crises, social and cultural changes, protest movements, and other phenomena so diffuse that they could hardly be contained by the Iron Curtain. Accordingly, A History Shared and Divided offers a collective portrait of the two Germanies that is both broad and deep. It brings together comprehensive thematic surveys by specialists in social history, media, education, the environment, and similar topics to assemble a monumental account of both nations from the crises of the 1970s to—and beyond—the reunification era.

Germany and 'The West'

Germany and 'The West' PDF Author: Riccardo Bavaj
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785335049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
“The West” is a central idea in German public discourse, yet historians know surprisingly little about the evolution of the concept. Contrary to common assumptions, this volume argues that the German concept of the West was not born in the twentieth century, but can be traced from a much earlier time. In the nineteenth century, “the West” became associated with notions of progress, liberty, civilization, and modernity. It signified the future through the opposition to antonyms such as “Russia” and “the East,” and was deployed as a tool for forging German identities. Examining the shifting meanings, political uses, and transnational circulations of the idea of “the West” sheds new light on German intellectual history from the post-Napoleonic era to the Cold War.

Selling the Economic Miracle

Selling the Economic Miracle PDF Author: Mark E. Spicka
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845452230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
Through an examination of election campaign propaganda and various public relations campaigns, reflecting new electioneering techniques borrowed from the United States, this work explores how conservative political and economic groups sought to construct and sell a political meaning of the Social Market Economy and the Economic Miracle in West Germany during the 1950s.The political meaning of economics contributed to conservative electoral success, constructed a new belief in the free market economy within West German society, and provided legitimacy and political stability for the new Federal Republic of Germany.

The Economic Consequences of the War

The Economic Consequences of the War PDF Author: Tamás Vonyó
Publisher: Cambridge Studies in Economic History: Second Series
ISBN: 1107128439
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
This exploration of the statistical evidence on Germany's post-war reconstruction sheds new light on the foundations of German economic power.

West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past

West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past PDF Author: S. Jonathan Wiesen
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807855430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
In this groundbreaking study, S. Jonathan Wiesen explores how West German business leaders remade and marketed their public image in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. He challenges assumptions that West Germans - and industrialists in particular - were silent about the recent past during the years of denazification and reconstruction, revealing how German business leaders attempted to absolve themselves of responsibility for Nazi crimes while recasting themselves as socially and culturally engaged public figures. Through case studies of individual firms such as Siemens and Krupp, Wiesen depicts corporate publicity as a telling example of postwar selective memory.

GIs and Fräuleins

GIs and Fräuleins PDF Author: Maria Höhn
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860328
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Book Description
With the outbreak of the Korean War, the poor, rural West German state of Rhineland-Palatinate became home to some of the largest American military installations outside the United States. In GIs and Frauleins, Maria Hohn offers a rich social history of this German-American encounter and provides new insights into how West Germans negotiated their transition from National Socialism to a consumer democracy during the 1950s. Focusing on the conservative reaction to the American military presence, Hohn shows that Germany's Christian Democrats, though eager to be allied politically and militarily with the United States, were appalled by the apparent Americanization of daily life and the decline in morality that accompanied the troops to the provinces. Conservatives condemned the jazz clubs and striptease parlors that Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe opened to cater to the troops, and they expressed scorn toward the German women who eagerly pursued white and black American GIs. While most Germans rejected the conservative effort to punish as prostitutes all women who associated with American GIs, they vilified the sexual relationships between African American men and German women. Hohn demonstrates that German anxieties over widespread Americanization were always debates about proper gender norms and racial boundaries, and that while the American military brought democracy with them to Germany, it also brought Jim Crow.

West Germany, Cold War Europe and the Algerian War

West Germany, Cold War Europe and the Algerian War PDF Author: Mathilde Von Bulow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316660036
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 483

Book Description
An illuminating and provocative account of Germany's role as sanctuary for Algerian nationalists during their fight for independence from France between 1954 and 1962. The book explores key issues such as the impact of external sanctuaries on French counterinsurgency efforts; the part played by security and intelligence services in efforts to eliminate these sanctuaries; the Algerian War's influence on West German foreign and security policy; and finally, the emergence of West German civic engagement in support of Algeria's independence struggle, which served to shape the newly independent country's perception of its role and place in international society. Mathilde Von Bulow sheds new light on the impact of FLN activities, the role of anti-colonial movements and insurgencies in the developing world in shaping the dynamics of the Cold War, as well as the manner in which the Algerian War was fought and won.

Terror and Democracy in West Germany

Terror and Democracy in West Germany PDF Author: Karrin Hanshew
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107017378
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Book Description
Karrin Hanshew examines West German responses to 1970s terrorism to explain why the experience had lasting significance for German politics and society.