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In the aftermath of World War II, American policymakers turned to the task of rebuilding Europe while keeping communism at bay. In Germany, formally divided since 1949,the United States prioritized the political, economic, and, eventually, military integration of the fledgling Federal Republic with the West. The extraordinary success story of forging this alliance has dominated our historical under-standing of the American-German relationship. Largely left out of the grand narrative of U.S.–German relations were most East Germans who found themselves caught under Soviet and then communist control by the post-1945 geo-political fallout of the war that Nazi Germany had launched. They were the ones who most dearly paid the price for the country's division. This book writes the East Germans—both leadership and general populace—back into that history as objects of American policy and as historical agents in their own right Based on recently declassified documents from American, Russian, and German archives, this book demonstrates that U.S. efforts from 1945 to 1953 went beyond building a prosperous democracy in western Germany and "containing" Soviet-Communist power to the east. Under the Truman and then the Eisenhower administrations, American policy also included efforts to undermine and "roll back" Soviet and German communist control in the eastern part of the country. This story sheds light on a dark-er side to the American Cold War in Germany: propaganda, covert operations, economic pressure, and psychological warfare. Christian F. Ostermann takes an international history approach, capturing Soviet and East German responses and actions, and drawing a rich and complex picture of the early East–West confrontation in the heart of Europe.
In the mid-summer of 1989 the German Democratic Republic-- known as the GDR or East Germany--was an autocratic state led by an entrenched Communist Party. A loyal member of the Warsaw Pact, it was a counterpart of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), which it confronted with a mixture of hostility and grudging accommodation across the divide created by the Cold War. Over the following year and a half, dramatic changes occurred in the political system of East Germany and culminated in the GDR's "accession" to the Federal Republic itself. Yet the end of Germany's division evoked its own new and very bitter constitutional problems. The Imperfect Union discusses these issues and shows that they are at the core of a great event of political, economic, and social history. Part I analyzes the constitutional history of eastern Germany from 1945 through the constitutional changes of 1989-1990 and beyond to the constitutions of the re-created east German states. Part II analyzes the Unification Treaty and the numerous problems arising from it: the fate of expropriated property on unification; the unification of the disparate eastern and western abortion regimes; the transformation of East German institutions, such as the civil service, the universities, and the judiciary; prosecution of former GDR leaders and officials; the "rehabilitation" and compensation of GDR victims; and the issues raised by the fateful legacy of the files of the East German secret police. Part III examines the external aspects of unification.
Envisioning Socialism examines television and the power it exercised to define the East Germans’ view of socialism during the first decades of the German Democratic Republic. In the first book in English to examine this topic, Heather L. Gumbert traces how television became a medium prized for its communicative and entertainment value. She explores the difficulties GDR authorities had defining and executing a clear vision of the society they hoped to establish, and she explains how television helped to stabilize GDR society in a way that ultimately worked against the utopian vision the authorities thought they were cultivating. Gumbert challenges those who would dismiss East German television as a tool of repression that couldn’t compete with the West or capture the imagination of East Germans. Instead, she shows how, by the early 1960s, television was a model of the kind of socialist realist art that could appeal to authorities and audiences. Ultimately, this socialist vision was overcome by the challenges that the international market in media products and technologies posed to nation-building in the postwar period. A history of ideas and perceptions examining both real and mediated historical conditions, Envisioning Socialism considers television as a technology, an institution, and a medium of social relations and cultural knowledge. The book will be welcomed in undergraduate and graduate courses in German and media history, the history of postwar Socialism, and the history of science and technologies.
With the signing of the Moscow Treaty in 1970, West German-Soviet relations came to the forefront of world politics. Two decades later, the historic opening of the Berlin Wall and German reunification once again focused world attention on the Federal Republic's relations with the USSR. This book explores the development of this relationship from the perspective of West Germany. Dr Avril Pittman outlines the main events after the Second World War and then focuses on four issues central to this relationship in the 1970s and early 1980s. She explores family reunification and emigration rights for ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union; the central role of Berlin and the reasons why the city persisted as a serious bilateral problem; the triangular relations between West Germany, the Soviet Union and East Germany; and the significance of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan which led to a sharp deterioration in East-West relations.
Edward Dickinson traces the story of German child welfare policy over an extended period of conflict and compromise among competing groups-progressive social reformers, conservative Protestants, Catholics, Social Democrats, feminists, medical men, jurists, and welfare recipients themselves.
"Companion volume to Politics and government in the Federal Republic of Germany"--Editor's pref.
This text avoids preoccupation with "the German question" and East-West German comparisons, looking at the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in its own right while recognizing that a legacy of German history and political precedent persists in the GDR as much as in the Federal Republic. Dr. Scharf shows how the GDR is subject to the same development