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The award-winning history of 12 million German-speaking civilians in Europe who were driven from their homes after WWII: “a major achievement” (New Republic). Immediately after the Second World War, the victorious Allies authorized the forced relocation of ethnic Germans from their homes across central and southern Europe to Germany. The numbers were almost unimaginable: between 12 and 14 million civilians, most of them women and children. And the losses were horrifying: at least five hundred thousand people, and perhaps many more, died while detained in former concentration camps, locked in trains, or after arriving in Germany malnourished, and homeless. In this authoritative and objective account, historian R.M. Douglas examines an aspect of European history that few have wished to confront, exploring how the forced migrations were conceived, planned, and executed, and how their legacy reverberates throughout central Europe today. The first comprehensive history of this immense manmade catastrophe, Orderly and Humane is an important study of the largest recorded episode of what we now call "ethnic cleansing." It may also be the most significant untold story of the World War II.
In 1945, Germany experienced the greatest outburst of deadly violence that the world has ever seen. Germany 1945 examines the country's emergence from the most terrible catastrophe in modern history. When the Second World War ended, millions had been murdered; survivors had lost their families; cities and towns had been reduced to rubble and were littered with corpses. Yet people lived on, and began rebuilding their lives in the most inauspicious of circumstances. Bombing, military casualties, territorial loss, economic collapse and the processes of denazification gave Germans a deep sense of their own victimhood, which would become central to how they emerged from the trauma of total defeat, turned their backs on the Third Reich and its crimes, and focused on a transition to relative peace. Germany's return to humanity and prosperity is the hinge on which Europe's twentieth century turned. For years we have concentrated on how Europe slid into tyranny, violence, war and genocide; this book describes how humanity began to get back out.
National Book Award Finalist: Never before has the mentality of the average German under the Nazi regime been made as intelligible to the outsider.” —The New York TImes They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Milton Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” These ten men were not men of distinction, according to Mayer, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune. A new foreword to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.
For 150 years Germany has surpassed many other countries in economic prowess despite devastating wars, political strife, and shrinking territory and natural resources. Why? Perhaps it's because of the psychology and culture of the German people. Wieland shows that simplistic explanations are wrong. The German people are not workaholics, working longer hours than others. Nor is achievement motivation higher among Germans. Several personality syndromes seem very important. Key is conscientiousness: which includes traits of being organized, orderly, systematic, efficient, precise, prompt, meticulous, and frugal. The syndrome of neuroticism also plays a role in German industriousness. Germans have a strong need to avoid uncertainties, and this fosters the rules, planning, systematization, and reliability that are hallmarks of German culture. There is some evidence that personality is primary and determines culture, not vice versa. In addressing the question of origins for German economic prowess, Wieland covers many other questions about the peculiarities of German culture. For example: Can the German emphasis on order and efficiency explain how Germany outperforms other countries economically? Why do Germans seem disagreeable in temperament? Why are punishments rather than rewards often used to control behaviors in Germany? Germans have long had a reputation as thinkers and philosophers. They seem to love information. Do these traits contribute to Germany's economic achievements? Does angst, a severe general anxiety that is a distinctive feature of the German psyche, help or hinder achievement? Could the modern study of epigenetics explain how the repeated traumas of war paradoxically seem to have made Germany even stronger in some ways? Does the American theory of "terror management" help explain Germany's economic success? How might East Germany's forty-five years under Communism contribute an understanding of German economic power? Other peculiarities of German culture: Why do Germans prefer to do one thing at a time rather than multitask? Is the German dislike of uncertainty a factor in economic achievement? Why are many Germans reluctant to smile? Why do they suffer from negativism and hypochondria? Why do Germans love to criticize but also love to take criticisms from others? Why are Germans more pessimistic about the future than people in other countries despite their nation's strong economy? Why are they politically conservative? Why do they suffer from what some call "paralysis by analysis?" And why did the German equivalent of Time magazine once devote forty pages to a history of the bathroom? These and many other unusual aspects of German personality and culture are covered. The German Mind includes an index of terms and pages where located as well as 218 literature references for further reading.