Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Germany
Languages : de
Pages : 539
Book Description
Wege in die Zeitgeschichte
Author: Common Destiny
Author: Dietrich OrlowPublisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781571811851
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
Although the Socialist or Social Democractic parties played a key role in West European politics during the quarter century after the Second World War, they have been studied far less than their political rivals, the Christian Democrats. The story of West European Social Democracy after 1945 begins with a dilemma: Democratic marxism, which had been the parties' ideological and organizational principle until the Second World War, was becoming politically irrelevant. The three parties analyzed here represent the spectrum of reactions among Social Democratic parties to this realization. The debate over the parties' programs and ideologies did not, of course, take place in a vacuum: the author devotes considerable space to a comparative analysis of the parties' leaders and organizational structures as well as the evolution of Social Democratic domestic and foreign policies. Immensely readable, this book not only offers an in-depth analysis of the postwar period crucial for the history of Social Democracy but also, because of its cross-national treatment of these three major parties, adds significantly to our understanding of the processes of European integration and the evolution of the Atlantic Alliance.
Adenauer's Germany and the Nazi Past
Author: Norbert FreiPublisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231507909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496
Book Description
Of all the aspects of recovery in postwar Germany perhaps none was as critical or as complicated as the matter of dealing with Nazi criminals, and, more broadly, with the Nazi past. While on the international stage German officials spoke with contrition of their nation's burden of guilt, at home questions of responsibility and retribution were not so clear. In this masterful examination of Germany under Adenauer, Norbert Frei shows that, beginning in 1949, the West German government dramatically reversed the denazification policies of the immediate postwar period and initiated a new "Vergangenheitspolitik," or "policy for the past," which has had enormous consequences reaching into the present. Adenauer's Germany and the Nazi Past chronicles how amnesty laws for Nazi officials were passed unanimously and civil servants who had been dismissed in 1945 were reinstated liberally—and how a massive popular outcry led to the release of war criminals who had been condemned by the Allies. These measures and movements represented more than just the rehabilitation of particular individuals. Frei argues that the amnesty process delegitimized the previous political expurgation administered by the Allies and, on a deeper level, served to satisfy the collective psychic needs of a society longing for a clean break with the unparalleled political and moral catastrophe it had undergone in the 1940s. Thus the era of Adenauer devolved into a scandal-ridden period of reintegration at any cost. Frei's work brilliantly and chillingly explores how the collective will of the German people, expressed through mass allegiance to new consensus-oriented democratic parties, cast off responsibility for the horrors of the war and Holocaust, effectively silencing engagement with the enormities of the Nazi past.
Ruling Oneself Out
Author: Ivan ErmakoffPublisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822341642
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444
Book Description
What induces groups to commit political suicide? This book explores the decisions to surrender power and to legitimate this surrender: collective abdications. Commonsensical explanations impute such actions to coercive pressures, actors’ miscalculations, or their contamination by ideologies at odds with group interests. Ivan Ermakoff argues that these explanations are either incomplete or misleading. Focusing on two paradigmatic cases of voluntary and unconditional surrender of power—the passing of an enabling bill granting Hitler the right to amend the Weimar constitution without parliamentary supervision (March 1933), and the transfer of full executive, legislative, and constitutional powers to Marshal Pétain (Vichy, France, July 1940)—Ruling Oneself Out recasts abdication as the outcome of a process of collective alignment. Ermakoff distinguishes several mechanisms of alignment in troubled and uncertain times and assesses their significance through a fine-grained examination of actors’ beliefs, shifts in perceptions, and subjective states. To this end, he draws on the analytical and methodological resources of perspectives that usually stand apart: primary historical research, formal decision theory, the phenomenology of group processes, quantitative analyses, and the hermeneutics of testimonies. In elaborating this dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, Ruling Oneself Out restores the complexity and indeterminate character of pivotal collective decisions and demonstrates that an in-depth historical exploration can lay bare processes of crucial importance for understanding the formation of political preferences, the paradox of self-deception, and the makeup of historical events as highly consequential.
Heinrich Bruning and the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic
Author: William L. Patch, JrPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521025416
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Book Description
This is the first scholarly biography of Heinrich BrÜning, chancellor of Germany from 1930 to 1932, and the last politican with a real chance to prevent the Nazi seizure of power. This book analyzes BrÜning's cabinet's economic and fiscal policies for coping with the Great Depression, the diplomatic campaign to redress Germany's grievances against the Treaty of Versailles, and his thoughtful strategy for creating a broad anti-fascist political coalition. Finally it seeks to explain why President Hindenburg and his reactionary advisers decided to topple BrÜning, with disastrous consequences.
Wege in die Zeitgeschichte
Author: Jürgen HeidekingPublisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 9783110117387
Category : History
Languages : de
Pages : 560
Book Description
The Holocaust and the West German Historians
Author: Nicolas BergPublisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299300846
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347
Book Description
This landmark book, Nicholas Berg addresses the work of German and German-Jewish historians in the first three decades of post-World War II Germany. He examines how they perceived--and failed to perceive--the Holocaust and how they interpreted and misinterpreted that historical fact using an arsenal of terms and concepts, arguments, and explanations.
Transforming Economic Systems: The Case of Poland
Author: Manfred KremerPublisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642515568
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 191
Book Description
This book deals with the transformation of the Polish centrally-planned system to a western-type market system. Poland represents the most interesting case to study as it runs an unprecedentedly radical and fast course of reform. The book provides insights in the theoretical foundations of the transformation of an economic system as well as a critical assessment of first experiences in Poland. As the authors develop theoretical approaches as well as study the empirical situation, thebook offers valuable insights both to the reader who is rather theoreticallyinterested and to a pragmatically orientated audience. One of the main features of the book is the broad variety of the subjects chosen for analysis and of the respective approaches taken by the authors who mostly specialize in the fields they worked on for this book.
Wege in die zeitgeschichte : Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Gerhard Schulz
Author: Historians at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial
Author: Mathew TurnerPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838608656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial was a milestone event in West German history. Between 1963 and 1965, twenty-two former Auschwitz personnel were tried in Frankfurt am Main. It was a trial that saw the engagement of four of the nation's leading historians as expert witnesses - Martin Broszat, Hans Buchheim, Helmut Krausnick, and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen - appointed by the prosecution to give evidence pertaining to the historical and organisational context of the Holocaust. Following the trial, the reports of these historians were published in a bestselling book, Anatomie des SS-Staates (Anatomy of the SS State) and Mathew Turner here investigates the relationship between the trial and this publication. In recent years, more attention has been paid to the intersection between history and law that accompanies historians' entry into the courtroom. Very little, however, has been written about this intersection with a focus on a single case study. Based on original research in several German archives and first-hand interviews, Turner addresses these connections through a study of West Germany's most famous trial, and the monumental work of history produced from the engagement of historical expertise in court.
