American Policy And The Reconstruction Of West Germany 1945 1955
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America and the Shaping of German Society, 1945-1955 by Michael Ermath Pdf
This book focuses upon the work of the United States, in both its official and unofficial capacities, in shaping the political culture and foundations of the Federal Republic during the crucial period of 1945 to 1955. It draws together the work of well-known scholars, both German and American, along with the reflective accounts of actual participants and witnesses of this period.
Because of Germany's strong reputation in naval construction, the Allies slated the shipbuilding industry for dismantling after 1945; however, by 1955, West German shipbuilders had regained their place among the world leaders in this industry. This study traces the reconstruction through the labyrinth of Cold War diplomacy, foreign aid programs, and West German politics. By linking the histories of U.S. foreign policy, German business, and postwar Americanization, Wend demonstrates not just the impact of U.S. policy on West German reconstruction, but also the influence of local actors on the direction, implementation, and success of U.S. policies. The recovery of German shipbuilding meshed well with most of the Truman administration's critical foreign policy initiatives, including the Marshall Plan. As American commitments became globalized, the U.S. relied heavily on West German actors and their institutions for the successful implementation of its policies. In shipbuilding, this reliance strengthened the role of the industrial association, the vertical integration of shipyards with Ruhr industries, and awakened opposition of British and American interest groups. Although U.S. policies failed to alter this industry's structure, West Germans did accept the American production model in the reconfiguration of individual shipyards in the 1950s.
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.
Author : S. Jonathan Wiesen Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press Page : 356 pages File Size : 42,6 Mb Release : 2004-02-01 Category : History ISBN : 080785543X
West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past by S. Jonathan Wiesen Pdf
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.
Reconstruction in Post-war Germany by Ian D. Turner Pdf
The reconstruction of post-war Germany is a major research focus for historians. This book offers insights into Allied occupation policy in the late 1940s, showing the painful adjustment which German industry, institutions and citizens had to make in the post-1945 world.
Author : James C. Van Hook Publisher : Cambridge University Press Page : 330 pages File Size : 52,7 Mb Release : 2004-05-10 Category : History ISBN : 9781139452199
The social market economy has served as a fundamental pillar of post-war Germany. Today, it is associated with the European welfare state. Initially, it meant the opposite. Rebuilding Germany examines the 1948 West German economic reforms that dismantled the Nazi command economy and ushered in the fabled 'European Miracle' of the 1950s. Van Hook evaluates the US role in German reconstruction, the problematic relationship of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his economics minister, Ludwig Erhard, the West German 'economic miracle', and the extent to which the social market economy represented a departure from the German past. In a nuanced and fresh account, Van Hook evaluates the American role in West German recovery and the debates about economic policy within West Germany, to show that Germans themselves had surprising room to shape their economic and industrial system.
Recasting West German Elites by Michael R. Hayse Pdf
The rapid shift of German elite groups' political loyalties away from Nazism and toward support of the fledgling democracy of the Federal Republic, in spite of the continuity of personnel and professional structures, has surprised many scholars of postwar Germany. The key, Hayse argues, lies in the peculiar and paradoxical legacy of these groups' evasive selective memory, by which they cast themselves as victims of the Third Reich rather than its erstwhile supporters. The avoidance of responsibility for the crimes and excesses of the Third Reich created a need to demonstrate democratic behavior in the post-war public sphere. Ultimately, this self-imposed pressure, while based on a falsified, selective group memory of the recent past, was more important in the long term than the Allies' stringent social change policies.
Germany and the Americas [3 volumes] by Thomas Adam Pdf
This comprehensive encyclopedia details the close ties between the German-speaking world and the Americas, examining the extensive Germanic cultural and political legacy in the nations of the New World and the equally substantial influence of the Americas on the Germanic nations. From the medical discoveries of Dr. Johann Siegert, surgeon general to Simon Bolivar, to the amazing explorations of the early-19th-century German explorer Alexander von Humboldt, whose South American and Caribbean travels made him one of the most celebrated men in Europe, Germany and the Americas examines both the profound Germanic cultural and political legacy throughout the Americas and the lasting influence of American culture on the German-speaking world. Ever since Baron von Steuben helped create George Washington's army, German Americans have exhibited decisive leadership not only in the military, but also in politics, the arts, and business. Germany and the Americas charts the lasting links between the Germanic world and the nations of the Americas in a comprehensive survey featuring a chronology of key events spanning 400 years of transatlantic history.
Author : Dennis Pilon Publisher : University of Toronto Press Page : 409 pages File Size : 45,8 Mb Release : 2013-06-17 Category : Political Science ISBN : 9781442662742
Though sharing broadly similar processes of economic and political development from the mid-to-late nineteenth century onward, western countries have diverged greatly in their choice of voting systems: most of Europe shifted to proportional voting around the First World War, while Anglo-American countries have stuck with relative majority or majority voting rules. Using a comparative historical approach, Wrestling with Democracy examines why voting systems have (or have not) changed in western industrialized countries over the past century. In this first single-volume study of voting system reform covering all western industrialized countries, Dennis Pilon reviews national efforts in this area over four timespans: the nineteenth century, the period around the First World War, the Cold War, and the 1990s. Pilon provocatively argues that voting system reform has been a part of larger struggles over defining democracy itself, highlighting previously overlooked episodes of reform and challenging widely held assumptions about institutional change.
Scholarship on the history of West Germany's educational system has traditionally portrayed the postwar period of Allied occupation as a failure and the following decades as a time of pedagogical stagnation. Two decades after World War II, however, the Federal Republic had become a stable democracy, a member of NATO, and a close ally of the West. Had the schools really failed to contribute to this remarkable transformation of German society and political culture? This study persuasively argues that long before the protest movements of the late 1960s, the West German educational system was undergoing meaningful reform from within. Although politicians and intellectual elites paid little attention to education after 1945, administrators, teachers, and pupils initiated significant changes in schools at the local level. The work of these actors resulted in an array of democratic reforms that signaled a departure from the authoritarian and nationalistic legacies of the past. The establishment of exchange programs between the United States and West Germany, the formation of student government organizations and student newspapers, the publication of revised history and civics textbooks, the expansion of teacher training programs, and the creation of a Social Studies curriculum all contributed to the advent of a new German educational system following World War II. The subtle, incremental reforms inaugurated during the first two postwar decades prepared a new generation of young Germans for their responsibilities as citizens of a democratic state.
Cold War Rivalry and the Perception of the American West by P. Goral Pdf
This book demonstrates how the two adversaries of the Cold War, West Germany and East Germany, endeavored to create two distinct and unique German identities. In their endeavor to claim legitimacy, the German cinematic representation of the American West became an important cultural weapon of mass dissemination during the Cold War.
Does science work best in a democracy? Were 'Soviet' or 'Nazi' science fundamentally different from science in the USA? These questions have been passionately debated in the recent past. Particular developments in science took place under particular political regimes, but they may or may not have been directly determined by them. Science and Ideology brings together a number of comparative case studies to examine the relationship between science and the dominant ideology of a state. Cybernetics in the USA is compared to France and the Soviet Union. Postwar Allied science policy in occupied Germany is juxtaposed to that in Japan. The essays are narrowly focussed, yet cover a wide range of countries and ideologies. The collection provides a unique comparative history of scientific policies and practices in the 20th century.