The East German Leadership And The Division Of Germany

Author : Dirk Spilker
Publisher : Clarendon Press
Page : 309 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2006-07-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9780191515828

Get Book

The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany by Dirk Spilker Pdf

Would it have been possible to build a unified and democratic Germany half a century before the fall of the Berlin Wall? This book reassesses this question by exploring Germany's division after the Second World War from the point of view of the SED, the communist-led and Soviet-sponsored ruling party of East Germany. Drawing on unpublished documents from the SED archives, Dr Spilker rejects claims that the East German comrades and their Soviet masters had abandoned their struggle for socialism and were willing to accept a democratic Germany in exchange for a pledge to neutrality. He argues that the communists' sudden switch to a multi-party approach at the end of the war was a tactical move inspired not by a desire for compromise but by the mistaken belief that they could win political hegemony - and the chance to introduce socialism throughout Germany - through the ballot box. Communist optimism, as this book shows, rested on specific assumptions about the situation after the war, all of which revolved around the prospect of political instability and social unrest in West Germany. The comrades in East Berlin did not just say that their regime would ultimately prevail, they genuinely believed it. Nor should their hopes be dismissed as a mere fantasy. In the aftermath of the war, the economic gap between the two Germanies was still relatively narrow and West Germany's future success as a magnet for the people in East Germany was by no means guaranteed.

Author : Ernest D. Plock
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2019-03-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780429714856

Get Book

East German-west German Relations And The Fall Of The Gdr by Ernest D. Plock Pdf

This book investigates inner-German economic ties, travel contacts, and national consciousness that proved to be of greater consequence after Gorbachev's accession to power. It addresses the inevitability of the German Democratic Republic revolution and unification with the Federal Republic.

Author : Hope M. Harrison
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2011-06-27
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781400840724

Get Book

Driving the Soviets up the Wall by Hope M. Harrison Pdf

The Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War. For the first time, this path-breaking book tells the behind-the-scenes story of the communists' decision to build the Wall in 1961. Hope Harrison's use of archival sources from the former East German and Soviet regimes is unrivalled, and from these sources she builds a highly original and provocative argument: the East Germans pushed the reluctant Soviets into building the Berlin Wall. This fascinating work portrays the different approaches favored by the East Germans and the Soviets to stop the exodus of refugees to West Germany. In the wake of Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviets refused the East German request to close their border to West Berlin. The Kremlin rulers told the hard-line East German leaders to solve their refugee problem not by closing the border, but by alleviating their domestic and foreign problems. The book describes how, over the next seven years, the East German regime managed to resist Soviet pressures for liberalization and instead pressured the Soviets into allowing them to build the Berlin Wall. Driving the Soviets Up the Wall forces us to view this critical juncture in the Cold War in a different light. Harrison's work makes us rethink the nature of relations between countries of the Soviet bloc even at the height of the Cold War, while also contributing to ongoing debates over the capacity of weaker states to influence their stronger allies.

Author : Eugene K. Keefe
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 1982
Category : Germany (East)
ISBN : UVA:X001437036

Get Book

East Germany, a Country Study by Eugene K. Keefe Pdf

Author : Christian F. Ostermann
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 566 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2021-04-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9781503607637

Get Book

Between Containment and Rollback by Christian F. Ostermann Pdf

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.

Author : Peter Davies
Publisher : MHRA
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Authors, German
ISBN : 1902653211

Get Book

Divided Loyalties by Peter Davies Pdf

This study aims to shed light on the relationship of writers with power in East Germany by setting their work in the context of Soviet and SED German policy after 1945. Peter Davies provides an analysis of the politics of German division as it affected visions of German national identity within the East German artistic community, and shows how this can give us a profound insight into contentious questions of artistic `dissidence' and `conformity'. The second part of the study develops these ideas through a series of case studies of important individuals such as Johannes R. Becher, Peter Huchel, Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, analysing the complexities of their relationship with the power structures and ideology of the East German state in the institutional context of the Deutsche Akademie der Kunste. The study concludes with an account of the consequences of the June 1953 uprising for these artists' view of their role in the GDR.

Author : Kurt Sontheimer,Wilhelm Bleek
Publisher : London : Hutchinson
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 1975
Category : Political Science
ISBN : UOM:39015046440528

Get Book

The Government and Politics of East Germany by Kurt Sontheimer,Wilhelm Bleek Pdf

Author : G. Jonathan Greenwald
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 1993-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780271042855

Get Book

Berlin Witness by G. Jonathan Greenwald Pdf

In a remarkable combination of personal reflections, official dispatches, and sophisticated political analysis, Berlin Witness recounts the dramatic story of the erosion of Communism in East Germany and the forging of the new Germany. Jonathan Greenwald arrived in East Berlin in the summer of 1987, when discontented East German youths were shouting &"Gorby, Gorby!&" on Unter den Linden and Erich Honecker was still received in Bonn as the respected leader of the Soviet Union's most powerful ally. Germany was divided, and Honecker's GDR was a cornerstone of the armed but apparently stable security order that grew up after the Second World War. As Political Counselor of the American Embassy, Greenwald expected to chronicle Europe's evolution away from East-West confrontation and to assess for the State Department the implications of strengthening ties between the two German states that were beginning to cause unease in the alliances of both superpowers. Instead, he found and described a revolution that climaxed with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and the unification of Germany. The daily entries, beginning with a traditional Communist May Day 1989 when time seemed to stand still, tell the story of that astonishing year from the unique perspective of a senior American diplomat. Greenwald had access not only to the leading personalities of the GDR, including Honecker, Egon Krenz, and Gregor Gysi, but also to the idealistic young people and churchmen who set in motion the events that astonished the world and changed all our lives. He participated in the often frustrating efforts to shape an American policy response to the accelerating crisis. In his Afterword, he offers insightful, and sometimes skeptical, observations about the rush to unification that has left Germany whole and free but racked by new tensions and self-doubts. Provocative and personal, Berlin Witness is likely to be the definitive American description of the first phase of the German Revolution until the government opens its archives in the next century and will be a valuable resource for anyone wishing to understand the background of the new Germany.

Author : Gareth Pritchard
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2004-09-04
Category : History
ISBN : 0719069815

Get Book

The Making of the GDR, 1945-53 by Gareth Pritchard Pdf

The Stalinisation of East Germany from 1945 to 1953 is analysed in this text, which is based on research in East German archives. It also tells the story of how the aspirations of antifascists and socialists were ultimately betrayed by Stalin.

Author : Michael Gehler
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2013-06-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781861899897

Get Book

Three Germanies by Michael Gehler Pdf

Since the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, Germany has been in a continual state of turmoil and reinvention. In Three Germanies, Michael Gehler explores the political rollercoaster Germany has been riding since the Yalta Conference, which split postwar Germany into separate zones controlled by the Soviets, Americans, French, and British. Peace, however, was short lived; from 1948 to 1949 Stalin blockaded Berlin in an attempt to gain control over the largest city in Germany. Though the blockade was finally broken in May of 1949, soon after, Germany was officially split into the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, and the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. From then on, Germany became two very different countries with opposite political ideals, splitting families down the middle ideologically—and soon physically, with the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Though the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and Germany was reunified, its problems were far from over: to this day Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Grand Coalition struggle to implement reform. Gehler’s timely and relevant study will appeal to readers interested in postwar diplomacy and the future of Germany, as it examines Germany’s attempts to find a government and a leader that will create a stable and secure country in the twenty-first century.

Author : A. James McAdams
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2020-12-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9780691221977

Get Book

Germany Divided by A. James McAdams Pdf

Germany Divided remains one of the most thought-provoking and comprehensive interpretations of the forty-year relationship between East and West Germany and of the problems of contemporary German unity. In this politically controversial and analytically sophisticated account, A. James McAdams dissects the complex process by which East and West German leaders moved over the years from first pursuing the ideal of German unity, to accepting what they believed to be the inescapable reality of division, and then, finally, to meeting the challenges of an unanticipated reunification. This new edition contains an epilogue in which McAdams considers some of the political and economic problems faced by eastern and western Germans as they entered their fourth year of living together.

Author : Dirk Spilker
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 309 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2006-07-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199284122

Get Book

The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany by Dirk Spilker Pdf

Would it have been possible to build a unified and democratic Germany half a century before the fall of the Berlin Wall? This book reassesses this question by exploring Germany's division after the Second World War from the point of view of the SED, the communist-led and Soviet-sponsored ruling party of East Germany.Drawing on unpublished documents from the SED archives, Dr Spilker rejects claims that the East German comrades and their Soviet masters had abandoned their struggle for socialism and were willing to accept a democratic Germany in exchange for a pledge to neutrality. He argues that the communists' sudden switch to a multi-party approach at the end of the war was a tactical move inspired not by a desire for compromise but by the mistaken belief that they could win political hegemony - and thechance to introduce socialism throughout Germany - through the ballot box.Communist optimism, as this book shows, rested on specific assumptions about the situation after the war, all of which revolved around the prospect of political instability and social unrest in West Germany. The comrades in East Berlin did not just say that their regime would ultimately prevail, they genuinely believed it. Nor should their hopes be dismissed as a mere fantasy. In the aftermath of the war, the economic gap between the two Germanies was still relatively narrow and West Germany'sfuture success as a magnet for the people in East Germany was by no means guaranteed.

Author : Patrick Major
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199243280

Get Book

Behind the Berlin Wall by Patrick Major Pdf

On 13 August 1961 eighteen million East Germans awoke to find themselves walled in by an edifice which was to become synonymous with the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. Patrick Major explores how the border closure affected ordinary East Germans, from workers and farmers to teenagers and even party members, 'caught out' by Sunday the Thirteenth.

Author : Ronald A. Francisco
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2019-08-27
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780429711848

Get Book

Berlin Between Two Worlds by Ronald A. Francisco Pdf

Berlin has been a central issue in the postwar dispute between East and West and was often the spark that brought the Soviet bloc and the West to the brink of confrontation. Although the city's role in international politics has been muted in the nearly quarter century since the erection of the Berlin Wall, its political status remains unsettled, and its potential to precipitate a crisis and even a military conflict has lessened only by degree. The contributors to this volume discuss Berlin's future from the perspective of all the major national actors involved. Just as the Quadripartite Agreement of 1971 was a necessary prerequisite for East-West detente, any future change in the division of Germany or in East-West relations will require fundamental shifts in long-held positions on the status of Berlin. The authors show how the perceptions, stakes, and even risks of the Berlin issue vary by nation and explore the reasons why Berlin is likely to continue to be an obstacle to East-West cooperation.

Author : Stephen R. Burant
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : History
ISBN : STANFORD:36105012025198

Get Book

East Germany by Stephen R. Burant Pdf

Research completed June 1987.