In the immediate aftermath of World War II, more than a quarter million Jewish survivors of the Holocaust lived among their defeated persecutors in the chaotic society of Allied-occupied ...Germany.Jews, Germans, and Alliesdraws upon the wealth of diary and memoir literature by the people who lived through postwar reconstruction to trace the conflicting ways Jews and Germans defined their own victimization and survival, comprehended the trauma of war and genocide, and struggled to rebuild their lives.
In gripping and unforgettable detail, Atina Grossmann describes Berlin in the days following Germany's surrender--the mass rape of German women by the Red Army, the liberated slave laborers and homecoming soldiers, returning political exiles, Jews emerging from hiding, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the East. She chronicles the hunger, disease, and homelessness, the fraternization with Allied occupiers, and the complexities of navigating a world where the commonplace mingled with the horrific. Grossmann untangles the stories of Jewish survivors inside and outside the displaced-persons camps of the American zone as they built families and reconstructed identities while awaiting emigration to Palestine or the United States. She examines how Germans and Jews interacted and competed for Allied favor, benefits, and victim status, and how they sought to restore normality--in work, in their relationships, and in their everyday encounters.
Jews, Germans, and Alliesshows how Jews were integral participants in postwar Germany and bridges the divide that still exists today between German history and Jewish studies.
Einblicke in die Anfänge eines Unrechtsstaates Der Tübinger Historiker Gerhard Schulz, der zur Gründergeneration der Zeitgeschichtsforschung in der Bundesrepublik gehört, hat Zeit seines Lebens ...Tagebuch geführt. Besonders dicht ist die Beschreibung über die Jahre von 1945 bis 1950, die er in der SBZ/DDR verbrachte. Als „Neulehrer“ und Student wurde er mit dem Bolschewisierungsprozess durch die SED konfrontiert. Er entfernte sich zunehmend von dem System, bis er 1950 nach West-Berlin überwechselte. Das „Mitteldeutsche Tagebuch“ dokumentiert nicht nur die SED-Diktatur in ihrer Entstehungsphase an einem Einzelschicksal, es ist ebenso ein Beitrag zur Ausprägung des Weltbildes des jungen Gerhard Schulz.
I began this study as the United States was extricating itself from its longest and most unsuccessful war, and I am ending it as Americans are recovering from the deepest recession of the post-World ...War II era. The Vietnam War stimulated widespread public interest in the origins of the Cold War while our recent difficulties have caused many Americans to ask how we ever became so vulnerable to external economic developments. During the late sixties and early seventies, historians associated with the "revisionist" school raised the level of the national debate by reemphasizing the importance of economic factors in American foreign policy. Among other things, these scholars demonstrated that the United States assumed world-wide commitments after 1945 out just to stop Communist expansion, but to defend certain economic interests, both material and ideological, as well.
Diese Edition dokumentiert zwei deutsche Schicksale in Polen, die unmittelbar mit dem Zusammenbruch der deutschen Herrschaft im Osten verbunden waren. Manfred Gebhardts Aufzeichnungen reflektieren ...Romantizismus, Naivität, vor allem aber Sensibilität eines jungen deutschen Soldaten, der in der Kriegsgefangenschaft erstmals direkt dem Land Polen und polnischen Menschen begegnet. Sie schildern die bisher wenig bekannte und dokumentierte Gefangenschaft deutscher Soldaten in Polen und die "Antifa"-Umerziehung, die eine erste "sozialistische Klassensolidarität" deutscher und polnischer Kommunisten begründen sollte. Die Aufzeichnungen dokumentieren ebenso ein Stück DDR-Gründungsgeschichte und sie sind zugleich be-eindruckendes Zeugnis der Suche nach Subjektivität und Objektivität eines Zeitzeugen, der später in der DDR eine nicht unwichtige Rolle im Pressewesen einnahm. Wie anders liest sich die Lebensgeschichte Joachim Küttners, der bis zu seiner abenteuerlichen Flucht in die Bundesrepublik 1958 immer mit Polen zusammengelebt hatte. Als deutscher Rittergutserbe wurde er im südlichen Teil des Posener Landes geboren, nahe der Grenze an der Prosna zum russischen Teilungsgebiet. Zwischenzeitlich wurde er polnischer Staatsbürger, seit 1939 im neu errichteten Reichsgau Wartheland aber wieder privilegiert und wie Millionen seiner Volksgenossen dazu ausersehen, zur "völkischen Neuordnung" in diesem Teil Polens beizutragen. Nach dem Zusammenbruch der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft sollte sich das Bild auf dramatische Weise wenden. Mit dem Augenblick dieser Wende beginnt Küttners Bericht. Die Gefangennahme Manfred Gebhardts in Böhmen mündet in eine vierjährige Lagerhaft, die Flucht Joachim Küttners vor der herannahenden Front in ein dreizehn Jahre währendes pseudonymes Leben. Gebhardt und Küttner lebten in Polen als "Gefangene und Fremde". Ihre Erfahrungen sind beispielhaft für die durch die jüngste Vergangenheit schwer belastete Begegnung von Deutschen und Polen nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges.
The relative decline of the East German economy after 1945 has eluded researchers, as several large shocks appeared to have hit it at the same time. In this paper, we revisit the immediate post-war ...period in both parts of Germany to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the output and productivity shocks operating in both economies. Our principal finding is that the dismantling of the capital stock alone cannot explain the inferior performance of the East German economy. The collapse of output after the war and the ensuing recovery in both parts of the country were driven by total factor productivity; changes in factor endowments were of second-order significance. West Germany began to lead East Germany in industrial labor productivity well before the economic reforms of 1948 could make their mark. The major factor contributing to this early divergence were disproportions in industrial structure caused by the division of Germany.
This international history of the origins and nature of 'cold war' offers the first systematic examination of the complex relationship between the United States and Italy, and of American debates ...about warfare in the years between World War II and the Korean War. Kaeten Mistry reveals how the defeat of the Marxist left in the 1948 Italian election was perceived as a victory for the United States amidst a 'war short of war', as defined by influential planner George Kennan, becoming an allegory for cold war in American minds. The book analyses how political warfare sought to employ covert operations, overt tactics and propaganda in a co-ordinated offensive against international communism. Charting the critical contribution of a broad network of local, religious, civic, labour, and business groups, Mistry reveals how the notion of a specific American success paved the way for a problematic future for US-Italian relations and American political warfare.
"Life in Transit is the long-awaited sequel to Shimon Redlich’s widely acclaimed Together and Apart in Brzezany, in which he discussed his childhood during the War and the Holocaust. Life in Transit ...tells the story of his adolescence in the city of Lodz in postwar Poland. Redlich’s personal memories are placed within the wider historical context of Jewish life in Poland and in Lodz during the immediate postwar years. Lodz in the years 1945-1950 was the second-largest city in the country and the major urban center of the Jewish population. Redlich’s research based on conventional sources and numerous interviews indicates that although the survivors still lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, postwar Jewish Lodz was permeated with a sense of vitality and hope."