Rebuilding Germany

Rebuilding Germany PDF Author: James C. Van Hook
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139452193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Rebuilding Germany

Rebuilding Germany PDF Author: James C. Van Hook
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139452193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

In the Wake of War

In the Wake of War PDF Author: Jeffry M. Diefendorf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195361091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1945 Germany's cities lay in ruins, destroyed by Allied bombers `hat left major architectural monuments badly damaged and much of the housing stock reduced to rubble. At the war's end, observers thought that it would take forty years to rebuild, but by the late 1950s West Germany's cities had risen anew. The housing crisis had been overcome and virtually all important monuments reconstructed, and the cities had reclaimed their characteristic identities. Everywhere there was a mixture of old and new: historic churches and town halls stood alongside new housing and department stores; ancient street layouts were crossed or encircled by wide arteries; old city centers were balanced by garden suburbs laid out according to modern planning principles. In this book, Diefendorf examines the questions raised by this remarkable feat of urban reconstruction. He explains who was primarily responsible, what accounted for the speed of rebuilding, and how priorities were set and decisions acted upon. He argues that in such crucial areas as architectural style, urban planning, historic preservation, and housing policy, the Germans drew upon personnel, ideas, institutions, and practical experiences from the Nazi and pre-Nazi periods. Diefendorf shows how the rebuilding of West Germany's cities after 1945 can only be understood in terms of long-term continuities in urban development.

Shouldering the Burdens of Defeat

Shouldering the Burdens of Defeat PDF Author: Michael L. Hughes
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469619539
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
World War II and its aftermath brought devastating material losses to millions of West Germans. Military action destroyed homes, businesses, and personal possessions; East European governments expelled 15 million ethnic Germans from their ancestral homes; and currency reform virtually wiped out many Germans' hard-earned savings. These "war damaged" individuals, well over one-third of the West German population, vehemently demanded compensation at the expense of those who had not suffered losses, to be financed through capital levies on surviving private property. Michael Hughes offers the first comprehensive study of West Germany's efforts to redistribute the costs of war and defeat among its citizenry. The debate over a Lastenausgleich (a balancing out of burdens) generated thousands of documents in which West Germans articulated deeply held beliefs about social justice, economic rationality, and political legitimacy. Hughes uses these sources to trace important changes in German society since 1918, illuminating the process by which West Germans, who had rejected liberal democracy in favor of Nazi dictatorship in the 1930s, came to accept the social-market economy and parliamentary democracy of the 1950s.

Selling the Economic Miracle

Selling the Economic Miracle PDF Author: Mark E. Spicka
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845452230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
Through an examination of election campaign propaganda and various public relations campaigns, reflecting new electioneering techniques borrowed from the United States, this work explores how conservative political and economic groups sought to construct and sell a political meaning of the Social Market Economy and the Economic Miracle in West Germany during the 1950s.The political meaning of economics contributed to conservative electoral success, constructed a new belief in the free market economy within West German society, and provided legitimacy and political stability for the new Federal Republic of Germany.

Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany

Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany PDF Author: Jay Howard Geller
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978800711
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Featuring essays by scholars of history, literature, television, and sociology, Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany illuminates important aspects of Jewish life in Germany since 1949, including institution building, the internal dynamics and changing demographics of the Jewish community, and the central role of Jewish writers and public intellectuals.

Three Cities After Hitler

Three Cities After Hitler PDF Author: Andrew Demshuk
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822988577
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 601

Get Book Here

Book Description
Three Cities after Hitler compares how three prewar German cities shared decades of postwar development under three competing post-Nazi regimes: Frankfurt in capitalist West Germany, Leipzig in communist East Germany, and Wrocław (formerly Breslau) in communist Poland. Each city was rebuilt according to two intertwined modern trends. First, certain local edifices were chosen to be resurrected as “sacred sites” to redeem the national story after Nazism. Second, these tokens of a reimagined past were staged against the hegemony of modernist architecture and planning, which wiped out much of whatever was left of the urban landscape that had survived the war. All three cities thus emerged with simplified architectural narratives, whose historically layered complexities only survived in fragments where this twofold “redemptive reconstruction” after Nazism had proven less vigorous, sometimes because local citizens took action to save and appropriate them. Transcending both the Iron Curtain and freshly homogenized nation-states, three cities under three rival regimes shared a surprisingly common history before, during, and after Hitler—in terms of both top-down planning policies and residents’ spontaneous efforts to make home out of their city as its shape shifted around them.

After the Holocaust

After the Holocaust PDF Author: Michael Brenner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691006796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Get Book Here

Book Description
Including never-before-published eyewitness accounts from Holocaust survivors, this is a comprehensive account of the lives of the Jews who remained in Germany immediately following the war.

Rebuilding a House Divided

Rebuilding a House Divided PDF Author: Hans-Dietrich Genscher
Publisher: Broadway
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 616

Get Book Here

Book Description
Americans may not recognize his name, but the actions of Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Germany's foreign minister from 1974-1989, have had an enormous impact on the world we live in today. In this sweeping memoir, Genscher illuminates such seminal events as the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, the dismantling of the Eastern Bloc, and the creation of the European Union. From the perspective of the ultimate insider, Genscher describes the thawing of the Cold War--including his own behind-the-scenes conversations with Mikhail Gorbachev and other world leaders; the strategies he developed that led to the emotionally charged demolition of the Berlin Wall; and the heated meetings between international leaders as the face of Europe changed. His candid portraits of Reagan, Thatcher, Mitterand, and Gorbachev, and his eyewitness accounts of what really goes on behind closed doors, show a side of international affairs rarely seen by the American public. A number-one bestseller in Germany, "Rebuilding a House Divided is must reading for anyone interested in politics, diplomacy, and the complex relationship between the United States and Europe.

Disciplining Germany

Disciplining Germany PDF Author: Jaimey Fisher
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814333297
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book Here

Book Description
During Hitler's reign, the Nazis deliberately developed and exploited a youthful image and used youth to define their political and social hierarchies. After the war, with Hitler gone but still requiring cultural exorcism, many intellectuals, authors, and filmmakers turned to these images of youth to navigate and negotiate the most difficult questions of Germany's recent, nefarious past. Focusing on youth, education, and crime allowed postwar Germans to claim one last realm of sovereignty against the Allies' own emphatic project of reeducation. Youth, reeducation, and reconstruction became important sites for the occupied to confront not only the recent past, but to negotiate the present occupation and, ultimately, direct the future of the German nation. Disciplining Germany analyzes a variety of media, including literature, news media, intellectual history, and films, in order to argue that youth and education played a central role in Germany's coming to terms with the Nazi past. Although there has been a recently renewed interest in Germany's coming to terms with the past, this attention has largely ignored the role of youth and reeducation. This lacuna is particularly perplexing given that the Allies' reeducation project became, in many ways, a cipher for the occupational project as a whole. Disciplining Germany opens up the discussion and points toward more general conclusions not only about youth and education as sites for wider socio-political and cultural debates but also about the complexities of occupation and the intertwining of different national cultures. In this investigation, the study attends to both "high" and "low" cultural text-to specialized versus popular texts-to examine how youth was mobilized across the generic spectrum. With these interdisciplinary approaches and timely interventions, Disciplining Germany will find a diverse readership, including upper-division and graduate courses in German studies and German history as well as those general readers interested in Nazi Germany, cultural history, film and literary studies, youth culture, American studies, and post-conflict and occupational situations.

La Reconstruction en Europe Après la Première Et la Seconde Guerre Mondiale Et Le Rôle de la Conservation Des Monuments Historiques

La Reconstruction en Europe Après la Première Et la Seconde Guerre Mondiale Et Le Rôle de la Conservation Des Monuments Historiques PDF Author: Nicholas Bullock
Publisher: Leuven University Press
ISBN: 9058678415
Category : Architecture
Languages : fr
Pages : 393

Get Book Here

Book Description
Living with History focuses on a particular aspect of heritage preservation in the twentieth century: destruction and postwar reconstruction in Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, and The Netherlands. This book establishes a status quaestionis for the historiography of wartime and postwar preservation, and sets these particular developments in preservation history in the context of the general evolution of architecture and urbanism. The authors investigate the specific role of conservationists and heritage institutions and administrations in the overall reconstruction and examine the part played by architects and planners in heritage preservation.