West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past

West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past PDF Author: S. Jonathan Wiesen
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807855430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
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.

West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past

West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past PDF Author: S. Jonathan Wiesen
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807855430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Shattered Past

Shattered Past PDF Author: Konrad H. Jarausch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140082527X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Broken glass, twisted beams, piles of debris--these are the early memories of the children who grew up amidst the ruins of the Third Reich. More than five decades later, German youth inhabit manicured suburbs and stroll along prosperous pedestrian malls. Shattered Past is a bold reconsideration of the perplexing pattern of Germany's twentieth-century history. Konrad Jarausch and Michael Geyer explore the staggering gap between the country's role in the terrors of war and its subsequent success as a democracy. They argue that the collapse of Communism, national reunification, and the postmodern shift call for a new reading of the country's turbulent development, one that no longer suggests continuity but rupture and conflict. Comprising original essays, the book begins by reexamining the nationalist, socialist, and liberal master narratives that have dominated the presentation of German history but are now losing their hold. Treated next are major issues of recent debate that suggest how new kinds of German history might be written: annihilationist warfare, complicity with dictatorship, the taming of power, the impact of migration, the struggle over national identity, redefinitions of womanhood, and the development of consumption as well as popular culture. The concluding chapters reflect on the country's gradual transition from chaos to civility. This penetrating study will spark a fresh debate about the meaning of the German past during the last century. There is no single master narrative, no Weltgeist, to be discovered. But there is a fascinating story to be told in many different ways.

Bystanders to the Holocaust

Bystanders to the Holocaust PDF Author: David Cesarani
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317791746
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Using accessible archival sources, a team of historians reveal how much the USA, Britain, Switzerland and Sweden knew about the Nazi attempt to murder all the Jews of Europe during World War II.

Quest for Economic Empire

Quest for Economic Empire PDF Author: Volker Rolf Berghahn
Publisher: Campus Verlag
ISBN: 9781571810274
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
German unification evoked ambivalent reactions outside its borders: it revived disquietingmemories of attempts by German big business during the two world wars to build an economic empire in Europe in conjunction with the military and the government bureaucracy. But thereare also high hopes that German finance and industry will serve as the engine of reconstruction in eastern Europe, just as it played this role in the postwar unification of western Europe.

A Nazi Past

A Nazi Past PDF Author: David A. Messenger
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 081316057X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Since the end of World War II, historians and psychologists have investigated the factors that motivated Germans to become Nazis before and during the war. While most studies have focused on the high-level figures who were tried at Nuremberg, much less is known about the hundreds of SS members, party functionaries, and intelligence agents who quietly navigated the transition to postwar life and successfully assimilated into a changed society after the war ended. In A Nazi Past, German and American scholars examine the lives and careers of men like Hans Globke—who not only escaped punishment for his prominent involvement in formulating the Third Reich's anti-Semitic legislation, but also forged a successful new political career. They also consider the story of Gestapo employee Gertrud Slottke, who exhibited high productivity and ambition in sending Dutch Jews to Auschwitz but eluded trial for fifteen years. Additionally, the contributors explore how a network of Nazi spies and diplomats who recast their identities in Franco's Spain, far from the denazification proceedings in Germany. Previous studies have emphasized how former Nazis hid or downplayed their wartime affiliations and actions as they struggled to invent a new life for themselves after 1945, but this fascinating work shows that many of these individuals actively used their pasts to recast themselves in a democratic, Cold War setting. Based on extensive archival research as well as recently declassified US intelligence, A Nazi Past contributes greatly to our understanding of the postwar politics of memory.

West German Industrialists and the Making of the Economic Miracle

West German Industrialists and the Making of the Economic Miracle PDF Author: Armin Grünbacher
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472513282
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
West German Industrialists and the Making of the Economic Miracle investigates the mentality of post-war German (heavy) industrialists through an analysis of their attitudes, thinking and views on social, political and, of course, economic matters at the time, including the 'social market economy' and how they saw their own role in society, with this investigation taking place against the backdrop of the 'economic miracle' and the Cold War of the 1950s and 60s. The book also includes an assessment of whether the self-declared, new 'aristocracy of merit' justified its place in society and carried out its actions in a new spirit of political responsibility. This is an important text for all students interested in the history of Germany and the modern economic history of Europe.

Learning from the Germans

Learning from the Germans PDF Author: Susan Neiman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374715521
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the past In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize and avoid them in the future.

Germany, Inc.

Germany, Inc. PDF Author: Werner Meyer-Larsen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
"Ten strong egos, three different strategies, and one major target. Enter Deutschland AG: Volkswagen v. Ford; Bertelsmann v. Time Warner; Hoechst, BASF, and Bayer v. DuPont; Allianz v. Metropolitan Life; Lufthansa v. American Airlines; Airbus v. Boeing....The contest is thrilling, intoxicating even. The figures of Deutschland AG versus those of Corporate America- everything is so right, it's really wrong, when you come right down to it." As Japan's sun sinks slowly in the West, a formidable new competitor has risen to replace her as America's chief rival in the battle for global business leadership. Emboldened by reunification and its role as leader of the European Union, Germany is flexing its muscles. For the first time in history, a transatlantic global conglomerate is rapidly taking shape, its policies defined by a small band of German business elites. What are the economic, sociopolitical, and cultural forces driving the new German expansionism? What is the strategy behind it, and how threatening is it really? Who are the major players involved and what can we expect from them in the years ahead? How do Germany's plans fit with the ultimate unification of European economies under the euro? And perhaps most intriguing, to what extent has American post-cold war policy been deliberately skewed to encourage the hegemony of Germany, Inc., and why? Written by Werner Meyer-Larsen, a journalist who has closely covered the transatlantic business beat for over a decade, this book provides answers to these and other questions of crucial importance to every businessperson. While the merger of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler in March 1999 is popularly held to have been the opening shot in a new war of global attrition, it was, as Meyer-Larsen explains, in reality a major turning point in a German offensive that has been quietly gaining ground for some years. Since the late 1980s, a handful of Germany's most powerful industrial concerns has been steadily chipping away at America's lead in a range of sectors, including publishing, air travel, steel, insurance, and cars. Leading the attack is a new generation of ambitious young executives, unencumbered by the political restrictions (or sins) of their predecessors, and bolstered by a virtual banking cartel controlled by Deutsche Bank. Compelled as much by their anxiety over the post-cold war power vacuum as a desire to strut their stuff on a global scale, their battle cry is "Go West! Think big!" Meyer-Larsen traces the growth of these companies and the evolution of Germany, Inc. He takes us inside Daimler, Lufthansa, VW, Bertelsmann, Hoechst, Siemens, Allianz, and the other top players to reveal their strategies. And he provides vivid portraits of the men who control their reins-including Ferdinand "the Shark" Piech of VW; Bertelsmann's Thomas Middelhoff, a.k.a. "Mr. Spock"; "Mr. Stockmarket," Rolf E. Breuer of Deutsche Bank; and Gerhard Crommer of Krupp, the "Spider in the Web of Steel"-explaining, in each case, the likely impact of each leader's style on the future of his industry. A penetrating, fact-filled exploration of a development of paramount commercial, geopolitical, and cultural importance, Germany, Inc. is must reading for businesspeople, policymakers, and students of current affairs everywhere.

Selling Modernity

Selling Modernity PDF Author: Pamela E. Swett
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822340690
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
DIVA historical study of modern German advertising, from the Imperial period through the 1970s, that explores mass consumption in modern society and the relationship between business mentalities, artistic creation, consumer behavior, and ideology. /div

Difficult Heritage

Difficult Heritage PDF Author: Sharon Macdonald
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134111053
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
How does a city and a nation deal with a legacy of perpetrating atrocity? How are contemporary identities negotiated and shaped in the face of concrete reminders of a past that most wish they did not have? Difficult Heritage focuses on the case of Nuremberg – a city whose name is indelibly linked with Nazism – to explore these questions and their implications. Using an original in-depth research, using archival, interview and ethnographic sources, it provides not only fascinating new material and perspectives, but also more general original theorizing of the relationship between heritage, identity and material culture. The book looks at how Nuremberg has dealt with its Nazi past post-1945. It focuses especially, but not exclusively, on the city’s architectural heritage, in particular, the former Nazi party rally grounds, on which the Nuremburg rallies were staged. The book draws on original sources, such as city council debates and interviews, to chart a lively picture of debate, action and inaction in relation to this site and significant others, in Nuremberg and elsewhere. In doing so, Difficult Heritage seeks to highlight changes over time in the ways in which the Nazi past has been dealt with in Germany, and the underlying cultural assumptions, motivations and sources of friction involved. Whilst referencing wider debates and giving examples of what was happening elsewhere in Germany and beyond, Difficult Heritage provides a rich in-depth account of this most fascinating of cases. It also engages in comparative reflection on developments underway elsewhere in order to contextualize what was happening in Nuremberg and to show similarities to and differences from the ways in which other ‘difficult heritages’ have been dealt with elsewhere. By doing so, the author offers an informed perspective on ways of dealing with difficult heritage, today and in the future, discussing innovative museological, educational and artistic practice.