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1. Comrades in Arms: Military Masculinities in East German Culture

Author:
Tom Smith
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Without question, the East German National People’s Army was a profoundly masculine institution that emphasized traditional ideals of stoicism, sacrifice, and physical courage. Nonetheless, as this innovative study demonstrates, depictions of the military in the film and literature of the GDR were far more nuanced and ambivalent. Departing from past studies that have found in such portrayals an unchanging, idealized masculinity, Comrades in Arms shows how cultural works both before and after reunification place violence, physical vulnerability, and military theatricality, as well as conscripts’ powerful emotions and desires, at the center of soldiers’ lives and the military institution itself.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Culture, Military Affairs, Institutions, and Masculinity
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, and East Germany

2. GERMANY ON THEIR MINDS German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988

Author:
Anne C. Schenderlein
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, approximately ninety thousand German Jews fled their homeland and settled in the United States, prior to that nation closing its borders to Jewish refugees. And even though many of them wanted little to do with Germany, the circumstances of the Second World War and the postwar era meant that engagement of some kind was unavoidable—whether direct or indirect, initiated within the community itself or by political actors and the broader German public. This book carefully traces these entangled histories on both sides of the Atlantic, demonstrating the remarkable extent to which German Jews and their former fellow citizens helped to shape developments from the Allied war effort to the course of West German democratization.
Topic:
Migration, Religion, Refugees, Holocaust, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Germany, and North America

3. Submerged on the Surface: The Not-So-Hidden Jews of Nazi Berlin, 1941-1945

Author:
Richard N. Lutjens Jr.
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Between 1941 and 1945, thousands of German Jews, in fear for their lives, made the choice to flee their impending deportations and live submerged in the shadows of the Nazi capital. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin during the war years. Contrary to the received wisdom that “hidden” Jews stayed in attics and cellars and had minimal contact with the outside world, the author reveals a cohort of remarkable individuals who were constantly on the move and actively fought to ensure their own survival.
Topic:
Genocide, World War II, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, Berlin, and Central Europe

4. A State of Peace in Europe

Author:
Petri Hakkarainen
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s West German foreign policy underwent substantial transformations: from bilateral to multilateral, from reactive to proactive. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was an ideal setting for this evolution, enabling the Federal Republic to take the lead early on in Western preparations for the conference and to play a decisive role in the actual East–West negotiations leading to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. Based on extensive original research of recently released documents, spanning more than fifteen archives in eight countries, this study is a substantial contribution to scholarly discussions on the history of détente, the CSCE and West German foreign policy. The author stresses the importance of looking beyond the bipolarity of the Cold War decades and emphasizes the interconnectedness of European integration and European détente. He highlights the need to place the genesis of the CSCE conference in its historical context rather than looking at it through the prism of the events of 1989, and shows that the bilateral and multilateral elements (Ostpolitik and the CSCE) were parallel rather than successive phenomena, parts of the same complex process and in constant interaction with each other.
Topic:
Cold War, Military Strategy, European Union, and Regional Integration
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, West Germany, Central Europe, and East Germany