The East German Leadership, 1946-73

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Author :
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780719054983
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (549 download)

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Book Synopsis The East German Leadership, 1946-73 by : Peter Grieder

Download or read book The East German Leadership, 1946-73 written by Peter Grieder and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the publication of The Woman Warrior in 1976, Maxine Hong Kingston has gained a reputation as one of the most popular -- and controversial -- writers in the Asian American literary tradition. In this volume Grice traces Kingston's development as a writer and cultural activist through both ethnic and feminist discourses, investigating her novels, occasional writings and her two-book 'life-writing project'.The publication of The Woman Warrior not only propelled Kingston into the mainstream literary limelight, but also precipitated a vicious and ongoing controversy in Asian American letters over the authenticity -- or fakery -- of her cultural references. Grice traces the debates through the appearance of China Men (1981), as well as the novels, Tripmaster Monkey (1989) and her most recent work, The Fifth Book of Peace.Maxine Hong Kingston will be of value to students and academics researching in the areas of diaspora writing, contemporary American and Asian- Amercianfiction, as well as feminist and postcolonial literature.

Stasi

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Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0786724412
Total Pages : 587 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

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Book Synopsis Stasi by : John O. Koehler

Download or read book Stasi written by John O. Koehler and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this gripping narrative, John Koehler details the widespread activities of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or "Stasi." The Stasi, which infiltrated every walk of East German life, suppressed political opposition, and caused the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of citizens, proved to be one of the most powerful secret police and espionage services in the world. Koehler methodically reviews the Stasi's activities within East Germany and overseas, including its programs for internal repression, international espionage, terrorism and terrorist training, art theft, and special operations in Latin America and Africa. Koehler was both Berlin bureau chief of the Associated Press during the height of the Cold War and a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. His insider's account is based on primary sources, such as U.S. intelligence files, Stasi documents made available only to the author, and extensive interviews with victims of political oppression, former Stasi officers, and West German government officials. Drawing from these sources, Koehler recounts tales that rival the most outlandish Hollywood spy thriller and, at the same time, offers the definitive contribution to our understanding of this still largely unwritten aspect of the history of the Cold War and modern Germany.

Stalin's Curse

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191644889
Total Pages : 504 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Stalin's Curse by : Robert Gellately

Download or read book Stalin's Curse written by Robert Gellately and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second World War almost destroyed Stalin's Soviet Union. But victory over Nazi Germany provided the dictator with his great opportunity: to expand Soviet power way beyond the borders of the Soviet state. Well before the shooting stopped in 1945, the Soviet leader methodically set about the unprecedented task of creating a Red Empire that would soon stretch into the heart of Europe and Asia, displaying a supreme realism and ruthlessness that Machiavelli would surely have envied. By the time of his death in 1953, his new imperium was firmly in place, defining the contours of a Cold War world that was seemingly permanent and indestructible - and would last until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But what were Stalin's motives in this spectacular power grab? Was he no more than a latter-day Russian tsar, for whom Communist ideology was little more than a smoke-screen? Or was he simply a psychopathic killer? In Stalin's Curse, best-selling historian Robert Gellately firmly rejects both these simplifications of the man and his motives. Using a wealth of previously unavailable documentation, Gellately shows instead how Stalin's crimes are more accurately understood as the deeds of a ruthless and life-long Leninist revolutionary. Far from being a latter day 'Red Tsar' intent simply upon imperial expansion for its own sake, Stalin was in fact deeply inspired by the rhetoric of the Russian revolution and what Lenin had accomplished during the Great War. As Gellately convincingly shows, Stalin remained throughout these years steadfastly committed to a 'boundless faith' in Communism - and saw the Second World War as his chance to take up once again the old revolutionary mission to carry the Red Flag to the world.

Cold War Ecology

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300130309
Total Pages : 367 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Cold War Ecology by : Arvid Nelson

Download or read book Cold War Ecology written by Arvid Nelson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: East Germany, its economy, and its society were in decline long before the country’s political collapse in the late 1980s. The clues were there in the natural landscape, Arvid Nelson argues in this groundbreaking book, but policy analysts were blind to them. Had they noted the record of the leadership’s values and goals manifest in the landscape, they wouldn’t have hailed East Germany as a Marxist-Leninist success story. Nelson sets East German history within the context of the landscape history of two centuries to underscore how forest and ecosystem change offered a reliable barometer to the health and stability of the political system that governed them. Cold War Ecology records how East German leaders’ indifference to human rights and their disregard for the landscape affected the rural economy, forests, and population. This lesson from history suggests new ways of thinking about the health of ecosystems and landscapes, Nelson shows, and he proposes assessing the stability of modern political systems based on the environment’s system qualities rather than on political leaders’ goals and beliefs.

Communism's Public Sphere

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501767062
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Communism's Public Sphere by : Kyrill Kunakhovich

Download or read book Communism's Public Sphere written by Kyrill Kunakhovich and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-15 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communism's Public Sphere explores the political role of cultural spaces in the Eastern Bloc. Under communist regimes that banned free speech, political discussions shifted to spaces of art: theaters, galleries, concert halls, and youth clubs. Kyrill Kunakhovich shows how these venues turned into sites of dialogue and contestation. While officials used them to spread the communist message, artists and audiences often flouted state policy and championed alternative visions. Cultural spaces therefore came to function as a public sphere, or a rare outlet for discussing public affairs. Focusing on Kraków in Poland and Leipzig in East Germany, Communism's Public Sphere sheds new light on state-society interactions in the Eastern Bloc. In place of the familiar trope of domination and resistance, it highlights unexpected symbioses like state-sponsored rock and roll, socialist consumerism, and sanctioned dissent. By examining nearly five decades of communist rule, from the Red Army's arrival in Poland in 1944 to German reunification in 1990, Kunakhovich argues that cultural spaces played a pivotal mediating role. They helped reform and stabilize East European communism but also gave cover to the protest movements that ultimately brought it down.

The History of the Stasi

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Author :
Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1504937058
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (49 download)

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Book Synopsis The History of the Stasi by : Antonella Colonna Vilasi

Download or read book The History of the Stasi written by Antonella Colonna Vilasi and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2015-03-09 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Stasi meant to East Germany, and historically means to the entire world, four decades of repression and prosecution carried out in the name of justice, which only ended in 1989. The word relates to the special secret police agency that was founded on February 8, 1950, by its first executive, Wilhelm Zaisser, and took the complete name of Ministerium fr StaatSichereit or MfS (Ministry for State Security), which Stasi is the abbreviated form resulting from its phonetic contraction. It was formally dependent on the government, but actually referred to the intelligence of the SED Central Committee. The very purpose of the Stasi was to endorse and impose the power of the SED by catching and destroying any dissident man or woman who tried to escape, plot, and work against the party or, simply, was differently thinking. Every little suspect could turn to the evidence of a crime against the government, either being real or nonexisting; any single attempt of rebellion should be prevented not to turn to real uprising. The way to make it possible was the careful monitoring of the population with the utmost secrecy to the purpose of collecting as much information as possible about individuals.

Divided, But Not Disconnected

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Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1845456467
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (454 download)

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Book Synopsis Divided, But Not Disconnected by : Tobias Hochscherf

Download or read book Divided, But Not Disconnected written by Tobias Hochscherf and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Allied agreement after the Second World War did not only partition Germany, it divided the nation along the fault-lines of a new bipolar world order. This inner border made Germany a unique place to experience the Cold War, and the “German question” in this post-1945 variant remained inextricably entwined with the vicissitudes of the Cold War until its end. This volume explores how social and cultural practices in both German states between 1949 and 1989 were shaped by the existence of this inner border, putting them on opposing sides of the ideological divide between the Western and Eastern blocs, as well as stabilizing relations between them. This volume’s interdisciplinary approach addresses important intersections between history, politics, and culture, offering an important new appraisal of the German experiences of the Cold War.

The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968

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Author :
Publisher : Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers
ISBN 13 : 0865167516
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (651 download)

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Book Synopsis The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968 by : M. Mark Stolarik

Download or read book The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968 written by M. Mark Stolarik and published by Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. This book was released on 2010 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays and comments presented at an international conference held at University of Ottawa, Oct. 9-10, 2008.

Jews and Germans

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Publisher : Jewish Publication Society
ISBN 13 : 0827615035
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (276 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews and Germans by : Guenter Lewy

Download or read book Jews and Germans written by Guenter Lewy and published by Jewish Publication Society. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews and Germans is the only book in English to delve fully into the history and challenges of the German-Jewish relationship, from before the Holocaust to the present day. The Weimar Republic era—the fifteen years between Germany’s defeat in World War I (1918) and Hitler’s accession (1933)—has been characterized as a time of unparalleled German-Jewish concord and collaboration. Even though Jews constituted less than 1 percent of the German population, they occupied a significant place in German literature, music, theater, journalism, science, and many other fields. Was that German-Jewish relationship truly reciprocal? How has it evolved since the Holocaust, and what can it become? Beginning with the German Jews’ struggle for emancipation, Guenter Lewy describes Jewish life during the heyday of the Weimar Republic, particularly the Jewish writers, left-wing intellectuals, combat veterans, and adult and youth organizations. With this history as a backdrop he examines the deeply disparate responses among Jews when the Nazis assumed power. Lewy then elucidates Jewish life in postwar West Germany; in East Germany, where Jewish communists searched for a second German-Jewish symbiosis based on Marxist principles; and finally in the united Germany—illuminating the complexities of fraught relationships over time.

Heiner Müller's Democratic Theater

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Author :
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1571139982
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (711 download)

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Book Synopsis Heiner Müller's Democratic Theater by : Michael Wood

Download or read book Heiner Müller's Democratic Theater written by Michael Wood and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2017 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes not just Müller's texts but also the theatrical events that emerged from them, showing that from the beginning of his career Müller tried to create democracy both within and outside the theater.

Communing with the Enemy

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Publisher : Peter Lang
ISBN 13 : 9783039101924
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis Communing with the Enemy by : Merrilyn Thomas

Download or read book Communing with the Enemy written by Merrilyn Thomas and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2005 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on archival sources, this book examines the secret role of British and German Christians in the Cold War, both as non-governmental envoys and as members of covert intelligence operations, and demonstrates the way in which religion was used as a tool of psychological warfare.

Time and Power

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691217327
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis Time and Power by : Christopher Clark

Download or read book Time and Power written by Christopher Clark and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the insights of Reinhart Koselleck and François Hartog, two pioneers of the "temporal turn" in historiography, Clark shows how Friedrich Wilhelm rejected the notion of continuity with the past, believing instead that a sovereign must liberate the state from the entanglements of tradition to choose freely among different possible futures. He demonstrates how Frederick the Great abandoned this paradigm for a neoclassical vision of history in which sovereign and state transcend time altogether, and how Bismarck believed that the statesman's duty was to preserve the timeless permanence of the state amid the torrent of historical change. Clark describes how Hitler did not seek to revolutionize history like Stalin and Mussolini, but instead sought to evade history altogether, emphasizing timeless racial archetypes and a prophetically foretold future.

The Handbook of Political, Social, and Economic Transformation

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192565478
Total Pages : 632 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis The Handbook of Political, Social, and Economic Transformation by : Wolfgang Merkel

Download or read book The Handbook of Political, Social, and Economic Transformation written by Wolfgang Merkel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political, social, and economic transformation is a complex historical phenomenon. It can adequately be analysed only by a multidisciplinary approach. The Handbook brings together an international team of scholars who are specialists in their respective research fields. It introduces the most important areas, theories, and methods in transformation research, with particular attention placed on the historical and comparative dimension. Although focussing on post-communist and other democratic transformations in our epoch, the Handbook therefore presents and discusses not only their problems, paths, and developments, but also deals with the antecedent 'waves', beginning with the Meiji Restoration in Japan in 1868 and its aftermath. The book is structured into six parts. Starting with basic concepts as systems, actors, and institutions (Section I), it gives an overview over major theoretical approaches and research methods (Sections II and III). The connection of theory and method with their application is essential, allowing special insights into the past and opens analytical avenues for transformation research in the future. Section (IV) provides a historically oriented description or interpretation of particular 'waves' or types of societal transformation. With a clear focus on present transformations, the contributions to Section V provide a description and discussion of the problems, structures, actors, and courses of the transformations within different spheres of (civil) society, politics, law, and economics. Finally, brief lexicographic entries in Section VI delineate research perspectives and facts about relevant issues of societal transformation. Each of the 79 contributions contains a concise list of the most important research literature.

The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany

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Author :
Publisher : Clarendon Press
ISBN 13 : 0191515825
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (915 download)

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Book Synopsis The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany by : Dirk Spilker

Download or read book The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany written by Dirk Spilker and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2006-07-13 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

The Marshall Plan

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1501102397
Total Pages : 624 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The Marshall Plan by : Benn Steil

Download or read book The Marshall Plan written by Benn Steil and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 American Academy of Diplomacy Douglas Dillon Award Shortlisted for the 2018 Duff Cooper Prize in Literary Nonfiction “[A] brilliant book…by far the best study yet” (Paul Kennedy, The Wall Street Journal) of the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan and its long-lasting influence on our world. In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin’s on the rise, US officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continue to shape world events. Benn Steil’s “thoroughly researched and well-written account” (USA TODAY) tells the story behind the birth of the Cold War, told with verve, insight, and resonance for today. Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Benn Steil’s gripping narrative takes us through the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar US-Soviet relations—the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, Stalin’s determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe is vividly portrayed. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Steil’s account will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan. “Trenchant and timely…an ambitious, deeply researched narrative that…provides a fresh perspective on the coming Cold War” (The New York Times Book Review), The Marshall Plan is a polished and masterly work of historical narrative. An instant classic of Cold War literature, it “is a gripping, complex, and critically important story that is told with clarity and precision” (The Christian Science Monitor).

Constructing the Monolith

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674031791
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (317 download)

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Book Synopsis Constructing the Monolith by : Marc J. Selverstone

Download or read book Constructing the Monolith written by Marc J. Selverstone and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the cold war took shape during the late 1940s, policymakers in the United States and Great Britain displayed a marked tendency to regard international communism as a "monolithic" conspiratorial movement. The image of a "communist monolith" distilled the messy realities of international relations into a neat, comprehensible formula. Its lesson was that all communists, regardless of their native land or political program, were essentially tools of the Kremlin. Marc Selverstone recreates the manner in which the "monolith" emerged as a perpetual framework on both sides of the Atlantic. Though more pervasive and millennial in its American guise, this understanding also informed conceptions of international communism in its close ally Great Britain, casting the Kremlin's challenge as but one more in a long line of threats to freedom. This illuminating and important book not only explains the cold war mindset that determined global policy for much of the twentieth century, but reveals how the search to define a foreign threat can shape the ways in which that threat is actually met.

From Incarceration to Repatriation

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Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501776045
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis From Incarceration to Repatriation by : Susan C. I. Grunewald

Download or read book From Incarceration to Repatriation written by Susan C. I. Grunewald and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Incarceration to Repatriation explores the lives and memories of the nearly 1.5 million German POWs who were held by the Soviet Union during and after World War II and released in phases through 1956, seven years longer than the prisoners of any other Allied nation. Susan C. I. Grunewald argues that Soviet leadership deliberately kept able-bodied German POWs to supplement their labor force after the end of the war. The Soviet Union lost 27 million citizens and a quarter of its physical assets during the war, motivating Soviet leadership to harness the labor of German POWs for as long as possible. Engaging with recently declassified documents in former Soviet archives, archival material from multiple German governments, as well as innovative use of digital humanities methods and geographic information system (GIS) mapping, Grunewald demonstrates that Soviet authorities detained German POWs primarily for economic rather than punitive reasons. In fact, the GIS mapping of the historical materials makes it clear that most of the four thousand POW camps across the USSR were strategically located near industrial, infrastructure, and natural resource sites that were critical to postwar economic reconstruction. From Incarceration to Repatriation is the first book to draw together the distinct fields of Soviet and German history to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of German POW captivity in the USSR during and after World War II. Attending to the ways that the memory of German POWs remains in circulation in both the former Soviet Union and Germany, Grunewald tracks the political repercussions of war commemoration.