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East German West German Relations And The Fall Of The Gdr
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Book Synopsis Driving the Soviets up the Wall by : Hope M. Harrison
Download or read book Driving the Soviets up the Wall written by Hope M. Harrison and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War. For the first time, this path-breaking book tells the behind-the-scenes story of the communists' decision to build the Wall in 1961. Hope Harrison's use of archival sources from the former East German and Soviet regimes is unrivalled, and from these sources she builds a highly original and provocative argument: the East Germans pushed the reluctant Soviets into building the Berlin Wall. This fascinating work portrays the different approaches favored by the East Germans and the Soviets to stop the exodus of refugees to West Germany. In the wake of Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviets refused the East German request to close their border to West Berlin. The Kremlin rulers told the hard-line East German leaders to solve their refugee problem not by closing the border, but by alleviating their domestic and foreign problems. The book describes how, over the next seven years, the East German regime managed to resist Soviet pressures for liberalization and instead pressured the Soviets into allowing them to build the Berlin Wall. Driving the Soviets Up the Wall forces us to view this critical juncture in the Cold War in a different light. Harrison's work makes us rethink the nature of relations between countries of the Soviet bloc even at the height of the Cold War, while also contributing to ongoing debates over the capacity of weaker states to influence their stronger allies.
Book Synopsis Between Containment and Rollback by : Christian F. Ostermann
Download or read book Between Containment and Rollback written by Christian F. Ostermann and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of World War II, American policymakers turned to the task of rebuilding Europe while keeping communism at bay. In Germany, formally divided since 1949,the United States prioritized the political, economic, and, eventually, military integration of the fledgling Federal Republic with the West. The extraordinary success story of forging this alliance has dominated our historical under-standing of the American-German relationship. Largely left out of the grand narrative of U.S.–German relations were most East Germans who found themselves caught under Soviet and then communist control by the post-1945 geo-political fallout of the war that Nazi Germany had launched. They were the ones who most dearly paid the price for the country's division. This book writes the East Germans—both leadership and general populace—back into that history as objects of American policy and as historical agents in their own right Based on recently declassified documents from American, Russian, and German archives, this book demonstrates that U.S. efforts from 1945 to 1953 went beyond building a prosperous democracy in western Germany and "containing" Soviet-Communist power to the east. Under the Truman and then the Eisenhower administrations, American policy also included efforts to undermine and "roll back" Soviet and German communist control in the eastern part of the country. This story sheds light on a dark-er side to the American Cold War in Germany: propaganda, covert operations, economic pressure, and psychological warfare. Christian F. Ostermann takes an international history approach, capturing Soviet and East German responses and actions, and drawing a rich and complex picture of the early East–West confrontation in the heart of Europe.
Download or read book The Collapse written by Mary Sarotte and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the night of November 9, 1989, massive crowds surged toward the Berlin Wall, drawn by an announcement that caught the world by surprise: East Germans could now move freely to the West. The Wall—infamous symbol of divided Cold War Europe—seemed to be falling. But the opening of the gates that night was not planned by the East German ruling regime—nor was it the result of a bargain between either Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It was an accident. In The Collapse, prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte reveals how a perfect storm of decisions made by daring underground revolutionaries, disgruntled Stasi officers, and dictatorial party bosses sparked an unexpected series of events culminating in the chaotic fall of the Wall. With a novelist’s eye for character and detail, she brings to vivid life a story that sweeps across Budapest, Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig and up to the armed checkpoints in Berlin. We meet the revolutionaries Roland Jahn, Aram Radomski, and Siggi Schefke, risking it all to smuggle the truth across the Iron Curtain; the hapless Politburo member Günter Schabowski, mistakenly suggesting that the Wall is open to a press conference full of foreign journalists, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw; and Stasi officer Harald Jäger, holding the fort at the crucial border crossing that night. Soon, Brokaw starts broadcasting live from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, where the crowds are exulting in the euphoria of newfound freedom—and the dictators are plotting to restore control. Drawing on new archival sources and dozens of interviews, The Collapse offers the definitive account of the night that brought down the Berlin Wall.
Book Synopsis China-GDR Relations from 1949 to 1989 by : Axel Berkofsky
Download or read book China-GDR Relations from 1949 to 1989 written by Axel Berkofsky and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an in-depth analysis of the relations between China and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1949 to 1989. These relations were characterized by some “ups” but many more “downs,” e.g. when, in the early 1960s, the Soviet Union ordered its vassal state in East Berlin to begin treating its former socialist comrade and brother-in-arms as an adversary and indeed enemy. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, especially from the archive of the GDR’s ruling party, this book examines selected issues and elements of East German and Chinese domestic and foreign policy. In order to better grasp the nature and the historical context of the bilateral relationship, it offers detailed insights into the following aspects: 1. the bilateral “honeymoon period” from 1949 to the late 1950s, which was accompanied by the two parties supporting and applauding each other’s oppressive domestic and ill-fated economic policies, including Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; 2. relations during the 1960s, when the “Sino-Soviet Split” defined the quality and level of bilateral animosities; 3. the 1970s, when Beijing replaced socialist comradeship with East Berlin with trade and aid from the US and West Germany; and 4. the resumption of Sino-East German relations in the 1980s and the subsequent period up to the Tiananmen Square protests and the collapse of the GDR in 1989. The book will appeal to historians, political scientists and scholars of international relations, as well as policymakers, diplomats, and others with an interest in this previously under-researched area.
Book Synopsis Comrades of Color by : Quinn Slobodian
Download or read book Comrades of Color written by Quinn Slobodian and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In keeping with the tenets of socialist internationalism, the political culture of the German Democratic Republic strongly emphasized solidarity with the non-white world: children sent telegrams to Angela Davis in prison, workers made contributions from their wages to relief efforts in Vietnam and Angola, and the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Ho Chi Minh, and Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired public memorials. Despite their prominence, however, scholars have rarely examined such displays in detail. Through a series of illuminating historical investigations, this volume deploys archival research, ethnography, and a variety of other interdisciplinary tools to explore the rhetoric and reality of East German internationalism.
Book Synopsis Undeclared Wars with Israel by : Jeffrey Herf
Download or read book Undeclared Wars with Israel written by Jeffrey Herf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Undeclared Wars with Israel examines a spectrum of antagonism by the East German government and West German radical leftist organizations - ranging from hostile propaganda and diplomacy to military support for Israel's Arab armed adversaries - from 1967 to the end of the Cold War in 1989. This period encompasses the Six-Day War (1967), the Yom Kippur War (1973), Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and an ongoing campaign of terrorism waged by the Palestine Liberation Organization against Israeli civilians. This book provides new insights into the West German radicals who collaborated in 'actions' with Palestinian terrorist groups, and confirms that East Germany, along with others in the Soviet Bloc, had a much greater impact on the conflict in the Middle East than has been generally known. A historian who has written extensively on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, Jeffrey Herf now offers a new chapter in this long, sad history.
Book Synopsis East German-west German Relations And The Fall Of The Gdr by : Ernest D. Plock
Download or read book East German-west German Relations And The Fall Of The Gdr written by Ernest D. Plock and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates inner-German economic ties, travel contacts, and national consciousness that proved to be of greater consequence after Gorbachev's accession to power. It addresses the inevitability of the German Democratic Republic revolution and unification with the Federal Republic.
Book Synopsis Behind the Berlin Wall by : Patrick Major
Download or read book Behind the Berlin Wall written by Patrick Major and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 13 August 1961 eighteen million East Germans awoke to find themselves walled in by an edifice which was to become synonymous with the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. Patrick Major explores how the border closure affected ordinary East Germans, from workers and farmers to teenagers and even party members, 'caught out' by Sunday the Thirteenth.
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.
Book Synopsis The East German State and the Catholic Church, 1945-1989 by : Schaefer
Download or read book The East German State and the Catholic Church, 1945-1989 written by Schaefer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Germany and 'The West' by : Riccardo Bavaj
Download or read book Germany and 'The West' written by Riccardo Bavaj and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2017-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The West” is a central idea in German public discourse, yet historians know surprisingly little about the evolution of the concept. Contrary to common assumptions, this volume argues that the German concept of the West was not born in the twentieth century, but can be traced from a much earlier time. In the nineteenth century, “the West” became associated with notions of progress, liberty, civilization, and modernity. It signified the future through the opposition to antonyms such as “Russia” and “the East,” and was deployed as a tool for forging German identities. Examining the shifting meanings, political uses, and transnational circulations of the idea of “the West” sheds new light on German intellectual history from the post-Napoleonic era to the Cold War.
Book Synopsis Envisioning Socialism by : Heather Gumbert
Download or read book Envisioning Socialism written by Heather Gumbert and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2014-02-10 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Envisioning Socialism examines television and the power it exercised to define the East Germans’ view of socialism during the first decades of the German Democratic Republic. In the first book in English to examine this topic, Heather L. Gumbert traces how television became a medium prized for its communicative and entertainment value. She explores the difficulties GDR authorities had defining and executing a clear vision of the society they hoped to establish, and she explains how television helped to stabilize GDR society in a way that ultimately worked against the utopian vision the authorities thought they were cultivating. Gumbert challenges those who would dismiss East German television as a tool of repression that couldn’t compete with the West or capture the imagination of East Germans. Instead, she shows how, by the early 1960s, television was a model of the kind of socialist realist art that could appeal to authorities and audiences. Ultimately, this socialist vision was overcome by the challenges that the international market in media products and technologies posed to nation-building in the postwar period. A history of ideas and perceptions examining both real and mediated historical conditions, Envisioning Socialism considers television as a technology, an institution, and a medium of social relations and cultural knowledge. The book will be welcomed in undergraduate and graduate courses in German and media history, the history of postwar Socialism, and the history of science and technologies.
Book Synopsis The Path to the Berlin Wall by : Manfred Wilke
Download or read book The Path to the Berlin Wall written by Manfred Wilke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long path to the Berlin Wall began in 1945, when Josef Stalin instructed the Communist Party to take power in the Soviet occupation zone while the three Western allies secured their areas of influence. When Germany was split into separate states in 1949, Berlin remained divided into four sectors, with West Berlin surrounded by the GDR but lingering as a captivating showcase for Western values and goods. Following a failed Soviet attempt to expel the allies from West Berlin with a blockade in 1948–49, a second crisis ensued from 1958–61, during which the Soviet Union demanded once and for all the withdrawal of the Western powers and the transition of West Berlin to a “Free City.” Ultimately Nikita Khrushchev decided to close the border in hopes of halting the overwhelming exodus of East Germans into the West. Tracing this path from a German perspective, Manfred Wilke draws on recently published conversations between Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, head of the East German state, in order to reconstruct the coordination process between these two leaders and the events that led to building the Berlin Wall.
Book Synopsis Power and Society in the GDR, 1961-1979 by : Mary Fulbrook
Download or read book Power and Society in the GDR, 1961-1979 written by Mary Fulbrook and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The communist German Democratic Republic was founded in 1949 in the Soviet-occupied zone of post-war Germany. This book looks at its history and how people came to terms with their new lives behind the Wall. In the 1960s and 1970s, a fragile stability emerged characterized by 'consumer socialism', international recognition and détente. Growing participation in the micro-structures of power, and conformity to the unwritten rules of an increasingly predictable system, suggest increasing accommodation to dominant norms and conceptions of socialist 'normality.' These essays explore the ways in which lower-level functionaries and people at the grass roots contributed to the formation and transformation of the GDR ? from industry and agriculture, through popular sport and cultural life, to the passage of generations and varieties of social experience.
Book Synopsis The East German Church and the End of Communism by : John P. Burgess
Download or read book The East German Church and the End of Communism written by John P. Burgess and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on his own research in East Germany and relying primarily on sources published in East Germany itself, author John Burgess demonstrates the roots of the church's theology in Barth, Bonhoeffer, and in the Barmen declaration, which in 1934 pronounced Christianity and Nazi ideology to be incompatible.
Book Synopsis The East German Economy, 1945-2010 by : Hartmut Berghoff
Download or read book The East German Economy, 1945-2010 written by Hartmut Berghoff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to this volume consider the economic history of East Germany within its broader political, cultural and social contexts.
Book Synopsis West Germany and the Iron Curtain by : Astrid M. Eckert
Download or read book West Germany and the Iron Curtain written by Astrid M. Eckert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-02 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of Cold War Germany and the German reunification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. These border regions constituted the Federal Republic's most sensitive geographical space where it had to confront partition and engage its socialist neighbor East Germany in concrete ways. Each issue that arose in these borderlands - from economic deficiencies, border tourism, environmental pollution, landscape change, and the siting decision for a major nuclear facility - was magnified and mediated by the presence of what became the most militarized border of its day, the Iron Curtain. In topical chapters, the book addresses the economic consequences of the border for West Germany, which defined the border regions as depressed areas, and examines the cultural practice of western tourism to the Iron Curtain. At the heart of this deeply-researched book stands an environmental history of the Iron Curtain that explores transboundary pollution, landscape change, and a planned nuclear industrial site at Gorleben that was meant to bring jobs into the depressed border regions. The book traces these subjects across the caesura of 1989/90, thereby integrating the "long" postwar era with the post-unification decades. As Eckert demonstrates, the borderlands that emerged with partition and disappeared with reunification did not merely mirror some larger developments in the Federal Republic's history but actually helped to shape them.
