Mitteleuropa


Book Description

German unification and the political and economic transformations in central Europe signal profound political changes that pose many questions. This book offers a cautiously optimistic set of answers to these questions.







Raising Citizens in the 'Century of the Child'


Book Description

The 20th century, declared at its start to be the “Century of the Child” by Swedish author Ellen Key, saw an unprecedented expansion of state activity in and expert knowledge on child-rearing on both sides of the Atlantic. Children were seen as a crucial national resource whose care could not be left to families alone. However, the exact scope and degree of state intervention and expert influence as well as the rights and roles of mothers and fathers remained subjects of heated debates throughout the century. While there is a growing scholarly interest in the history of childhood, research in the field remains focused on national narratives. This volume compares the impact of state intervention and expert influence on theories and practices of raising children in the U.S. and German Central Europe. In particular, the contributors focus on institutions such as kindergartens and schools where the private and the public spheres intersected, on notions of “race” and “ethnicity,” “normality” and “deviance,” and on the impact of wars and changes in political regimes.




Framing Europe


Book Description

This book provides a major empirical analysis of differing attitudes to European integration in three of Europe's most important countries: Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. From its beginnings, the European Union has resounded with debate over whether to move toward a federal or intergovernmental system. However, Juan Díez Medrano argues that empirical analyses of support for integration--by specialists in international relations, comparative politics, and survey research--have failed to explain why some countries lean toward federalism whereas others lean toward intergovernmentalism. By applying frame analysis to a unique set of primary sources (in-depth interviews, newspaper articles, novels, history texts, political speeches, and survey data), Díez Medrano demonstrates the role of major historical events in transforming national cultures and thus creating new opportunities for political transformation. Clearly written and rigorously argued, Framing Europe explains differences in support for European integration between the three countries studied in light of the degree to which each realized its particular "supranational project" outside Western Europe. Only the United Kingdom succeeded in consolidating an empire and retaining it after World War II, while Germany and Spain each abandoned their corresponding aspirations. These differences meant that these countries' populations developed different degrees of identification as Europeans and, partly in consequence, different degrees of support for the building of a federal Europe.




World in Danger


Book Description

A vision of a European future of peace and stability despite the present gloom The world appears to be at another major turning point. Tensions between the United States and China threaten a resumption of great power conflict. Global institutions are being tested as never before, and hard-edged nationalism has resurfaced as a major force in both democracies and authoritarian states. From the European perspective, the United States appears to be abdicating its global leadership role. Meanwhile, Moscow and Beijing eagerly exploit every opportunity to pit European partners against one another. But a pivot point also offers the continent an opportunity to grow stronger. In World in Danger, Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany's most prominent diplomat, offers a vision of a European future of peace and stability. Ischinger examines the root causes of the current conflicts and suggests how Europe can successfully address the most urgent challenges facing the continent. The European Union, he suggests, is poised to become a more powerful actor on the world stage, able to shape global politics while defending the interests of its 500 million citizens. This important book offers a practical vision of a Europe fully capable of navigating these turbulent times.




News from Germany


Book Description

Winner of the Barclay Book Prize, German Studies Association Winner of the Gomory Prize in Business History, American Historical Association and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Winner of the Fraenkel Prize, Wiener Library for the Study of Holocaust and Genocide Honorable Mention, European Studies Book Award, Council for European Studies To control information is to control the world. This innovative history reveals how, across two devastating wars, Germany attempted to build a powerful communication empire—and how the Nazis manipulated the news to rise to dominance in Europe and further their global agenda. Information warfare may seem like a new feature of our contemporary digital world. But it was just as crucial a century ago, when the great powers competed to control and expand their empires. In News from Germany, Heidi Tworek uncovers how Germans fought to regulate information at home and used the innovation of wireless technology to magnify their power abroad. Tworek reveals how for nearly fifty years, across three different political regimes, Germany tried to control world communications—and nearly succeeded. From the turn of the twentieth century, German political and business elites worried that their British and French rivals dominated global news networks. Many Germans even blamed foreign media for Germany’s defeat in World War I. The key to the British and French advantage was their news agencies—companies whose power over the content and distribution of news was arguably greater than that wielded by Google or Facebook today. Communications networks became a crucial battleground for interwar domestic democracy and international influence everywhere from Latin America to East Asia. Imperial leaders, and their Weimar and Nazi successors, nurtured wireless technology to make news from Germany a major source of information across the globe. The Nazi mastery of global propaganda by the 1930s was built on decades of Germany’s obsession with the news. News from Germany is not a story about Germany alone. It reveals how news became a form of international power and how communications changed the course of history.




Coming Home to Germany?


Book Description

The end of World War II led to one of the most significant forced population transfers in history: the expulsion of over 12 million ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1950 and the subsequent emigration of another four million in the second half of the twentieth century. Although unprecedented in its magnitude, conventional wisdom has it that the integration of refugees, expellees, and Aussiedler was a largely successful process in postwar Germany. While the achievements of the integration process are acknowledged, the volume also examines the difficulties encountered by ethnic Germans in the Federal Republic and analyses the shortcomings of dealing with this particular phenomenon of mass migration and its consequences.




American Enterprise in Europe


Book Description

Originally published by the U. S. Army in 1945, this book is not intended as a definitive history of this phase of the American effort in Europe, but simply as a souvenir to recall for the soldier the highlights of the great project in which he had a part. One million copies were distributed by the U. S. armed forces in France. Obviously one person could not gather and evaluate all the material for a book on the Services of Supply of the U. S. Army in the ETO. Actually more than 100 persons, ranging from a Pfc to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, contributed variously. Ten generals, for instance, read proof and criticized chapters dealing with their particular branches.




Refugees From Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States


Book Description

The exodus of refugees from Nazi Germany in the 1930s has received far more attention from historians, social scientists, and demographers than many other migrations and persecutions in Europe. However, as a result of the overwhelming attention that has been given to the Holocaust within the historiography of Europe and the Second World War, the issues surrounding the flight of people from Nazi Germany prior to 1939 have been seen as Vorgeschichte (pre-history), implicating the Western European democracies and the United States as bystanders only in the impending tragedy. Based on a comparative analysis of national case studies, this volume deals with the challenges that the pre-1939 movement of refugees from Germany and Austria posed to the immigration controls in the countries of interwar Europe. Although Europe takes center-stage, this volume also looks beyond, to the Middle East, Asia and America. This global perspective outlines the constraints under which European policy makers (and the refugees) had to make decisions. By also considering the social implications of policies that became increasingly protectionist and nationalistic, and bringing into focus the similarities and differences between European liberal states in admitting the refugees, it offers an important contribution to the wider field of research on political and administrative practices.




Germany and Europe 1919-1939


Book Description

This is the only short study in English to survey Germany's foreign policy from a German viewpoint across the entire inter-war period. The approach, which sets Germany in her full European context, is not narrowly diplomatic; and it gives as much attention to the Weimar years of the 1920s as it gives to the more familiar story of Germany's international relations under the Third Reich. John Hiden has now thoroughly revised his text to take account of new scholarship since the book first appeared in 1977.