America and the Shaping of German Society, 1945-1955 PDF Download

Author: Michael Ermath
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This book focuses upon the work of the United States, in both its official and unofficial capacities, in shaping the political culture and foundations of the Federal Republic during the crucial period of 1945 to 1955. It draws together the work of well-known scholars, both German and American, along with the reflective accounts of actual participants and witnesses of this period.

Author: Reiner Pommerin
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781571810953
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
It is only with the benefit of hindsight that the Germans have become acutely aware of how profound and comprehensive was the impact of the United States on their society after 1945.This volume reflect the ubiquitousness of this impact and examines the German responses to it. Contributions by well-known scholars cover politics, industry, social life and mass culture.

Author: Thomas Adam
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1851096337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1366

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Book Description
This comprehensive encyclopedia details the close ties between the German-speaking world and the Americas, examining the extensive Germanic cultural and political legacy in the nations of the New World and the equally substantial influence of the Americas on the Germanic nations. From the medical discoveries of Dr. Johann Siegert, surgeon general to Simon Bolivar, to the amazing explorations of the early-19th-century German explorer Alexander von Humboldt, whose South American and Caribbean travels made him one of the most celebrated men in Europe, Germany and the Americas examines both the profound Germanic cultural and political legacy throughout the Americas and the lasting influence of American culture on the German-speaking world. Ever since Baron von Steuben helped create George Washington's army, German Americans have exhibited decisive leadership not only in the military, but also in politics, the arts, and business. Germany and the Americas charts the lasting links between the Germanic world and the nations of the Americas in a comprehensive survey featuring a chronology of key events spanning 400 years of transatlantic history.

Author: Jeffrey Legro
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801442728
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Stunning shifts in the worldviews of states mark the modern history of international affairs: how do societies think about—and rethink—international order and security? Japan's "opening," German conquest, American internationalism, Maoist independence, and Gorbachev's "new thinking" molded international conflict and cooperation in their eras. How do we explain such momentous changes in foreign policy—and in other cases their equally surprising absence? The nature of strategic ideas, Jeffrey W. Legro argues, played a critical and overlooked role in these transformations. Big changes in foreign policies are rare because it is difficult for individuals to overcome the inertia of entrenched national mentalities. Doing so depends on a particular nexus of policy expectations, national experience, and ready replacement ideas. In a sweeping comparative history, Legro explores the sources of strategy in the United States and Germany before and after the world wars, in Tokugawa Japan, and in the Soviet Union. He charts the likely future of American primacy and a rising China in the coming century. Rethinking the World tells us when and why we can expect changes in the way states think about the world, why some ideas win out over others, and why some leaders succeed while others fail in redirecting grand strategy.

Author: Jacques R. Pauwels
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company
ISBN: 1459408721
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
In the spirit of historians Howard Zinn, Gwynne Dyer, and Noam Chomsky, Jacques Pauwels focuses on the big picture. Like them, he seeks to find the real reasons for the actions of great powers and great leaders. Familiar Second World War figures from Adolf Hitler to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin are portrayed in a new light in this book. The decisions of Hitler and his Nazi government to go to war were not those of madmen. Britain and the US were not allies fighting shoulder to shoulder with no motive except ridding the world of the evils of Nazism. In Pauwels' account, the actions of the United States during the war years were heavily influenced by American corporations -- IBM, GM, Ford, ITT, and Standard Oil of New Jersey (now called Exxon) -- who were having a very profitable war selling oil, armaments, and equipment to both sides, with money gushing everywhere. Rather than analyzing Pearl Harbor as an unprovoked attack, Pauwels notes that US generals boasted of their success in goading Japan into a war the Americans badly wanted. One chilling account describes why President Truman insisted on using nuclear bombs against Japan when there was no military need to do so. Another reveals that Churchill instructed his bombers to flatten Dresden and kill thousands when the war was already won, to demonstrate British-American strength to Stalin. Leaders usually cast in a heroic mould in other books about this war look quite different here. Nations that claimed a higher purpose in going to war are shown to have had far less idealistic motives. The Second World War, as Jacques Pauwels tells it, was a good war only in myth. The reality is far messier -- and far more revealing of the evils that come from conflicts between great powers and great leaders seeking to enrich their countries and dominate the world.

Author: John W. Lemza
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476624100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
On April 28, 1946, a small group of American wives and children arrived at the port of Bremerhaven, West Germany, the first of thousands of military family members to make the trans–Atlantic journey. They were the basis of a network of military communities—“Little Americas”—that would spread across the postwar German landscape. During a 45-year period which included some of the Cold War’s tensest moments, their presence confirmed America’s resolve to maintain Western democracy in the face of the Soviet threat. Drawing on archival sources and personal narratives, this book explores these enclaves of Americanism, from the U.S. government's perspective to the grassroots view of those who made their homes in Cold War Europe. These families faced many challenges in balancing their military missions with their daily lives during a period of dynamic global change. The author describes interaction in American communities that were sometimes separated, sometimes connected with their German neighbors.

Author: Loyd Lee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313033145
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
A broadly interdisciplinary work, this handbook discusses the best and most enduring literature related to the major topics and themes of World War II. Military historiography is treated in essays on the major theaters of military operations and the related themes of logistics and intelligence, while political and diplomatic history is covered in chapters on international relations, resistance movements, and collaboration. The volume analyzes themes of domestic history in essays on economic mobilization, the home fronts, and women in the military and civilian life. The book also covers the Holocaust. This handbook approaches each topic from a global viewpoint rather than focusing on individual national communities. Except for nonprint material, the literature, research, and sources surveyed are primarily those available in English. The volume is aimed at both experts on the war and the general academic community and will also be useful to students and serious laymen interested in the war.

Author: Lee Kruger
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319388363
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
This book examines the U. S. Army’s presence in Germany after the Nazi regime’s capitulation in May 1945. This presence required the pursuit of two stated missions: to secure German borders, and to establish an occupation government within the assigned U.S. zone and sector of Berlin. Both missions required logistics support, a critical aspect often understated in existing scholarship. The security mission, covered by the combat troops, declined between 1945 and 1948, but grew again with the Berlin Blockade/Airlift in 1948, and then again with the Korean crisis in 1950. The logistics mission grew exponentially to support this security mission, as the U.S. Army was the only U.S. Government agency possessing the ability and resources to initially support the occupation mission in Germany. The build-up of ‘Little Americas’ during the occupation years stood forward-deployed U.S. military forces in Europe in good stead over the ensuing decades.

Author: Dean A. Nowowiejski
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700632743
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
The American Army in Germany, 1918–1923: Success against the Odds by Dean A. Nowowiejski fills a gap in American military and political history through thorough research and a compelling narrative of the Rhineland occupation. After the armistice ended the fighting on the Western Front in World War I, the US Third Army marched into the American occupation zone around the city of Koblenz, Germany, in December 1918. American forces remained there as part of an “inter-Allied” coalition until early 1923. Nowowiejski reintroduces us to a successful military diplomat, Major General Henry T. Allen, who faced two major challenges: build an efficient army and handle the complexity of working with the Allied powers of France, Britain, and Belgium in the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission (IARHC). Allen’s ability to balance the interests of the French with those of the occupied Germans made him an indispensable participant in the High Commission. As the French sought revenge and added security against Germany, Allen moderated their actions with diplomatic skill. When the French sent forces into Germany in 1920 and 1921, Allen ensured that the US zone around Koblenz remained free of French interference. These achievements were without the support of the administration, and Congress had no desire to take part in European affairs. Allen also had to create a competent American army in the Rhineland so that the Allied powers and the Germans would respect American views and interests. He successfully took a large number of new recruits, who replaced World War I combat veterans, and molded them into a professional fighting force. As a result, the American Forces in Germany became an exemplar for the entire US Army and a symbol to the Allies and Germans of American power and resolve. This force competently accomplished the difficult task of postwar occupation according to the highest international standards. The US administration made the decision in 1922 to radically cut back the size of Allen’s army, and in 1923 to remove all US troops from Germany. The author analyzes this withdrawal as a “missed opportunity” for US leverage on diplomatic developments in Europe.

Author: John Cunningham Wood
Publisher: Taylor & Francis US
ISBN: 9780415323925
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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