Download or read book The German Myth of the East written by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-12-09 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two centuries and indeed up to the present day, Eastern Europe's lands and peoples have conjured up a complex mixture of fascination, anxiety, promise, and peril for Germans looking eastwards. Across the generations, a varied cast of German writers, artists, philosophers, diplomats, political leaders, generals, and Nazi racial fanatics have imagined (often in very different ways) a special German mission in the East, forging a frontier myth that paralleled the American myths of the 'Wild West' and 'Manifest Destiny'. Through close analysis of German views of the East from 1800 to our own times, The German Myth of the East reveals that this crucial international relationship has in fact been integral to how Germans have defined (and repeatedly redefined) themselves and their own national identity. In particular, what was ultimately at stake for Germans was their own uncertain position in Europe, between East and West. Paradoxically, the East came to be viewed as both an attractive land of unlimited potential for the future and as a place undeveloped, dangerous, wild, dirty, and uncultured. Running the gamut from the messages of international understanding announced by generations of German scholars and sympathetic writers, to the violent racial utopia envisaged by the Nazis, German imaginings of the East represent a crucial, yet unfamiliar, part of modern European history, and one that remains fundamentally important today in the context of an expanded European Union.
Download or read book The German Myth of the East written by Vejas G. Liulevicius and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the various different expressions of the distinctive German myth of the East, Vejas Liulevicius discusses its importance as a feature of German culture over the last two centuries, which has influenced German attitudes both to Eastern Europe itself and also to Germans' own sense of identity.
Download or read book East German Foreign Intelligence written by Kristie Macrakis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited book examines the East German foreign intelligence service (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, or HVA) as a historical problem, covering politics, scientific-technical and military intelligence and counterintelligence. The contributors broaden the conventional view of East German foreign intelligence as driven by the inter-German conflict to include its targeting of the United States, northern European and Scandinavian countries, highlighting areas that have previously received scant attention, like scientific-technical and military intelligence. The CIA’s underestimation of the HVA was a major intelligence failure. As a result, East German intelligence served as a stealth weapon against the US, West German and NATO targets, acquiring the lion’s share of critical Warsaw Pact intelligence gathered during the Cold War. This book explores how though all of the CIA’s East German sources were double agents controlled by the Ministry of State Security, the CIA was still able to declare victory in the Cold War. Themes and topics that run through the volume include the espionage wars; the HVA's relationship with the Russian KGB; successes and failures of the BND (West German Federal Intelligence Service) in East Germany; the CIA and the HVA; the HVA in countries outside of West Germany; disinformation and the role and importance of intelligence gathering in East Germany. This book will be of much interest to students of East Germany, Intelligence Studies, Cold War History and German politics in general. Kristie Macrakis is Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Thomas Wegener Friis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern Denmark’s Centre for Cold War Studies. Helmut Müller-Enbergs is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern Denmark and holds a tenured senior staff position at the German Federal Commission for the STASI Archives in Berlin.
Download or read book The Myth of the Eastern Front written by Ronald Smelser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some Americans are receptive to a positive interpretation of German military conduct on the Russian front in World War II.
Download or read book The Germans and the East written by Charles W. Ingrao and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The editors present a collection of 23 historical papers exploring relationships between "the Germans" (necessarily adopting different senses of the term for different periods or different topics) and their immediate neighbors to the East. The eras discussed range from the Middle Ages to European integration. Examples of specific topics addressed include the Teutonic order in the development of the political culture of Northeastern Europe during the Middle ages, Teutonic-Balt relations in the chronicles of the Baltic Crusades, the emergence of Polenliteratur in 18th century Germany, German colonization in the Banat and Transylvania in the 18th century, changing meanings of "German" in Habsburg Central Europe, German military occupation and culture on the Eastern Front in Word War I, interwar Poland and the problem of Polish-speaking Germans, the implementation of Nazi racial policy in occupied Poland, Austro-Czechoslovak relations and the post-war expulsion of the Germans, and narratives of the lost German East in Cold War West Germany.
Download or read book The German Myth of the East written by Vejas G. Liulevicius and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-09 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the various different expressions of the distinctive German 'myth of the East' that has been such a marked feature of German culture over the last two centuries, influencing German attitudes both to Eastern Europe itself and also to Germans' own sense of identity.
Download or read book War Land on the Eastern Front written by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-18 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War Land on the Eastern Front is a study of a hidden legacy of World War I: the experience of German soldiers on the Eastern front and the long-term effects of their encounter with Eastern Europe. It presents an 'anatomy of an occupation', charting the ambitions and realities of the new German military state there. Using hitherto neglected sources from both occupiers and occupied, official documents, propaganda, memoirs, and novels, it reveals how German views of the East changed during total war. New categories for viewing the East took root along with the idea of a German cultural mission in these supposed wastelands. After Germany's defeat, the Eastern front's 'lessons' were taken up by the Nazis, radicalized, and enacted when German armies returned to the East in World War II. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius's persuasive and compelling study fills a yawning gap in the literature of the Great War.
Download or read book Building the East German Myth written by Alan L. Nothnagle and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how communist youth propaganda contributed to East Germany's success
Download or read book Sagas of the Norsemen written by Loren Auerbach and published by Time Life Medical. This book was released on 1997 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a combination of archaeological artifacts and early writings, historians have recovered much of a lifestyle and philosophy that once rivaled those of Greece and Rome. Even today the names of figures from northern mythology, from Odin and Thor to the Valkyries, have not lost their power to excite the imagination. Richly illustrated.
Download or read book Past in the Making written by Michal Kopecek and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical revisionism, far from being restricted to small groups of ‘negationists,’ has galvanized debates in the realm of recent history. The studies in this book range from general accounts of the background of recent historical revisionism to focused analyses of particular debates or social-cultural phenomena in individual Central European countries, from Germany to Ukraine and Estonia. Where is the borderline between legitimate re-examination of historical interpretations and attempts to rewrite history in a politically motivated way that downgrades or denies essential historical facts? How do the traditional ‘national historical narratives’ react to the ‘spill-over’ of international and political controversies into their ‘sphere of influence’? Technological progress, along with the overall social and cultural decentralization shatters the old hierarchies of academic historical knowledge under the banner of culture of memory, and breeds an unequalled democratization in historical representation. This book offers a unique approach based on the provocative and instigating intersection of scholarly research, its political appropriations, and social reflection from a representative sample of Central and East European countries.
Download or read book The German Army on the Eastern Front written by Jeff Rutherford and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Histories of the German army on the Eastern Front generally focus on battlefield exploits on the war as it was fought in the front line. They tend to neglect other aspects of the armys experience, particularly its participation in the racial war demanded by the leadership of the Reich. This ground-breaking book aims to correct this incomplete, often misleading picture. Using a selection of revealing extracts from a wide range of wartime documents, it looks at the totality of the Wehrmachts war in the East. The documents have previously been unpublished or have never been translated into English, and they offer a fascinating inside view of the armys actions and attitudes. Combat is covered, and complicity in Hitlers war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. There are sections on the conduct of the war in the rear areas logistics, medical, judicial and the armys tactics, motivation and leadership. The entire text is informed by the latest research into the reality of the conflict as it was perceived and understood by those who took part.
Download or read book The Wehrmacht written by Wolfram WETTE and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a profound reexamination of the role of the German army, the Wehrmacht, in World War II. Until very recently, the standard story avowed that the ordinary German soldier in World War II was a good soldier, distinct from Hitler's rapacious SS troops, and not an accomplice to the massacres of civilians. Wolfram Wette, a preeminent German military historian, explodes the myth of a "clean" Wehrmacht with devastating clarity. This book reveals the Wehrmacht's long-standing prejudices against Jews, Slavs, and Bolsheviks, beliefs that predated the prophecies of Mein Kampf and the paranoia of National Socialism. Though the sixteen-million-member German army is often portrayed as a victim of Nazi mania, we come to see that from 1941 to 1944 these soldiers were thoroughly involved in the horrific cleansing of Russia and Eastern Europe. Wette compellingly documents Germany's long-term preparation of its army for a race war deemed necessary to safeguard the country's future; World War II was merely the fulfillment of these plans, on a previously unimaginable scale. This sober indictment of millions of German soldiers reaches beyond the Wehrmacht's complicity to examine how German academics and ordinary citizens avoided confronting this difficult truth at war's end. Wette shows how atrocities against Jews and others were concealed and sanitized, and history rewritten. Only recently has the German public undertaken a reevaluation of this respected national institution--a painful but necessary process if we are to truly comprehend how the Holocaust was carried out and how we have come to understand it.
Download or read book Blood Red Snow written by Gunter Koschorrek and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2011-04-13 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Günter Koschorrek wrote his illicit diary on any scraps of paper he could lay his hands on, storing them with his mother on infrequent trips home on leave. The diary went missing, and it was not until he was reunited with his daughter in America some forty years later that it came to light and became Blood Red Snow. The authors excitement at the first encounter with the enemy in the Russian Steppe is obvious. Later, the horror and confusion of fighting in the streets of Stalingrad are brought to life by his descriptions of the others in his unit their differing manners and techniques for dealing with the squalor and death. He is also posted to Romania and Italy, assignments he remembers fondly compared to his time on the Eastern Front. This book stands as a memorial to the huge numbers on both sides who did not survive and is, some six decades later, the fulfilment of a responsibility the author feels to honour the memory of those who perished.
Download or read book Becoming East German written by Mary Fulbrook and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For roughly the first decade after the demise of the GDR, professional and popular interpretations of East German history concentrated primarily on forms of power and repression, as well as on dissent and resistance to communist rule. Socio-cultural approaches have increasingly shown that a single-minded emphasis on repression and coercion fails to address a number of important historical issues, including those related to the subjective experiences of those who lived under communist regimes. With that in mind, the essays in this volume explore significant physical and psychological aspects of life in the GDR, such as health and diet, leisure and dining, memories of the Nazi past, as well as identity, sports, and experiences of everyday humiliation. Situating the GDR within a broader historical context, they open up new ways of interpreting life behind the Iron Curtain – while providing a devastating critique of misleading mainstream scholarship, which continues to portray the GDR in the restrictive terms of totalitarian theory.
Download or read book Learning from the Germans written by Susan Neiman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the past In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize and avoid them in the future.
Download or read book Operation Barbarossa and Germany s Defeat in the East written by David Stahel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an important reassessment of the failure of Germany's 1941 campaign against the Soviet Union.
Download or read book Re Imagining DEFA written by Séan Allan and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the time the Berlin Wall collapsed, the cinema of the German Democratic Republic—to the extent it was considered at all—was widely regarded as a footnote to European film history, with little of enduring value. Since then, interest in East German cinema has exploded, inspiring innumerable festivals, books, and exhibits on the GDR’s rich and varied filmic output. In Re-Imagining DEFA, leading international experts take stock of this vibrant landscape and plot an ambitious course for future research, one that considers other cinematic traditions, brings genre and popular works into the fold, and encompasses DEFA’s complex post-unification “afterlife.”
