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Author: Jeffry M. Diefendorf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 560
ISBN-13: 9780521431200
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume of essays by German and American historians discusses key issues of US policy toward Germany in the decade following World War II.
Author: Roger G. Miller
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2008-04-21
Total Pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9781603440905
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFollowing World War II, the Soviet Union drew an Iron Curtain across Europe, crowning its efforts with a blockade of West Berlin in a desperate effort to prevent the creation of an independent, democratic West Germany. The United States and Great Britain, aided by France, responded with a daring air logistical operation that in fifteen months delivered almost three million tons of coal, food, and other necessities to the people of Berlin. Now, drawing on rare U.S. Air Force files, recently declassified documents from the National Archives, records released since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the memories of airlift veterans themselves, Roger G. Miller provides an original study of the Berlin Airlift. The Berlin Airlift was an enterprise of epic proportions that demonstrated the power of air logistics as a political instrument. What began as a hastily organized operation by a small number of warweary cargo airplanes evolved into an intricate bridge of aircraft that flowed in and out of Berlin through narrow air corridors. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, a stream of airplanes delivered everything from food and medicine to coal and candy in defiance of breakdowns, inclement weather, and Soviet hostility. And beyond the airlift itself, a complex system of transportation, maintenance, and supply stretching around the world sustained operations. Historians, veterans, and general readers will welcome this history of the first Western victory of the Cold War. Maps, diagrams, and more than forty photographs illustrate the mechanical inner workings and the human faces that made that triumph possible.
Author: Christian F. Ostermann
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2021-04-27
Total Pages: 566
ISBN-13: 1503607631
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 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.
Author: Richard Bessel
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2012-09-27
Total Pages: 648
ISBN-13: 1849832013
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 1945, Germany experienced the greatest outburst of deadly violence that the world has ever seen. Germany 1945 examines the country's emergence from the most terrible catastrophe in modern history. When the Second World War ended, millions had been murdered; survivors had lost their families; cities and towns had been reduced to rubble and were littered with corpses. Yet people lived on, and began rebuilding their lives in the most inauspicious of circumstances. Bombing, military casualties, territorial loss, economic collapse and the processes of denazification gave Germans a deep sense of their own victimhood, which would become central to how they emerged from the trauma of total defeat, turned their backs on the Third Reich and its crimes, and focused on a transition to relative peace. Germany's return to humanity and prosperity is the hinge on which Europe's twentieth century turned. For years we have concentrated on how Europe slid into tyranny, violence, war and genocide; this book describes how humanity began to get back out.
Author: Carolyn Woods Eisenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 542
ISBN-13: 9780521627177
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEisenberg argues that the United States made the decision to divide Germany, and that this was the key development in the emergence of the Cold War.
Author: Mogens Pelt
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 456
ISBN-13: 8772895837
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTying Greece to the West: US-West German-Greek Relations 1949-74 examines the reconstruction of Greece in the post-war era and how the Greek foreign economic and political relations with the United States and West Germany developedespecially the Greek-West German trade and the American and West German financial and aid policy. Furthermore, it investigates what impact Greek foreign relations had on the domestic development, particularly in relation to the establishment of the dictatorship in 1967the so-called Colonels Regime. The Second World War disrupted the Greek economy, polarized politics and left Greece in a state of severe economic and social disorder. The Axis occupation was followed by civil war with devastating consequences and the Greek Civil War was one immediate reason for the declaration of the Truman Doctrine in 1947. The Truman Doctrine made Greece subject to the most costly overseas American aid program ever in peace time. However, gradually, West Germany became the b
Author: Charlie Hall
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-01-16
Total Pages: 230
ISBN-13: 1351122533
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAt the end of the Second World War, Germany lay at the mercy of its occupiers, all of whom launched programmes of scientific and technological exploitation. Each occupying nation sought to bolster their own armouries and industries with the spoils of war, and Britain was no exception. Shrouded in secrecy yet directed at the top levels of government and driven by ingenuity from across the civil service and armed forces, Britain made exploitation a key priority. By examining factories and laboratories, confiscating prototypes and blueprints, and interrogating and even recruiting German experts, Britain sought to utilise the innovations of the last war to prepare for the next. This ground-breaking book tells the full story of British exploitation for the first time, sheds new light on the legacies of the Second World War, and contributes to histories of intelligence, science, warfare and power in the midst of the twentieth century.
Author: Christopher Knowles
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-01-26
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13: 1474267440
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBy adopting a unique biographical approach, this book examines the aims and intentions of twelve important and influential individuals who worked for the British Military Government in occupied Germany during the first three years after the end of the Second World War. British policy was distinctive, and the British zone was the largest and economically most important of all four zones. Although the three Western Allies all ended in the same place with the creation of an independent Federal Republic of (West) Germany in 1949, they took different paths to get there. The role of the British has been much misunderstood. Winning the Peace strikes a balance between earlier self-congratulatory accounts of the British occupation, and the later more critical historiography. It highlights diversity of aims and personal backgrounds and in so doing explains some of the complexities and apparent contradictions in British occupation policy. The book concludes that, despite diversity among those studied, all twelve individuals followed a policy described as the 'three Rs' - Reconstruction, Renewal and Reconciliation - rather than the 'four Ds' - De-militarisation, De-nazification, De-industrialisation, and Democratisation - highlighted in earlier histories of the occupation. Whilst reflecting on the role of human agency, Christopher Knowles examines why individuals sometimes failed to achieve what they originally intended, and how their aims and perceptions changed over time to reveal broader political, sociological and cultural forces, outside their direct control. This book is an innovative study for those interested in the Allied occupation, the post-war history of Germany and the study of military occupation generally.
Author: Petra Goedde
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2003-01-01
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13: 9780300090222
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Goedde finds that as American soldiers fraternized with German civilians, particularly as they formed sexual relationships with women, they developed a feminized image of Germany that contrasted sharply with their wartime image of the aggressive Nazi storm trooper. A perception of German "victimhood" emerged that was fostered by the German population and adopted by Americans.
Author: James Dobbins
Publisher: Rand Corporation
Published: 2003-08-01
Total Pages: 281
ISBN-13: 0833034863
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe post-World War II occupations of Germany and Japan set standards for postconflict nation-building that have not since been matched. Only in recent years has the United States has felt the need to participate in similar transformations, but it is now facing one of the most challenging prospects since the 1940s: Iraq. The authors review seven case studies--Germany, Japan, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan--and seek lessons about what worked well and what did not. Then, they examine the Iraq situation in light of these lessons. Success in Iraq will require an extensive commitment of financial, military, and political resources for a long time. The United States cannot afford to contemplate early exit strategies and cannot afford to leave the job half completed.
