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Status and Prospects of German Trade-Unions and Works Councils: (May 27, 1946)

Herbert Marcuse

in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort

This chapter evaluates the status and prospects of trade unions and works councils in Nazi Germany. The report details that the German trade-union movement has developed in a different direction from ... More

This chapter evaluates the status and prospects of trade unions and works councils in Nazi Germany. The report details that the German trade-union movement has developed in a different direction from American unionism. The German unions were affiliated with political parties: the Free Trade-Unions with the Social Democratic Party; the Christian-National Trade-Unions with the Center Party and the German National People's Party; and the German Trade Associations (Hirsch-Duncker) with the Democratic Party. The chapter first provides an overview of trade unionism in Germany prior to Adolf Hitler's ascension to power before discussing the spontaneous revival of trade unionism after the collapse of the Nazi regime. It then considers trade-union development in the Allied zones of occupation and in the Soviet zone of occupation, along with the revival of the works councils or shop stewards movement. It also addresses the question of the “political neutrality” of the trade-union movement.Less

Writing History while Sitting on Packed Suitcases: Holocaust Documentation in the Jewish Displaced Persons Camps of Germany, Austria, and Italy

Laura Jockusch

in Collect and Record!: Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe

This chapter discusses several historical commissions in Germany, Austria, and Italy, three countries where between 1945 and 1949 large numbers of eastern European Jews temporarily lived in Displaced ... More

This chapter discusses several historical commissions in Germany, Austria, and Italy, three countries where between 1945 and 1949 large numbers of eastern European Jews temporarily lived in Displaced Persons (DP) camps under Allied occupation. Diverse in educational, social, and national backgrounds, most commission activists had endured the Holocaust in German-occupied eastern Europe. Unlike their counterparts in France and Poland, they did not primarily document the destruction of local Jewish communities but looked eastward to their countries of origin, which they had left either by wartime displacement or postwar escape. As they waited to establish new lives overseas, documenting the recent past provided a way to endow their involuntary sojourn in the DP camps with meaning. They regarded the historical material they gathered as preparation for emigration and Jewish life outside Europe, preferably in a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine/Israel, not as a path to integration into the societies outside their camps.Less

The History of Modern Japanese Law

Hiroshi Oda

in Japanese Law

This chapter focuses on the history of modern Japanese law. It discusses the three stages wherein foreign law was received. The first stage was in the 7th and 8th centuries, when Japan imported the ... More

This chapter focuses on the history of modern Japanese law. It discusses the three stages wherein foreign law was received. The first stage was in the 7th and 8th centuries, when Japan imported the Chinese political and legal system. The second stage occurred between the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the mid-19th century and the early 20th century, when the industrialization of Japan was accomplished. The third stage began after the Second World War and continued during the period of the Allied occupation.Less

Radio Propaganda during the Ocupation, 1945–1949

Nicholas J. Schlosser (ed.)

in Cold War on the Airwaves: The Radio Propaganda War against East Germany

This chapter focuses on the founding of RIAS and how stations in East and West Berlin reported on the Berlin Blockade and Airlift. It shows how RIAS's formative years, from 1946 to 1949, were ... More

This chapter focuses on the founding of RIAS and how stations in East and West Berlin reported on the Berlin Blockade and Airlift. It shows how RIAS's formative years, from 1946 to 1949, were turbulent ones. Constant tensions existed both within and without the station with regard to what its purpose and responsibility as a radio broadcaster actually were. Personnel problems led to internal discord, rivalries, and frequent staff turnover. The rapidly deteriorating political situation in Berlin, as Allied cooperation collapsed and German political parties quickly aligned themselves with the rival superpowers, both fed and compounded these pressures. From the very beginning the inherent contradictions between objective news and propaganda came to shape the type of station RIAS became and the type of news and programming it broadcasted.Less

Reenvisioning Japan

Simon Partner

in Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer

This chapter focuses on the significant new developments after the war—developments that were the product of a catastrophic defeat attributable in part to the failure of Japanese technology. It ... More

This chapter focuses on the significant new developments after the war—developments that were the product of a catastrophic defeat attributable in part to the failure of Japanese technology. It explores the visions that established business leaders, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs, as well as ordinary Japanese people, developed during the formative years of the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952). The chapter explains that during these early postwar years, Japanese businessmen and others began quite consciously to search for the keys to the immense prosperity of the United States—a prosperity which was all the more tantalizing given its contrast with life in a Japan prostrate from defeat. It notes that although these visions were diverse and often contested, key protagonists in this story focused on a few common themes which were to unlock, for them, the gates to prosperity.Less

The Children’s Zoo: Elephant Ambassadors and Other Creatures of the Allied Occupation

Ian Jared Miller

in The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo

While the wartime zoo was hammered into a ritual altar intended to generate consent and spur personal sacrifice, the postwar zoo was rebuilt under the US-led Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) ... More

While the wartime zoo was hammered into a ritual altar intended to generate consent and spur personal sacrifice, the postwar zoo was rebuilt under the US-led Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) into a conservative paradise, a theme park focused on the figures of the uncorrupted child and the blameless animal. Animals and children were reframed together as part of the difficult process of “de-imperialization”—the deconstruction of empire—and national reconsolidation. The institution sought to marshal kids both as actors and audience after 1945, not only working for children, but also working through them. In the process, the zoological garden was reconstructed with American funds and repopulated by American animals. Illuminated against the backdrop of a bombed-out capital, the occupation-era zoo sought to reinforce the new order of things in the guise of staging its escape.Less

Conclusion: Beyond Victimhood

in Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan

Sex work in Japan has been highly shaped and even formalized for 300 years. A coalition based on the rights of sex workers might have been far more efficient in fighting exploitative proprietors and ... More

Sex work in Japan has been highly shaped and even formalized for 300 years. A coalition based on the rights of sex workers might have been far more efficient in fighting exploitative proprietors and decreasing the incidence of venereal disease (VD). In Japan, sex workers were not the only ones who could find profit and opportunity during the Allied Occupation. The proprietors have managed a law that put streetwalkers out of business and solidified their control over the industry. The Prostitution Prevention Law has protected the interests of male proprietors and permitted sex work to continue in base areas and exempted clients from the risk of prosecution. Sex workers under the Occupation were unambiguously authorized, with control over their fortunes, their families, and their fates. In general, the history of Japan under occupation demonstrates that it is all too easy to treat the most vulnerable people as symbols.Less

Shinto from 1945 through 1989

Helen Hardacre

in Shinto

The Allied Occupation of Japan aligned Shinto with religion, ended its public funding, and squelched its claim to public status. The Occupation singled out Shinto as responsible for prewar militarism ... More

The Allied Occupation of Japan aligned Shinto with religion, ended its public funding, and squelched its claim to public status. The Occupation singled out Shinto as responsible for prewar militarism and ultra-nationalism. Censorship prevented Shinto from answering this charge. The post-Occupation politicization of the Association of Shinto Shrines is a major topic. The Association became a prominent patron of the Liberal Democratic Party’s most right-leaning faction. It continues to mourn Shinto’s loss of public status and to greater respect for Japan’s “indigenous tradition.” Meanwhile, significant legal verdicts opened new scope for Shinto ceremonial paid for with public funds, also creating obstacles for dissenters.Less

Japan: Student Activism in An Emerging Democracy

Patricia G. Steinhoff

in Student Activism in Asia: Between Protest and Powerlessness

This chapter discusses Japanese student activism during the Allied Occupation (1945–52) in Japan. During this period, Japanese students who joined military service returned to their campuses and ... More

This chapter discusses Japanese student activism during the Allied Occupation (1945–52) in Japan. During this period, Japanese students who joined military service returned to their campuses and joined student activists to demand the removal of wartime school administrators and the restoration of faculty who had been expelled during the war. Three critical policies of the Occupation fundamentally reshaped the postwar environment for student activism: the legalization of the Left; the far-reaching civil liberties protections of the new constitution; and the restructuring of the education system. The development of student activism in postwar Japan in the context of an emerging democracy and developmentalism fundamentally shaped the forms and nature of student activism.Less

Behind the Curtain

Dayna L. Barnes

in Architects of Occupation: American Experts and Planning for Postwar Japan

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Allied occupation of Japan. Between 1939 and 1945, American policymakers decided to reorient rather than punish postwar Japan. They hoped to ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Allied occupation of Japan. Between 1939 and 1945, American policymakers decided to reorient rather than punish postwar Japan. They hoped to transform the current enemy into a “responsible” international actor through a short American-led military occupation. The political, religious, and even linguistic makeup of an ancient and deeply patriotic nation would be changed; Imperial Japan's colonial possessions would be liberated or redistributed. American intervention was expected to remake Japan into a pacifist economic power supportive of a postwar American order. However, President Franklin Roosevelt, congressmen, popular media figures, and high-level officials all opposed the plan at different points.Less

Public Confessions of German National Guilt, 1945–1947

George Faithful

in Mothering the Fatherland: A Protestant Sisterhood Repents for the Holocaust

Leaders of the Confessing Church found themselves in prominent positions in German society under Allied occupation. With the help of Karl Barth, a few of them issued statements affirming Germans’ ... More

Leaders of the Confessing Church found themselves in prominent positions in German society under Allied occupation. With the help of Karl Barth, a few of them issued statements affirming Germans’ collective guilt for the Third Reich. The 1945 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt (Stuttgarter Schulderklärung), also known as the Stuttgart Confession, placed Germans in a “solidarity of guilt” but remained vague as to what that guilt entailed. The 1947 Darmstadt Statement (Darmstädter Wort) provided greater clarity and specificity: the guilt was both political and social. Christians in general and Protestants in particular had done little to oppose Hitler, apart from rejecting governmental encroachment into church affairs. Neither document made direct reference to the Holocaust or to Nazi treatment of the Jews. Only a few of their signers, such as Martin Niemöller and Hans Asmussen, actually agreed with the documents; others acted under compulsion, forced by the occupying Allied powers.Less