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“Germany Belongs in the Western World”: Germany and Consensus Politics in America, 1945–1959

Brian C. Etheridge

in Enemies To Allies: Cold War Germany and American Memory

This chapter shows how coalitions formed around different understandings of Germany in the early postwar period. Once decided upon a policy of rehabilitation toward Germany, the American government ... More

This chapter shows how coalitions formed around different understandings of Germany in the early postwar period. Once decided upon a policy of rehabilitation toward Germany, the American government promoted a Cold War narrative of Germany that legitimized America's struggle against the Soviet Union. With the prestige and stature that the U.S. government enjoyed after victory in World War II, the dawning of a new ideological struggle with the Soviet Union, and a widespread fear of communist subversion, an era of consensus settled in that discouraged dissent. While some actors, such as the Federal Republic of Germany and the American Council on Germany, promoted the Cold War narrative based on their respective self-interests, major Jewish groups like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League offered their support, or at least refused to dissent, out of fear of being labeled anti-American or sympathetic to Bolshevism. The only organization that remained faithful to the world war narrative and resolved to stand against the power of the state was the Society for the Prevention of World War III. It was marginalized in the larger society and abandoned by its erstwhile allies.Less

“The Anti-German Wave”: Maintaining and Challenging Consensus in an Age of Chaos, 1959–1969

Brian C. Etheridge

in Enemies To Allies: Cold War Germany and American Memory

This chapter illustrates that during the late 1950s and early 1960s, a number of factors changed the sociopolitical landscape both abroad and at home. Although the U.S.-German relationship became ... More

This chapter illustrates that during the late 1950s and early 1960s, a number of factors changed the sociopolitical landscape both abroad and at home. Although the U.S.-German relationship became strained under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the rhetoric of Democratic administrations did not differ significantly from that of previous administrations. Especially by the middle of the 1960s, with the war in Vietnam intensifying, the civil rights movement fragmenting, and campuses in open revolt, Johnson deployed the Cold War narrative to legitimize his foreign and domestic policies. Aware of the strained relationship with the U.S. government, West German officials sought to combat what they perceived as an “anti-German wave” of material in the American mass media by intensifying their public activities. Fearful and critical of the tension between the American and West German governments, the American Council on Germany similarly sought to strengthen the alliance. The rift between the two governments, along with a series of international events that cast West Germany in a bad light, led Jewish organizations to reassess their stance toward the German Question. Still, while they became more critical, they, like the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, refrained from an open break with the West German government.Less

Creating the Western Alliance: Britain and Germany after World War II

CHRISTOPH BLUTH

in Britain, Germany, and Western Nuclear Strategy

This chapter describes the process whereby the Federal Republic of Germany formally gained its sovereignty and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alliance. This provides a framework ... More

This chapter describes the process whereby the Federal Republic of Germany formally gained its sovereignty and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alliance. This provides a framework of debate about nuclear weapons policy. This chapter also gives a discussion of early history of NATO nuclear strategy, the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe (including West Germany), and Britain's search for an independent nuclear deterrent. These years were the influential years of the NATO Alliance. Moreover, Britain exerted a lot of effort to include United States and Canada in a Western defence pact and the United States only signed the treaty establishing NATO on 4 April 1949.Less

Germany: The Mixed‐Member System as a Political Compromise

Susan E. Scarrow

in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds?

Describes how the German mixed‐member electoral system arose, and shows how it developed both from interest‐based bargaining and from more widely shared concerns about political stability. Some of ... More

Describes how the German mixed‐member electoral system arose, and shows how it developed both from interest‐based bargaining and from more widely shared concerns about political stability. Some of the features that are most characteristic of the current German arrangements—including giving citizens two ballots and the legal threshold set at 5% of the national vote—were absent in West Germany's first electoral law. These points were incorporated into the German law as the result of partisan struggles, contests whose outcomes were shaped by the shifting contours of West Germany's evolving party system. In other words, although the circumstances of total regime collapse and temporary occupation created rare opportunities to develop a political consensus for principled experimentation with new institutional designs, the German ‘model’ was as much an ad hoc creation as it was the product of theoretically inspired engineering. The different sections of the chapter are: Electoral Systems in the Federal Republic of Germany; The Origins of Germany's Mixed‐Member System; The 1949 Law—and the 1953 and 1956 laws; The German Electoral System Since 1956; and Conclusion: Accidentally Inventing a Model?Less

Triumph: Economic Integration, 1955–1957

Sebastian Rosato

in Europe United: Power Politics and the Making of the European Community

This chapter is structured around four questions: Why did the Europeans not achieve economic integration in the late 1940s and early 1950s? Why did the Federal Republic of Germany welcome the Benelux ... More

This chapter is structured around four questions: Why did the Europeans not achieve economic integration in the late 1940s and early 1950s? Why did the Federal Republic of Germany welcome the Benelux proposal in 1955 and make substantial concessions to France in order to establish the European Economic Community (EEC)? Why did the French agree to create a supranational common market so soon after rejecting the defense community and then carry through on their commitment? And why did the British initially join the discussions, quickly pull out, and then propose a competing European industrial free trade area (FTA) in October 1956, before finally seeking to associate their own economic grouping with the common market? It argues that these events are best understood as the product of balance of power politics. Specifically, the global distribution of power made European cooperation possible, and the major protagonists endorsed or refused integration based on balance of power calculations.Less

From Managerial to Contested Control in Germany

Mary O'Sullivan

in Contests for Corporate Control: Corporate Governance and Economic Performance in the United States and Germany

Like its US counterpart, the characteristic features of the post‐war system of corporate governance in the former West Germany have deep roots in the region's history. Section 7.2 of this chapter ... More

Like its US counterpart, the characteristic features of the post‐war system of corporate governance in the former West Germany have deep roots in the region's history. Section 7.2 of this chapter analyses the evolution of managerial control in pre‐war Germany and identifies its central institutional foundations as inter‐company shareholding and bank–industry relations. Section 7.3 describes how these institutions persisted in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) after the war, although through the institution of co‐determination, the post‐war system of corporate governance was transformed beyond its narrow pre‐war confines into a contested form of organizational control; in shaping control over corporate resource allocation, these social conditions were complemented by institutions––especially the dual system of apprenticeship––that supported the organizational integration of resources in German business enterprises. Section 7.3 further discusses how, on the basis of the system of governance that supported organizational control, German companies achieved considerable success in industrial sectors in which high quality was more important than low cost as a basis for competitive advantage; it also analyses how the type of organizational control that emerged in the post‐war period influenced the distribution of wealth in the economy. The last main section, Sect. 7.4, discusses corporate governance in relation to performance.Less

The Shifting Contours of the German Homeland

Nadav G. Shelef

in Homelands: Shifting Borders and Territorial Disputes

This chapter discusses the transformations in the area that counted as part of the homeland in post-World War II Germany. The West German setting is especially useful because it features the ... More

This chapter discusses the transformations in the area that counted as part of the homeland in post-World War II Germany. The West German setting is especially useful because it features the simultaneous loss of territories that differ in their ethnic composition; in economic value; whether they came to be excluded from the homeland, and, if they did, when this redefinition of the homeland occurred. Political movements in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) also differed in when, and even whether, they withdrew homeland territoriality from the various parts of the homeland Germany lost. The chapter then traces the withdrawal of homeland territoriality from Germany's lost lands and, leveraging the internal variation that characterizes the German experience, explains the timing of the changes that took place, and accounts for the absence of change where one might have expected it to occur. This historical process tracing shows that different logics of legitimation and domestic political mechanisms played a crucial role in explaining the pattern of stability and change in conceptions of the German homeland.Less

Operational Thinking in the Age of the Atom

Gerhard P. Gross

David T. Zabecki (ed.)

in The Myth and Reality of German Warfare: Operational Thinking from Moltke the Elder to Heusinger

Unlike the downfall of 1918, that of 1945 changed fundamentally a central element of German operational thinking. Divided into two states, Germany moved from being the center of Europe to being the ... More

Unlike the downfall of 1918, that of 1945 changed fundamentally a central element of German operational thinking. Divided into two states, Germany moved from being the center of Europe to being the border between two hostile world power blocs. As a result, the need for a quick decision that had dominated German military thinking since Schlieffen became moot. This chapter examines the struggle of the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany to develop a new theory of war accounting for nuclear weapons. In the West, NATO encouraged this development, but in the East, Soviet ideology prevented Germany’s independent command and control methods from taking root. Thus, West Germany inherited Schlieffen and Moltke’s operational theory while the GDR did not. This tradition led Inspector General of the Bundeswehr Adolf Heusinger, in contrast to the prevailing American ideology of “massive response,” to advocate for a “flexible response” and for the use of nuclear weapons for deterrence only, allowing his ground forces to conduct classical operations. Although his plans were largely accepted, he struggled to comprehend the revolutionary nature of nuclear weapons and the impact they would have on future wars.Less

The German Federal Constitutional Court: Present State, Future Challenges

Rainer Nickel

in Building the UK's New Supreme Court: National and Comparative Perspectives

This chapter discusses the ways in which the Federal Republic of Germany and its constitutional court managed the difficult problem of organizing human rights and civil rights adjudication and ... More

This chapter discusses the ways in which the Federal Republic of Germany and its constitutional court managed the difficult problem of organizing human rights and civil rights adjudication and constitutional adjudication in general. The first part of the chapter sketches the federal framework of constitutional adjudication in Germany, and the particular role and function of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) within this framework. The second part describes the relation between the FCC and constitutional courts of the 16 Länder that form the Federal Republic. The third part analyzes the challenges arising from international and supra-national law above the level of the constitution, namely the European Convention on Human Rights and EU law. More precisely, it focuses on how the human rights adjudication of the European Court of Human Rights influences the status and function of the FCC, and examines how the European Court of Justice's adjudication on European Community law affects the position of the FCC. Finally, the question of constitutional adjudication in the era of ‘Europeanization’ is addressed.Less

From the Cold War to the Present

Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius

in The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present

This chapter follows, through the Cold War up to the present day, the continuing and evolving German relationship with Eastern Europe. The different orientations of the Federal Republic of Germany ... More

This chapter follows, through the Cold War up to the present day, the continuing and evolving German relationship with Eastern Europe. The different orientations of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic are analyzed through their foreign policies, the building of the Berlin Wall, Ostpolitik, and the curious competition to appropriate Prussia's disputed historical legacy. The chapter concludes by taking stock of the state of the German myth of the East today, examining complexities of reunification and the persistent ‘wall in the minds’, especially in mutual antagonistic stereotypes of ‘Wessis’ and ‘Ossis’, so-called ‘Ostalgie’ (nostalgia for a lost eastern German state and society), and the paradoxical belated rise of a distinct East German national identity. The chapter ends with an assessment of the future of German relations with Eastern Europe, marked by issues like the challenges of the European Union's expansion and relations with the new Russia.Less

‘We are (afraid of) the people’: Constituent Power in German Constitutionalism

Christoph Möllers

in The Paradox of Constitutionalism: Constituent Power and Constitutional Form

This chapter examines the special path of constitutional development in Germany. It shows how developments from the Kaiserreich, through Weimar to the Nazi regime has rendered any attempt to make a ... More

This chapter examines the special path of constitutional development in Germany. It shows how developments from the Kaiserreich, through Weimar to the Nazi regime has rendered any attempt to make a direct appeal to the people, or even to the authority of a representative parliament, problematic. It indicates how the highly legalistic constitutional culture that evolved in the post-war Federal Republic was a product of conscious efforts to eliminate any claim to populism in the constitutional settlement imposed by the Allies, and suggests that the appeal to an especially formal notion of ‘constitutional patriotism’ has its basis in that history.Less

The Diplomacy of Guilt

Todd H. Hall

in Emotional Diplomacy: Official Emotion on the International Stage

This chapter explores the role of the diplomacy of guilt during the initial decades of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the State of Israel. When the FRG came into being in ... More

This chapter explores the role of the diplomacy of guilt during the initial decades of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the State of Israel. When the FRG came into being in 1949, it inherited a legacy of international suspicion and hostility born of the acts of the Nazi regime during World War II. Perhaps nowhere was this more in evidence than in Israel, which officially treated the FRG as a pariah. In subsequent decades, however, FRG relations with Israel would not only improve, but would also come to involve diplomatic support, substantial transfers of aid, and even covert and open military assistance. The chapter looks at the motives and means of early FRG attempts at rapprochement with Israel and the subsequent trajectory of relations between the two states. It argues that FRG behavior is best understood as part of an effort to rehabilitate its image on the international stage by pursuing the diplomacy of guilt vis-à-vis Israel.Less

The Transformation of Europe and the End of the Cold War

James J. Sheehan

in The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989

This chapter examines the transformation of Europe after 1945 and how it affected the timing and character of the Cold War's end. It first considers how the European states, particularly Britain, ... More

This chapter examines the transformation of Europe after 1945 and how it affected the timing and character of the Cold War's end. It first considers how the European states, particularly Britain, France, and the Federal Republic of Germany, learned to live with the Cold War before discussing their relationship with the Soviet Union, the United States, and one another. It then explores the changes that occurred after 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership of the Soviet Union and the process of European integration entered a new phase. Finally, it assesses the role played by Europe in the end of the Cold War, with particular reference to the German question.Less

Jewish Museums in the Federal Republic of Germany

Inka Bertz

in Visualizing and Exhibiting Jewish Space and History

This chapter examines the history of Jewish museums in the Federal Republic of Germany. It describes the different phases of public presentations of Jewish history and culture characterized by ... More

This chapter examines the history of Jewish museums in the Federal Republic of Germany. It describes the different phases of public presentations of Jewish history and culture characterized by dramatic changes in museological emphases. These include the first phase in the early 1960s which coincided with efforts at examining the history and legacy of National Socialism and the Holocaust; the second phase began in the mid-1970s with the founding of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft judischer Sammlungen; the third phase in the 1980s; and the fourth phase in which Holocaust remembrance was reconfigured.Less

Introduction

Peter Speiser

in The British Army of the Rhine: Turning Nazi Enemies into Cold War Partners

This introductory chapter provides a review of the political and social impact of the British attempt to transform the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) from an occupation force of the defeated Nazi ... More

This introductory chapter provides a review of the political and social impact of the British attempt to transform the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) from an occupation force of the defeated Nazi Germany to an alliance partner of the Federal Republic of Germany. The study begins in 1948, when it became increasingly evident that the western zones of Germany would merge into a semi-sovereign state; it ends in 1957, when the generally good political, economic, and cultural cooperation that had been established between Britain and Germany in the postwar decade began to deteriorate. The study seeks to establish the extent to which the BAOR provided an effective tool for the improvement of Anglo-German relations in a crucial period of the Cold War.Less

Housing and urban renewal: the case of Germany

Jürgen Friedrichs, Rolf Müller, and Wendelin Strubelt

in Renewing Europe's housing

The two post-war German states were founded in 1949. In the former Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), policy was dominated initially by the shortage of housing following the war. Population increase ... More

The two post-war German states were founded in 1949. In the former Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), policy was dominated initially by the shortage of housing following the war. Population increase led in the 1960s and 1970s to the building of many new single family houses and large peripheral housing estates. Plans to demolish older houses in inner city areas were criticised, leading in the 1970s to a popular movement against further destruction. From 1971 to 1990 a programme co-financed by the FRG and the constituent states (Länder) supported housing renewal in older inner city areas and historic towns; and was followed from 1999 by the Social City programme, focussing on deprived neighbourhoods. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) faced similar housing problems to the FRG but chose different strategies to deal with them. New industrialised housing was constructed, and existing housing neglected. By 1988, only 9 per cent of housing in the GDR was in ‘good condition’. After reunification in 1990, renewal became a primary focus for urban policy in the former GDR: inner cities were redeveloped and system-built housing estates renewed or demolished. Demand for private housing led to suburbanisation. In 2005, the federal government began the further decentralisation of housing responsibilities to the Länder, including support for modernising the housing stock as part of the urban renewal process.Less

The Federal Republic’s Adaptation to Western European Normality: Gadamer, the Two Frankfurt Schools, and Hans Jonas

Vittorio Hösle

in A Short History of German Philosophy

The two most appalling consequences of National Socialism were the victims of mass murder and the Second World War. The National Socialists also destroyed, along with many other things, the special ... More

The two most appalling consequences of National Socialism were the victims of mass murder and the Second World War. The National Socialists also destroyed, along with many other things, the special status of German culture. They did so by driving out and murdering its Jewish and critical intelligentsia; the German policy of occupation caused Scandinavia, central Eastern Europe, and the Benelux countries, where German had often been a scientific lingua franca, to turn resolutely toward English; and even after the restoration of constitutional government based on the rule of law in the Federal Republic, further travel along specifically German philosophical paths was no longer possible. This chapter discusses the philosophers of the Federal Republic who won wide international recognition. A strong focus of the young Federal Republic was on the historiography of philosophy, to which thinkers attached their own, usually modest systematic ambitions.Less

Weimar after the Fall of the Berlin Wall: 1990 to 2013

Michael H. Kater

in Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present

This chapter describes Weimar after the fall of the Berlin Wall, focusing on the period 1990–2013. It first considers the interactions between Weimar's Ossi majority from East Germany and the newly ... More

This chapter describes Weimar after the fall of the Berlin Wall, focusing on the period 1990–2013. It first considers the interactions between Weimar's Ossi majority from East Germany and the newly influential minority of Wessis from West Germany against the backdrop of a Red Army presence. It then examines developments in Weimar after Soviet troops left Thuringia, focusing on Thuringia's recreation as a state and incorporation in the Federal Republic of Germany via official contracts signed on October 3, 1990, along with four other East German states that used to be former districts of the German Democratic Republic. It also explores how Weimar recaptured its culture between 1990 and 1998 and became the culture capital of Europe from 1999 to 2003. Finally, it looks at Nike Wagner's tenure as director of Weimar's annual art festival known as Kunstfest.Less

Unreliable Allies: The German Crucible and Russian Anti-Communism

Benjamin Tromly

in Cold War Exiles and the CIA: Plotting to Free Russia

Chapter 11 turns to a crucial challenge faced by the CIA-backed Russian exiles: the shifting political situation in West Germany, the crucial place d’armes for Cold War political operations against ... More

Chapter 11 turns to a crucial challenge faced by the CIA-backed Russian exiles: the shifting political situation in West Germany, the crucial place d’armes for Cold War political operations against the Soviet bloc. The two main Russian organizations funded by the agency, the NTS and TsOPE, attempted with great persistence to gain the sympathy of West German political and academic elites in the 1950s. German anti-Russian sentiment limited the success of the émigré charm offensive, however, while the shifting form of the Cold War in Europe weakened their position in the country. In the second half of the 1950s, CIA operations utilizing exiles came under scrutiny and pressure from the now sovereign West German state, which sought to safeguard its new diplomatic relationship with the USSR.Less