German society underwent greater change under the four years of military occupation than it had under Hitler and the Nazis. The issue of reeducation lay at the heart of America's occupation policies. Encompassing denazification, restructuring of the school system, university reform, and cultural exchange, reeducation began as an idealistic (and naive) attempt to democratize Germany by making her over in the American image. For this meticulously researched study, James F. Tent has drawn on a wealth of recently declassified documents and on numerous personal interviews with veterans of the Occupation. He brings to life not only the dilemmas American officials faced in balancing the need for a political purge against the need to rehabilitate a disrupted society but also the paradoxes involved in a democracy's attempt to impose its ideals on another people. His book chronicles the dedicated work of many Americans; it also illuminates America's Occupation experience as a whole.

German society underwent greater change under the four years of military occupation than it had under Hitler and the Nazis. The issue of reeducation lay at the heart of America's occupation policies. Encompassing denazification, restructuring of the school system, university reform, and cultural exchange, reeducation began as an idealistic (and naive) attempt to democratize Germany by making her over in the American image. For this meticulously researched study, James F. Tent has drawn on a wealth of recently declassified documents and on numerous personal interviews with veterans of the Occupation. He brings to life not only the dilemmas American officials faced in balancing the need for a political purge against the need to rehabilitate a disrupted society but also the paradoxes involved in a democracy's attempt to impose its ideals on another people. His book chronicles the dedicated work of many Americans; it also illuminates America's Occupation experience as a whole.

A comprehensive history of the origins of democracy in Germany offers insight into the magnitude of the Third Reich's 1945 collapse and the challenges faced by the Allies in their efforts to construct a humane and democratic nation against formidable Nazi resistance. 30,000 first printing.

“Translated with skill and precision, these lectures . . . present the most penetrating analysis of two of Hölderlin’s most significant hymns” (Choice). Martin Heidegger’s 1934–1935 lectures on Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine” are considered the most significant among Heidegger’s lectures on Hölderlin. Coming at a crucial time in his career, the text illustrates Heidegger’s turn toward language, art, and poetry while reflecting his despair at his failure to revolutionize the German university and his hope for a more profound revolution through the German language, guided by Hölderlin’s poetry. These lectures are important for understanding Heidegger’s changing relation to politics, his turn toward Nietzsche, his thinking about the German language, and his breakthrough to a new kind of poetic thinking. “[This translation], including a clear and concise introduction and useful glossaries, attains both accuracy and clarity, rarely faltering in its choice of words.” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

In the dark days after the events in the book Gust Front, but before the primary invasion, the Chancellor of Germany faces a critical decision.

Of all European landscapes and regions, the Rhine is one of the most heavily overlaid with cultural and political meaning. Cradle of Romanticism, tourism, and the picturesque, bone of contention between the German and French spheres of cultural and geopolitical influence, the Rhine has attracted armies, artists, activists and tourists for centuries and has featured prominently the key writings of Europe’s literary and intellectual history from Byron to Lucien Febvre. This volume brings together eminent literary and cultural historians to present materials and analyses from various of the central nexus of European culture. The volume also contains a unique and comprehensive anthology of key texts (historical, poetical and polemical) related to the Rhineland and its contested position. Contributors are: Reinhard Baumann, Manfred Beller, Hans-Werner Breunig, Giovanna Cermelli, Joep Leerssen, Elmar Scheuren, Helmut J. Schneider, and Waldemar Zacharasiewicz.

In two centuries of non-stop hydraulic tinkering the Rhine River has been modified more than any other large river in the world. This title examines the environmental history of the Rhine from its headwaters in the Swiss Alps to its delta in the Netherlands. It looks at the great river engineering projects of the 19th and 20th centuries, and assesses the impact of the coal, steel and chemical industries on its banks.

The nervous geopolitical tension between East and West, the Cold War, emerged before the end of the Second World War and lasted until 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The British Army of the Rhine was born in 1945 out of the British Liberation Army at the close of the war as the military government of the British zone of occupied Germany. As the Soviet threat increased, so BAOR became less of an occupational army and assumed the role of defender of Western Europe, and as a major contributor to NATO after 1949.This book traces and examines the changing role of BAOR from 1945 to its demise in the 1993 Options for Change defence cuts. It looks at the part it played in the defence of West Germany, its effectiveness as a Cold War deterrent, the garrisons and capabilities, logistics and infrastructure, its arms and armour, the nuclear option and the lives of the thousands of families living on the front line.

Scholarship on the history of West Germany's educational system has traditionally portrayed the postwar period of Allied occupation as a failure and the following decades as a time of pedagogical stagnation. Two decades after World War II, however, the Federal Republic had become a stable democracy, a member of NATO, and a close ally of the West. Had the schools really failed to contribute to this remarkable transformation of German society and political culture? This study persuasively argues that long before the protest movements of the late 1960s, the West German educational system was undergoing meaningful reform from within. Although politicians and intellectual elites paid little attention to education after 1945, administrators, teachers, and pupils initiated significant changes in schools at the local level. The work of these actors resulted in an array of democratic reforms that signaled a departure from the authoritarian and nationalistic legacies of the past. The establishment of exchange programs between the United States and West Germany, the formation of student government organizations and student newspapers, the publication of revised history and civics textbooks, the expansion of teacher training programs, and the creation of a Social Studies curriculum all contributed to the advent of a new German educational system following World War II. The subtle, incremental reforms inaugurated during the first two postwar decades prepared a new generation of young Germans for their responsibilities as citizens of a democratic state.