This book analyzes postwar Germany to show how social movements shape public memory and influence democratization through cooperation and conflict with government.

SAGE Memory Studies Journal & Memory Studies Association Outstanding First Book Award, Honorable Mention, 2019 Set in Israel in the first decade of the twenty-first century and based on long-term fieldwork, this rich ethnographic study offers an innovative analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It explores practices of "memory activism" by three groups of Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian citizens--Zochrot, Autobiography of a City, and Baladna--showing how they appropriated the global model of truth and reconciliation while utilizing local cultural practices such as tours and testimonies. These activist efforts gave visibility to a silenced Palestinian history in order to come to terms with the conflict's origins and envision a new resolution for the future. This unique focus on memory as a weapon of the weak reveals a surprising shift in awareness of Palestinian suffering among the Jewish majority of Israeli society in a decade of escalating violence and polarization--albeit not without a backlash. Contested memories saturate this society. The 1948 war is remembered as both Independence Day by Israelis and al-Nakba ("the catastrophe") by Palestinians. The walking tour and survivor testimonies originally deployed by the state for national Zionist education that marginalized Palestinian citizens are now being appropriated by activists for tours of pre-state Palestinian villages and testimonies by refugees.

Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and society. In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist activists, from surviving Jews to Turkish "guest" workers, from young hoodlums to middle-class mothers. We learn how they experienced and represented the institutions and social forces that shaped their lives and defined the wider culture. We see how two generations of West Germans came to terms not only with war guilt, division from East Germany, and the Angst of nuclear threat, but also with changing gender relations, the Americanization of popular culture, and the rise of conspicuous consumption. Individually, these essays peer into fascinating, overlooked corners of German life. Together, they tell what it really meant to live in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Volker R. Berghahn, Frank Biess, Heide Fehrenbach, Michael Geyer, Elizabeth Heineman, Ulrich Herbert, Maria Höhn, Karin Hunn, Kaspar Maase, Richard McCormick, Robert G. Moeller, Lutz Niethammer, Uta G. Poiger, Diethelm Prowe, Frank Stern, Arnold Sywottek, Frank Trommler, Eric D. Weitz, Juliane Wetzel, and Dorothee Wierling.

The dynamics of transnational memory play a central role in modern politics, from postsocialist efforts at transitional justice to the global legacies of colonialism. Yet, the relatively young subfield of transnational memory studies remains underdeveloped and fractured across numerous disciplines, even as nascent, boundary-crossing theories on topics such as multi-vocal, traveling, or entangled remembrance suggest new ways of negotiating difficult political questions. This volume brings together theoretical and practical considerations to provide transnational memory scholars with an interdisciplinary investigation into agency—the “who” and the “how” of cross-border commemoration that motivates activists and fascinates observers.

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award • One of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year “Impressive . . . Mr. Judt writes with enormous authority.” —The Wall Street Journal “Magisterial . . . It is, without a doubt, the most comprehensive, authoritative, and yes, readable postwar history.” —The Boston Globe Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world's most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through thirty-four nations and sixty years of political and cultural change-all in one integrated, enthralling narrative. Both intellectually ambitious and compelling to read, thrilling in its scope and delightful in its small details, Postwar is a rare joy. Judt's book, Ill Fares the Land, republished in 2021 featuring a new preface by bestselling author of Between the World and Me and The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Auschwitz, Belsen, Dachau. These names still evoke the horrors of Nazi Germany around the world. This 2001 book takes one of these sites, Dachau, and traces its history from the beginning of the twentieth century, through its twelve years as Nazi Germany's premier concentration camp, to the camp's postwar uses as prison, residential neighborhood, and, finally, museum and memorial site. With superbly chosen examples and an eye for telling detail, Legacies of Dachau documents how Nazi perpetrators were quietly rehabilitated to become powerful elites, while survivors of the concentration camps were once again marginalized, criminalized and silenced. Combining meticulous archival research with an encyclopedic knowledge of the extensive literatures on Germany, the Holocaust, and historical memory, Marcuse unravels the intriguing relationship between historical events, individual memory, and political culture, to offer a unified interpretation of their interaction from the Nazi era to the twenty-first century.

Within Germany, policies and cultural attitudes toward migrants have been profoundly shaped by the difficult legacies of the Second World War and its aftermath. This wide-ranging volume explores the complex history of migration and diversity in Germany from 1945 to today, showing how conceptions of “otherness” developed while memories of the Nazi era were still fresh, and identifying the continuities and transformations they exhibited through the Cold War and reunification. It provides invaluable context for understanding contemporary Germany’s unique role within regional politics at a time when an unprecedented influx of immigrants and refugees present the European community with a significant challenge.