Few countries have caused or experienced more calamities in the 20th century than Germany. The country emerged from the Cold War as a newly united and sovereign state, eventually becoming Europe's indispensable partner for all major domestic and foreign policy initiatives. This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of some of the major issues of German domestic politics, economics, foreign policy, and culture by leading experts in their respective fields. This book serves primarily as a reference work on Germany for scholars and an interested public, but through this broader lens it also provides a magnifying glass of global developments which are challenging and transforming the modern state. The growing importance of Germany as a political actor and economic partner makes this endeavor all the more timely and pertinent from a German, European, and global perspective.

The creation of the Foreign Office under Adenauer tells us much about the possibilities and limits of professional diplomacy in the mid-twentieth century. It also demonstrates three themes central to the early history of the Federal Republic: the integration of the new state into the international community, the cooptation of German elites and traditions by the new political system, and the creation of government in a state under foreign occupation. In this important study, Thomas Maulucci argues that, despite an improvised start and a considerable continuity of practice and personnel with pre-1945 Germany, the changed international anddomestic situation proved decisive in creating a ministry that could help to implement new directions in German foreign policy. In addition, Maulucci explores the interactions between international, political, and social history, contributing to a literature that bridges the gap between the pre- and post-World War Two eras that characterized previous writing on German history. Based on extensive research in German, American, British, and French archives, Adenauer's Foreign Office is the only English-language book of its kind. The troubling question of personnel continuity in the German diplomatic service is of considerable importance today, especially because of the Foreign Office's previous attempts to portray its past in the best possible light. Of interest to scholars and students of German history and politics as well as non-specialists, this book provides new insights into post-war diplomacy, the sociology of German elites, and the problems involved in creating a new government after losing a major war.

Since World War II, Germany has confronted its own history to earn acceptance in the family of nations. Lily Gardner Feldman draws on the literature of religion, philosophy, social psychology, law and political science, and history to understand Germany's foreign policy with its moral and pragmatic motivations and to develop the concept of international reconciliation. Germany's Foreign Policy of Reconciliation traces Germany's path from enmity to amity by focusing on the behavior of individual leaders, governments, and non-governmental actors. The book demonstrates that, at least in the cases of France, Israel, Poland, and Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic, Germany has gone far beyond banishing war with its former enemies; it has institutionalized active friendship. The German experience is now a model of its own, offering lessons for other cases of international reconciliation. Gardner Feldman concludes with an initial application of German reconciliation insights to the other principal post-World War II pariah, as Japan expands its relations with China and South Korea.

The Routledge Handbook of German Politics and Culture offers a wide-ranging and authoritative account of Germany in the 21st century. It gathers the expertise of internationally leading scholars of German culture, politics, and society to explore and explain historical pathways to contemporary Germany the current ‘Berlin Republic’ society and diversity Germany and Europe Germany and the world. This is an essential resource for students, researchers, and all those looking to understand contemporary German politics and culture.

Radical ideologies may manifest differently at first, but they do follow a similar logic: truth claims, promises of salvation and a unifying common enemy. In Yemen's transition process today, the secessionist movement Al-Hirak has summoned the spirit of South Yemen, the only Marxist state in Arabia. This book meticulously describes how East Germany supported the implantation of this alien ideology in Yemen through its policy of »Socialist state- and nation-building«. In the same breath, the analysis captures the GDR's activities in the Middle East and their vital role in Moscow's Cold War strategy. Last but least, the study provides one of the few compact overviews of East German foreign policy in the English language of today.