Germans of the generation born just before the outbreak of World War I lived through a tumultuous and dramatic century. This book tells the story of their lives and, in so doing, offers a new history of twentieth-century Germany, as experienced and made by ordinary human beings.On the basis of sixty-two oral-history interviews, this book shows how this generation was shaped psychologically by a series of historically engendered losses over the course of the century. In response, this generation turned to the collective to repair the losses it had suffered, most fatefully to the community of the "Volk" during the Third Reich, a racial collective to which this generation was passionately committed and which was at the heart of National Socialism and its popular appeal.

Tracking the turbulent course of 20th century German history. Around 1900, Germany was economically the strongest country on the European continent, a leader in the sciences, with a flourishing culture and a progressive social model. One hundred years later, it is presented as being so once again. But, in between, there were two world wars, a failed democracy, the Nazi dictatorship and the Holocaust, and the 40-year division of the country. How did Germany go from the economic and cultural bloom of the country around the turn of the century to mass crimes during the Nazi dictatorship? And how did the Germans emerge from this apocalypse over the next sixty years? Ulrich Herbert tackles here the questions of both the collapse in the first half of the century and the development from a post-fascist, ruined society to one of the most stable liberal democracies and one of the richest countries in the world in the latter half. To explain these trajectories, Herbert's analysis brings together wars and terror, utopia and politics, capitalism and the welfare state, socialism and liberal democratic society, gender and generations, culture and lifestyles, European integration and globalization.

This is the first book to examine this crucial relationship between politics and culture in Germany, not only during the Nazi and Cold War eras but in periods when the effects are less obvious.

The gripping stories of ordinary Germans who lived through World War II, the Holocaust, and Cold War partition—but also recovery, reunification, and rehabilitation Broken Lives is a gripping account of ordinary Germans who came of age under Hitler and whose lives were scarred and sometimes destroyed by what they saw and did. Drawing on six dozen memoirs by Germans born in the 1920s, Konrad Jarausch chronicles the unforgettable stories of people who not only lived through the Third Reich, World War II, the Holocaust, and Cold War partition, but also participated in Germany's astonishing postwar recovery, reunification, and rehabilitation. Bringing together the voices of men and women, perpetrators and victims, Broken Lives offers new insights about persistent questions. Why did so many Germans support Hitler through years of wartime sacrifice and Nazi inhumanity? How did they finally distance themselves from the Nazi past and come to embrace human rights? The result is a powerful portrait of the experiences of average Germans who journeyed into, through, and out of the abyss of a dark century.

This book is a clear and accessible guide to the controversial course of modern German history. A series of intellectually innovative and stimulating essays address key issues and debates, providing both chronological coverage and a thematic approach to modern German politics, economy, society, and culture.

'A New History of German Literature' offers some 200 essays on events in German literary history.

This is the first book to trace the history of all ethnic minorities in Germany during the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. It argues that all of the different types of states in Germany since 1800 have displayed some level of hostility towards ethnic minorities. While this reached its peak under the Nazis, the book suggests a continuity of intolerance towards ethnic minorities from 1800 that continued into the Federal Republic. During this long period German states were home to three different types of ethnic minorities in the form of- dispersed Jews and Gypsies; localised minorities such as Serbs, Poles and Danes; and immigrants from the 1880s. Taking a chronological approach that runs into the new Millennium, the author traces the history of all of these ethnic groups, illustrating their relationship with the German government and with the rest of the German populace. He demonstrates that Germany provides a perfect testing ground for examining how different forms of rule deal with minorities, including monarchy, liberal democracy, fascism and communism.