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Begin New Search Topic World War II Political Geography Germany

1. A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany

Author:
Luis Martinez, Jonas Jessen, and Guo Xu
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC)
Abstract:
This paper studies costly political resistance in a non-democracy. When Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945, 40% of the designated Soviet occupation zone was initially captured by the western Allied Expeditionary Force. This occupation was short-lived: Soviet forces took over after less than two months and installed an authoritarian regime in what became the German Democratic Republic (GDR). We exploit the idiosyncratic line of contact separating Allied and Soviet troops within the GDR to show that areas briefly under Allied occupation had higher incidence of protests during the only major episode of political unrest in the GDR before its demise in 1989 - the East German Uprising of 1953. These areas also exhibited lower regime support during the last free elections in 1946. We argue that even a “glimpse of freedom" can foster civilian opposition to dictatorship.
Topic:
Democracy, Occupation, World War II, Dictatorship, and Resistance
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, and East Germany

2. An Economic Analysis Of The Fall Of France In June 1940 Based On The Theory Of New Institutional Economics

Author:
Ioannis Salavrakos
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
he paper challenges the view that the fall of France in June 1940 is attributed to military errors of the French High Command and with the brilliant German offense in the Ardennes. The paper highlights that the French security strategy after the end of World War I failed because the country lacked the economic basis to implement its strategy. Thus the paper argues that the French endorsed an internal and external balancing strategy against Germany. The internal balancing strategy was associated with the ability of France to sustain powerful armed forces and obviously this was associated with high defense spending and a strong economy. The second part was associated with external balancing which was associated with the creation of alliances in Eastern Europe in order to block any German expansion. Again this was associated with strong economic relations between France and these states. This strategy was implemented during the 1919-1929 period however after the global economic crisis erupted the deterioration of the French economy made the continuation of this strategy impossible. Thus France was forced to follow a defensive strategy at the military level and the privileged bilateral economic relations with Eastern European countries were abolished and Germany replaced France as the major economic and trading partner of these states.
Topic:
Economics, Regional Cooperation, Military Strategy, and World War II
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, France, and Germany

3. Submerged on the Surface: The Not-So-Hidden Jews of Nazi Berlin, 1941-1945

Author:
Richard N. Lutjens Jr.
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Between 1941 and 1945, thousands of German Jews, in fear for their lives, made the choice to flee their impending deportations and live submerged in the shadows of the Nazi capital. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and interviews with survivors, this book reconstructs the daily lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin during the war years. Contrary to the received wisdom that “hidden” Jews stayed in attics and cellars and had minimal contact with the outside world, the author reveals a cohort of remarkable individuals who were constantly on the move and actively fought to ensure their own survival.
Topic:
Genocide, World War II, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, Berlin, and Central Europe

4. The Political Economy of Europe since 1945: A Kaleckian perspective

Author:
Joseph Halevi
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the early stages of the formation of the Common Market. The period covered runs from the end of WW2 to 1959, which is the year in which the European Payments Union ceased to operate. The essay begins by highlighting the differences between the prewar political economy of Europe and the new dimensions and institutions brought in by the United States after 1945. It focuses on the marginalization of Britain and on the relaunching of French great power ambitions and how the latter determined, in a very problematical way, the European complexion of France. Because of France’s imperial aspirations, France, not West Germany, emerged as the politically crisis prone country of Europe acting as a factor of instability thereby jeopardizing the process of European integration, Among the large European nations, Germany and Italy appear, for opposite economic reasons, as the countries most focused on furthering integration. Germany expressed the strongest form of neomercantilism while Italy the weakest.
Topic:
Economics, Political Economy, Global Political Economy, World War II, and Common Market
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Germany, and Global Focus

5. JUDGING 'PRIVILEGED' JEWS Holocaust Ethics, Representation, and the 'Grey Zone'

Author:
Adam Brown
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
The Nazis’ persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust included the creation of prisoner hierarchies that forced victims to cooperate with their persecutors. Many in the camps and ghettos came to hold so-called “privileged” positions, and their behavior has often been judged as self-serving and harmful to fellow inmates. Such controversial figures constitute an intrinsically important, frequently misunderstood, and often taboo aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on Primo Levi’s concept of the “grey zone,” this study analyzes the passing of moral judgment on “privileged” Jews as represented by writers, such as Raul Hilberg, and in films, including Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. Negotiating the problems and potentialities of “representing the unrepresentable,” this book engages with issues that are fundamental to present-day attempts to understand the Holocaust and deeply relevant to reflections on human nature.
Topic:
Mass Media, Film, Holocaust, World War II, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, California, Germany, and Central Europe

6. Perspectives for Researching British Appeasement of Nazi Germany in the Inter-War Years Using the Digitized Newspaper Collections of the British Library

Author:
Andrei Vasiliu
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
This paper aims to verify that the methods for researching the British appeasement policy towards Germany in the inter-war years can include the new method of studying the digitized collections of newspapers of the British Library. The policy of appeasement led by Great Britain during the inter-war years still represents a very attractive subject of research. The challenge lies not only in the new data harvested from primary sources such as documents and newspapers but also in the new methods of researching that may be applied, and that may increase the interest of scholars. Today, researching the digitized collections of archives are not even a futuristic resource, but a growing necessity. Accessing the British Library's digitized collections through the British Newspaper Archive website is often easier and more efficient than going to the archives. The site has more than 40 million digitized newspapers, mainly local periodicals, which can be accessed by searching for keywords, establishing filters and saving results to retrieve them later. The electronic resources of the digitized collections provide valuable help in my doctoral research on the Anglo-French appeasement reflected in the newspapers, which proves to be a great challenge, given the fact that the subject was widely covered in many of the central newspapers. But, of course, this method immediately poses multiple questions: is this method of research as rigorous as the traditional research conducted in the archives? Does this method provide the intercoder reliability framework required for such works? These are the research questions that remain at the center of this article. Previous research on the subject of digitized collections and also the analysis of the resources of the British Newspaper Archive in comparison with the traditional British Library resources can provide an answer.
Topic:
History, World War I, and World War II
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, and Germany

7. The Train Journey: Transit, Captivity, and Witnessing in the Holocaust

Author:
Simone Gigliotti
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Deportations by train were critical in the Nazis’ genocidal vision of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Historians have estimated that between 1941 and 1944 up to three million Jews were transported to their deaths in concentration and extermination camps. In his writings on the “Final Solution,” Raul Hilberg pondered the role of trains: “How can railways be regarded as anything more than physical equipment that was used, when the time came, to transport the Jews from various cities to shooting grounds and gas chambers in Eastern Europe?” This book explores the question by analyzing the victims’ experiences at each stage of forced relocation: the round-ups and departures from the ghettos, the captivity in trains, and finally, the arrival at the camps. Utilizing a variety of published memoirs and unpublished testimonies, the book argues that victims experienced the train journeys as mobile chambers, comparable in importance to the more studied, fixed locations of persecution, such as ghettos and camps.
Topic:
Genocide, Infrastructure, Holocaust, World War II, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Poland, and Germany

8. Historical Dialogue on Cham Issues

Author:
The Harriman Institute
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Professor Lambros Baltsiotis (Adjunct Lecturer, Research Centre for Minority Groups - Athens, Panteion University) and Professor Pellumb Xhufi (Professor of History, Albania Institute of History) participated in the second meeting. The organizers requested them to prepare scholarly perspectives of about 1,000 words commenting on the following statement: "Cham-Albanians suffered internment beginning in 1940, killings in 1944-45, and expulsion in 1945. Thousands of Cham-Albanians were killed in 1944 and 1945. These events occurred in a context and cycle of violence. It is alleged that Cham-Albanians were collaborators with the fascist and Nazi governments of Italy and Germany during World War II."
Topic:
Genocide, Human Rights, Violence, and World War II
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, Balkans, Albania, and Italy