Publications of the German Historical Institute

"This collection of essays explores the impact that nationalism, capitalism, and socialism had on economics during the first half of the twentieth century. Focusing on Central Europe, contributors examine the role that businesspeople and enterprises played in Germany's and Austria's paths to the catastrophe of Nazism. Based on new archival research, the essays gathered here ask how the business community became involved in the political process and describes the consequences arising from that involvement. Particular attention is given to the responses of individual businesspeople to changing political circumstances and their efforts to balance the demands of their consciences with the pursuit for profit"--

"This book examines the use of national and international law to prosecute Nazi crimes, the centerpiece of twentieth-century state-sponsored genocide and mass murder. In its various essays, the contributors reconstruct the historical setting of the crimes committed under the aegis of the Nazi regime and examine why postwar adjudication took place only within limits, within the national and international judicial forums responsible for prosecuting perpetrators. The topics discussed include the impact of the Nazi justice system on postwar justice, postwar legal proceedings against those who committed war crimes and genocide, the work of the Nuremberg tribunal and Allied trials, and judicial investigations and prosecutions in East Germany, West Germany, and Austria. They span the postwar period up to contemporary U.S. legal efforts to deport Nazi criminals within its borders and libel suits brought by Holocaust deniers in British and Canadian courts, and they reveal new perspectives on the present and future implications of these trials."--Jacket.

This volume of essays by German and American historians deals with the most important issues of U.S. policy toward Germany in the decade following World War II: constitutional problems, political and economic democratization, higher education, urban reconstruction, questions of industry, demilitarization and rearmament, treatment of war criminals, problems of German and European security, and the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the Western Alliance. All contributions to this volume are based on recent research in German and American archives, including two comprehensive essays on archival sources in the Federal Republic and the United States for the Occupation period and the era of the Allied High Commission. While a substantial body of historical literature deals with the policies of the U.S. government for Germany (1945-49), archival research into American policy toward Germany in the period of the Allied High Commission (1949-55) is still in an early stage. Relevant records are not easily accessible to historians. The essays in this volume therefore represent one of the first efforts to expand our knowledge of both periods of German history and of American policy toward Germany in the first postwar decade.

Medieval Concepts of the Past shows how the history of the Middle Ages is being reshaped by leading medieval historians in Germany and the United States in light of cultural and social-scientific investigations into ritual, language, and memory. These two national traditions of medieval scholarship, which have been largely separated over the course of the twentieth century, are drawing closer together through a common interest in issues of social science and linguistic theory as applied to the representation of the past. This book marks a significant step in the reconvergence of these two historiographical traditions.