Recasting West German Elites : Higher Civil Servants, Business Leaders, and Physicians in Hesse between Nazism and Democracy, 1945-1955 (Monographs in German History)

Hayse, Michael R.

Berghahn Books, Incorporated（2003/12発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 288 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781571812711
• DDC分類 305.552094309045

Full Description

The rapid shift of German elite groups' political loyalties away from Nazism and toward support of the fledgling democracy of the Federal Republic, in spite of the continuity of personnel and professional structures, has surprised many scholars of postwar Germany. The key, Hayse argues, lies in the peculiar and paradoxical legacy of these groups' evasive selective memory, by which they cast themselves as victims of the Third Reich rather than its erstwhile supporters. The avoidance of responsibility for the crimes and excesses of the Third Reich created a need to demonstrate democratic behavior in the post-war public sphere. Ultimately, this self-imposed pressure, while based on a falsified, selective group memory of the recent past, was more important in the long term than the Allies' stringent social change policies.

Contents

List of Charts and Tables

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Complicity and Disenchantment by 1945

Chapter 2. Compositional Change and Continuity, 1945-1955

Chapter 3. Legal Restructuring and Professional Reorganization

Chapter 4. Denazification and its Effects, 1945-1955

Chapter 5. Recasting Personal and Occupational World Views

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index