This book focuses on one of the most visible and important
consequences of total defeat in postwar Germany: the return to East
and West Germany of the two million German soldiers and POWs who
spent an extended period in Soviet captivity. These former
prisoners made up a unique segment of German society. They were
both soldiers in the war of racial annihilation on the Eastern
front and then suffered extensive hardship and deprivation
themselves as prisoners of war. The book examines the lingering
consequences of the soldiers' return and explores returnees' own
responses to a radically changed and divided homeland.
Historian Frank Biess traces the origins of the postwar period
to the last years of the war, when ordinary Germans began to face
the prospect of impending defeat. He then demonstrates parallel
East and West German efforts to overcome the German loss by
transforming returning POWs into ideal post-totalitarian or
antifascist citizens. By exploring returnees' troubled adjustment
to the more private spheres of the workplace and the family, the
book stresses the limitations of these East and West German
attempts to move beyond the war.
Based on a wide array of primary and secondary sources,
"Homecomings" combines the political history of reconstruction with
the social history of returnees and the cultural history of war
memories and gender identities. It unearths important structural
and functional similarities between German postwar societies, which
remained infused with the aftereffects of unprecedented violence,
loss, and mass death long after the war was over.
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