Bringing together incisive contributions from an international group of colleagues and former students, Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective takes stock of the field of German history as exemplified by the extraordinary scholarly career of Konrad H. Jarausch. Through fascinating reflections on the discipline’s theoretical, professional, and methodological dimensions, it explores Jarausch’s monumental work as a teacher and a builder of scholarly institutions. In this way, it provides not merely a look back at the last fifty years of German history, but a path forward as new ideas and methods infuse the study of Germany’s past.

Historians know a great deal about how wars begin, but far less about how they end. Whilst much has been written about the forces, passions, and institutions that mobilized societies for war and worked to sustain that mobilization through years of struggle, much less is known about the equally complex processes that demobilized societies in the wake of armed conflict. As such, this new book will be welcomed by scholars wishing to understand the effects of the Great War in its fullest context, including the reactions, behaviors, and attitudes of 'ordinary' Europeans during the tumultuous events of the years of demobilization. Taking a transnational perspective on demobilization this study demonstrates that the experience of mass industrial war generated remarkably similar pressures within both the defeated and victorious countries. Using as examples the important provincial centres of Munich and Manchester, this book examines the experiences of European urban-dwellers from the last year of the war until the early 1920s. Utilizing a wide variety of sources from more than twenty archives in Germany, Britain, and the United States, this book recovers voices from the period that are often lost in conventional narratives, capturing the richness and diversity of the ideas, visions, and conflicts engendered by those difficult and tumultuous years. The result is a book that paints a vivid picture of the difficulties that peace could bring to economies and societies that had rapidly and fully adapted to the demands of industrial world war.

Historians know a great deal about how wars begin, but far less about how they end. Whilst much has been written about the forces, passions, and institutions that mobilized societies for war and worked to sustain that mobilization through years of struggle, much less is known about the equally complex processes that demobilized societies in the wake of armed conflict. As such, this new book will be welcomed by scholars wishing to understand the effects of the Great War in its fullest context, including the reactions, behaviors, and attitudes of 'ordinary' Europeans during the tumultuous events of the years of demobilization. Taking a transnational perspective on demobilization this study demonstrates that the experience of mass industrial war generated remarkably similar pressures within both the defeated and victorious countries. Using as examples the important provincial centres of Munich and Manchester, this book examines the experiences of European urban-dwellers from the last year of the war until the early 1920s. Utilizing a wide variety of sources from more than twenty archives in Germany, Britain, and the United States, this book recovers voices from the period that are often lost in conventional narratives, capturing the richness and diversity of the ideas, visions, and conflicts engendered by those difficult and tumultuous years. The result is a book that paints a vivid picture of the difficulties that peace could bring to economies and societies that had rapidly and fully adapted to the demands of industrial world war.

In 1936, the Nazi state created a massive military training site near Wildflecken, a tiny community in rural Bavaria. During the war, this base housed an industrial facility that drew forced laborers from all over conquered Europe. At war s end, the base became Europe s largest Displaced Persons camp, housing thousands of Polish refugees and German civilians fleeing Eastern Europe. As the Cold War intensified, the US Army occupied the base, removed the remaining refugees, and stayed until 1994. Strangers in the Wild Place tells the story of these tumultuous years through the eyes of these very different groups, who were forced to find ways to live together and form a functional society out of the ruins of Hitler s Reich."