This collection of essays, first published in 1986, provides an exciting introduction to modern German agrarian history. The essays offer a revised account of the agricultural sector in an industrial Germany, and provide an extensive methodological, conceptual and thematic range. This collection challenges accepted interpretations, suggests some alternatives and at the same time offers a context in which new questions can be posed and answers can be sought.

This collection of essays, first published in 1986, provides an exciting introduction to modern German agrarian history. The essays offer a revised account of the agricultural sector in an industrial Germany, and provide an extensive methodological, conceptual and thematic range. This collection challenges accepted interpretations, suggests some alternatives and at the same time offers a context in which new questions can be posed and answers can be sought.

"This is an excellent collection. In its thematic breadth and its broad geographical coverage it is quite distinctive." . Mark Roseman, Indiana University, Bloomington

In 1945, Europeans confronted a legacy of mass destruction and death: millions of families had lost their homes and livelihoods; millions of men in uniform had lost their lives; and millions more had been displaced by the war's destruction, and the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime. From a range of methodological historical perspectives-military, cultural, and social, to film and gender and sexuality studies-this volume explores how Europeans came to terms with these multiple pasts. With a focus on distinctive national experiences in both Eastern and Western Europe, it illuminates how postwar stabilization coexisted with persistent insecurities, injuries, and trauma.

Frank Biess is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany (Princeton UP, 2006), and he is currently working on a history of fear and anxiety in postwar Germany.

Robert G. Moeller is Professor of modern European and German history at the University of California, Irvine. He has published widely on the social, cultural, and political history of Germany in the twentieth century.

Robert Moeller investigates the German peasantry's rejection of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and provides a new interpretation of Catholic peasant conservatism in western Germany. According to Moeller, rural support for conservative political solutions to the troubled Weimar Republic was the result of a series of severe economic jolts that began in 1914 and continued unabated until 1933.
During the late nineteenth century, peasant farmers in the Rhineland and Wesphalia adjusted their production to a capitalist market and enjoyed an unprecedented period of prosperity that lasted until the outbreak of World War I. After August 1914 peasant producers confronted state intervention in the agricultural sector, regulation of prices and markets, and the subordination of agrarian interests to the demands of urban consumers. A controlled economy for many agricultural products continued into the postwar period.
Focusing on the Catholic peasantry, Moeller shows that peasant rejection of the Weimar Republic was firmly grounded in the immediate circumstances of the war economy and the uneven process of postwar recovery. He challenges the dominant view that rural support for conservative political solutions was primarily the product of the peasantry's hostility toward industrial capitalism and of long-term social and political affinities dating from the nineteenth century. Moeller's findings show that conservative agrarian ideology was carefully formulated in response to the specific peasant grievances that originated in this period of continuing economic and political crisis.
Originally published in 1986.
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"The Nazi State and German Society "invites students to view the history of the twentieth century's most infamous totalitarian regime through the voices of people who experienced it. Robert Moeller's comprehensive introduction presents an overview of the Nazi regime, from Weimar to the end of the war, explaining the factors that led millions of ordinary Germans to sacrifice individual rights in the interest of collective goals and national security. The effects of Nazi rule on Aryans, Jews, and other "undesirables" are explored, along with a discussion of why so few people organized against the regime. Over 50 documents from a broad range of perspectives -- including speeches, memoirs, letters, diaries, and propaganda posters -- bring this history to life and illustrate the effect of Nazi rule on German society. Document headnotes, a chronology, questions for consideration, and a selected bibliography provide pedagogical support.

"A brilliant analysis of the manner in which postwar Germany forged for itself a new identity on the basis of vivid yet selective memories of the past. Robert Moeller convincingly demonstrates that public preoccupation with the expulsion of Germans from the east and the fate of prisoners of war in the Soviet Union created a sense of German victimhood that facilitated overcoming past crimes by asserting an equivalence of suffering. This is the best analysis by far of the 'negative' elements in the reconstruction of German national identity. The book is an indispensable contribution to our understanding of German politics and culture from the fall of Nazism to the present day."--Omer Bartov, author of "Mirrors of Destruction"

"Required reading for anyone interested in how selective memory shapes national identity, Robert Moeller's "War Stories "provides a whole new reading of Germany's confrontation with its Nazi past from the fifties through the nineties. . . . This is history as it should be written in the twenty-first century."--Temma Kaplan, author of "Taking Back the Streets"

From the perspective of the 1990s, it is possible to see the road to the Bonn Republic and West Germany's "social market economy" as the "correct" postwar German path. But unified Germany continues to confront enormous problems of social inequality and widespread resistance to the acceptance of a truly multi-cultural society. By exploring how West Germans confronted--or failed to confront--similar problems in the early history of the Federal Republic, this collection makes a crucial contribution to understanding the present.
Moving beyond accounts of high politics and international relations, the essays brought together here focus on the intersections between the politics of daily life and the politics of the nation-state. Building on the approaches of women's history, social history, and cultural studies, they emphasize that the process of defining West Germany in the 1950s took place not only in the geopolitical arena of the Cold War but also in dance halls and at the movies, in worker-training programs, and in patterns of consumption.
"West Germany under Construction" not only expands our understanding of the early formation of West German society, it also outlines ways to continue the excavation of that past. It will be mandatory reading for students and scholars alike.
Robert G. Moeller is Professor of History, University of California, Irvine.