This course examines some of the immense challenges of reconstruction faced by Germany in the aftermath of World War II and during the decades that followed. In 1945, with most European governments in some state of collapse or disarray and with civilian populations devastated by the effects of modern warfare, dislocation, Nazi occupation and persecution, it looked by no means certain that either Germany or Europe would recover from self-inflicted wounds. In Germany, the problems of reconstruction were initially tackled less by the Germans themselves, and more by the Allied powers (America, Britain, France and the Soviet Union) who now occupied the country. We will consider the Allied occupations of Germany as case studies in the rebuilding of a fractured society and discredited political system from the ground up, both in their Western capitalist and Soviet communist variants. The problems of reconstruction continued long past the end of the Allied occupations and the division of Germany into East and West; each of the Germanies had to face the larger, less tangible task of reconstructing viable national identities, which could both unify and inspire their citizens, while somehow or other accounting for the traumas and crimes of the recent past. We will follow some of the debates and controversies that have attended this process of cultural reconstruction in both Germanies since the sixties and that still reverberate today. Format: lecture/discussion. Evaluation will be based on class participation and three papers. Group B

Hour: ROSENFELD