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The city of West Berlin was of supreme importance to the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany in their effort to fight the Cold War during the 1950s. Only by utilizing billions of dollars and (later on) Deutschmarks could the city survive in its isolated position east of the Iron Curtain. The reasons for, and the particulars of, American aid during the first years after the Berlin airlift is described in this paper as well as the West German aid, which began to replace direct American support in the middle of the 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France's role is often overlooked in the abundant literature on the end of the Cold War. In addition, most accounts tell of the country's alleged lack of understanding for the democratic revolutions in the East and of its supposed attempt to block German unification. Yet archival research, now becoming possible, which allows for a thorough reappraisal, categorically invalidates most of this. In spite of concerns over the risk of instability - which were shared by other key players - French diplomacy in fact played an important and constructive role in the events of 1989-91, not least through the relaunch of European integration which led to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. The French case provides a useful reminder that the dominant narrative of these events - with its almost exclusive focus on the superpowers (the US to begin with) and its lack of interest in European actors or factors - needs to be revised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay focuses on the ERW controversy in the context of NATO modernisation of tactical nuclear weapons and Soviet deployment of SS-20s. The rationale of a low-yield warhead supposedly tailor-made for the European theatre enabled the Americans to ask their allies for a prior commitment on deployment, while the Europeans retorted that the process of decision making should be triggered by a US previous determination of whether to produce the neutron bomb. Consultations were essentially a FRG-US-UK affair. Against this background British inability to properly assess the genuine German position was a very important factor, resulting in a persistent climate of uncertainty. Bonn's decision not to inform the British that on 20 January 1978 they agreed to give the Americans a qualified green light to deploy ERWs on German soil represents a blunder in this sense. It kept the UK government wary, instead of possibly precipitating a solution of the controversy by hammering out the terms of an arms control offer to the Soviets according to a ‘dual track’ approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay analyses the relationship between nuclear technology and ideas about the nation in the late 1950s by looking at the US–West German bilateral agreement and at American proposals to develop reactors in West Berlin, both of which emerged from Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace programme. American efforts to maintain tight control over the German nuclear sphere contradicted the claim that reactors were solely instruments of peace. At the same time, plans to build a reactor in West Berlin underscored that city's status as an occupied city with an uncertain future and with ill-defined relationships to East and West Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to the rise of totalitarian theories after 1990 research on broadcasting in the former socialist states emphasised its propagandistic character and political overstretch. This cannot be dismissed out of hand, but a closer look to listeners' mail show, that the praxis of Radio in the GDR didn't simply merge in political persuasion. In fact it results even in dictatorship in the long run from a dynamic negotiation process between audiences and broadcasters. In particular radio in East Germany was by no means resistant to the influences of popular culture from the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the intentions of the Soviet leadership towards Germany during the early 1950s in the light of recently released documents. Whereas Malenkov's comment of 2 June 1953 shows the commitment to a 'bourgeois' Germany and the victory of Beria in post-Stalin debates about the German question, Bodnăras' report on a meeting of the party chairmen and defense ministers of the people's democracies of 9 to 12 January 1951 underlines the real fear of war due to the Western decision to rearm Western Germany, and the minutes of the meetings between Stalin and the SED leadership on 1 and 7 April 1952 demonstrate both the difference of interest between Stalin and Ulbricht and the difference of performance between Stalin and Beria. Minutes of the Presidium of the CPSU's Central Committee show that the final decision for the stabilisation of the GDR was not taken before November 1955. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of the Berlin Wall posed a double challenge to the East German state monopoly film industry, the DEFA. Not only was it difficult for many of its employees to get to the DEFA's Babelsberg studios to the south-west of sealed-off West Berlin - they lived either in East Berlin and henceforth had to circumnavigate it, or actually in West Berlin itself. They also found it a challenge politically to explain the Wall to the GDR's population. The first feature film produced on the subject, ...und deine Liebe auch, was only a partial success. Deliberately international both in its artistic inspiration and aspects of its content, it struck a highly poetic note, without fully achieving its aim of making its central figure, who failed to flee the GDR because of the Wall, appear either foolish or criminal. The lack of popular success of this film is symptomatic of the moral and philosophical dilemmas in which the GDR's intelligentsia found itself on account of the construction of the 'anti-fascist rampart'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is time to re-open the question of the early post-war division of Europe as a problem. In order to move beyond bipolarity and give a fuller representation of the tentative and open character of the immediate post-war years it is furthermore pertinent to include a broader array of actors. By highlighting the aspirations of Internationale Gruppe Demokratischer Sozialisten, a transnational network of social-democratic refugees from Germany and German-occupied countries in Sweden during the war and some of their endeavours after the war the articles explores the relative merits of realist and liberal readings of the outcomes. It is argued that historiography so far has underestimated the nationalistic, anti-German position of French and British socialists at the end of the war, and its wider implications as well as the importance of internal domestic dissensions within the UK and US administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the cultural contradictions of Cold War education in Germany. Promises of liberal capitalism in the twentieth century; Factors that contributed to the collapse of the communist bloc by the end of twentieth century; Cultural contradiction in the field of higher education.

An analysis based on the archives of the Soviet Foreign Ministry of how the note of 10 March 1952 came into being shows that Stalin had not yet given up his hopes of a speedy conclusion of a peace treaty between the four victorious powers and Germany. From the arguments presented in preparing the Soviet initiative and from the textual changes that were made throughout the process of editing, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that, in the spring of 1952, Stalin really wanted what he said: namely, the conclusion of a peace treaty establishing a neutral Germany. That the initiative was not perfect in every respect does not alter this conclusion. In particular, it is not disproved by the observation that Stalin was disappointed by the negative reaction of the Western powers to the note. On the contrary, Foreign Ministry documents demonstrate that until the Western response of 25 March, the Soviet dictator hoped to prevent the recruitment of West German troops and the integration of the Federal Republic into the Western military alliance. Ironically, Konrad Adenauer saw it the same way -- and hence did everything he could to prevent the establishment of a neutral Germany in 1952. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the motives of Soviet Union leader Nikita Krushchev that led him to stage the Berlin Crisis in Germany during the Cold War. Discussion on some documents that provide information on the dynamics of the Berlin Crisis; Information on the decision of the U.S. government to deploy nuclear intermediate-range missiles in Central Europe in December 1957; Response of the Soviet leader to the involvement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on the issue; Details of the negotiation and agreement reached in relation to the Berlin Crisis.

Demonstrates that British Labour Party's anti-Adenauer policy was designed to marginalize the pro-German Democratic Republic and anti-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) factions within the Labour movement and strengthen support for a non-revisionist West Germany within NATO. Characteristics of Labour foreign policy in the Cold War; Factor which intensified Labour opposition to German rearmament; Implications of Labour attitudes towards West Germany between 1951 and 1964.

Examines the Berlin Crisis of 1958 to 1961 during which East Germany used direct and indirect means to persuade the reluctant Soviets to build the Berlin Wall. Ways in which allies mattered in the Cold War; Differences in goals, priorities and strategies between East German and Soviet Union; Sources of East German bargaining power with the Soviets.