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The Latvian-German politician and journalist Paul Schiemann was a passionate advocate of independence for the indigenous Baltic peoples. This book presents the biography of a man who battled against both Baltic and German nationalism.
This edited volume presents a comprehensive analysis of the ‘Baltic question’, which arose within the context of the Cold War, and which has previously received little attention. This volume brings together a group of international specialists on the international history of northern Europe. It combines country-based chapters with more thematic approaches, highlighting above all the political dimension of the Baltic question, locating it firmly in the context of international politics. It explores the policy decision-making mechanisms which sustained the Western non-recognition of Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic States after 1940 and which eventually led to the legal restoration of the three countries’ statehood in 1991. The wider international ramifications of this doctrine of legal continuity are also examined, within the context both of the Cold War and of relations between post-soviet Russia and the enlarging ‘Euro-Atlantic area’. The book ends with an examination of how this Cold War legacy continues to shape relations between Russia and the West.
A study of German economic influence in the Baltic states after World War I.
This important addition to twentieth-century German historiography treats the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich as a continuum, exploring its themes through the 1920s and 1930s without artificial breaks, Although the basic information is provided for an understanding of the text, John Hiden's purpose is not to provide yet another chronological narrative of German history between her successive defeats in the two World Wars; rather, he sets out to re-examine a number of key aspects of the period in a set of parallel thematic chapters deliberately designed to provoke reflection and debate.
The years from 1918 to 1945 remain central to European History. It was a breath-taking time during which the very best and very worst attributes of Mankind were on display. In the euphoria of peace which followed the end of the First World War, the Baltic States emerged as independent forces on the world stage, participating in thrilling experiments in national and transnational governance. Later, following economic collapse and in the face of rising totalitarianism among even Europe’s most cultured nations, Baltic communities succumbed to nationalism too. During wartime, Baltic peoples became both victims and, sometimes, victimisers. Ultimately their victimhood lasted until the end of the Cold War, yielding consequences still discernible at the start of the twenty first century. Taking the period 1918 to 1945 as pivotal, this collection of essays examines some of the key themes in Baltic History as they are emerging today. These include appreciations of identity, autonomy and the rights of national minorities; the everyday and social foundations of international security; and the importance of historical memory to popular and political identities.
Modern relativism and postmodern thought in culture and language challenge the 'truth' of history. This book considers how all historians, confined by the concepts and forms of argument of their own cultures, can still discover truths about the past. The Truth of History presents a study of various historical explanations and interpretations and evaluates their success as accounts of the past. C. Behan McCullagh contests that the variety of historical interpretations and subjectivity does not exclude the possibility of their truth. Through an examination of the constraints of history, the author argues that although historical descriptions do not mirror the past they can correlate with it in a regular and definable way. Far from debating in the abstract and philosophical only, the author beds his argument in numerous illuminating concrete historical examples. The Truth of History explores a new position between the two extremes of believing that history perfectly represents the past and that history can tell us nothing true of the past.
Basic elements - Adaptive agents - Echoing emergence - Simulating echo - Toward theory.
The story of how Corrie and her family became leaders in the Dutch Underground, hiding Jewish people in a specially built room in their house and aiding their escape from the Nazis.
Valdis Lumans provides an authoritative, balanced, and comprehensive account of one of the most complex, and conflicted, arenas of the Second World War. Struggling against both Germany and the Soviet Union, Latvia emerged as an independent nation state after the First World War. In 1940, the Soviets occupied neutral Latvia, deporting or executing more than 30,000 Latvians before the Nazis invaded in 1941 and installed a puppet regime. The Red Army expelled the Germans in 1944 and reincorporated Latvia as a Soviet Republic. By the end of the war, an estimated 180,000 Latvians fled to the West. The Soviets would deport at least another 100,000. Drawing on a wide range of sources--many brought together here for the first time--Lumans synthesizes political, military, social, economic, diplomatic, and cultural history. He moves carefully through traditional sources, many of them partisan, to scholarship emerging since the end of the Cold War, to confront such issues as political loyalties, military collaboration, resistance, capitulation, the Soviet occupation, anti-Semitism, and the Latvian role in the Holocaust.
This book analyses some of the fundamental reasons for the triumph of National Socialism in 1933. Written in 1983 by historians at Canadian, American and British universities, it provides a clear and balanced historiographical perspective of the dynamics of socio-political mobilization which helped make the Machtergreifung possible. The relationship during the Weimar republic between the Nazi Party and various social groups constitutes a major element in the book, as do the attitudes towards Hitler displayed by a number of influential institutions. The Nazis’ successful mobilization of popular support before 1933 is illustrated through the impact of foreign policy and ideology/propaganda on the Germans.