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The definitive account of the historic diplomatic agreement that provided a blueprint for ending the Cold War The Helsinki Final Act was a watershed of the Cold War. Signed by thirty-five European and North American leaders at a summit in Finland in the summer of 1975, the document presented a vision for peace based on common principles and cooperation across the Iron Curtain. The Final Act is the first in-depth history of the diplomatic saga that produced this important agreement. This gripping book explains the Final Act's emergence from the parallel crises of the Soviet bloc and the West during the 1960s and the conflicting strategies that animated the negotiations. Drawing on research in eight countries and multiple languages, The Final Act shows how Helsinki provided a blueprint for ending the Cold War and building a new international order.
The 20th century was marked by the emergence of human rights and their power to transform international relations, but not everyone who claimed human rights wanted to make the world a better place, while sometimes the benefits of human rights were unintended. Eckel recounts a history that is complex, polycentric, and does not provide easy lessons.
The Second World War in Eastern Europe is far from a neglected topic, especially since social, cultural, and diplomatic historians have entered a field previously dominated by operational histories, and produced a cornucopia of new scholarship offering a more nuanced picture from both sides of the front. However, until now, the story has still been disjointed and specialized, whereby military, social, economic, and diplomatic histories continue to give their own separate accounts. This collection of essays attempts to bring these themes into a more cohesive whole that tells a complex, multifaceted story of war on the Eastern Front as it truly was. This is one of the few critical examinations...
This book brings together historians from Great Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Canada, Austria, and Latvia who have worked and published on fraternisation between Prisoners of War and local women during either the First or Second World War, providing the first comparative study of this multi-faceted phenomenon in different belligerent countries. By focusing on prisoners as wartime migrants and studying the nature and impact of their interactions with the local female population, this book expands the existing framework on prisoner of war studies. Its substantial scope and comparative approach make it an important point of reference in the growing research field of POW studies.
In recent years, the issue of space has sparked debates in the field of Holocaust Studies. The book demonstrates the transdisciplinary potential of space-related approaches. The editors suggest that “spatial thinking” can foster a dialogue on the history, aftermath, and memory of the Holocaust that transcends disciplinary boundaries. Artworks by Yael Atzmony serve as a prologue to the volume, inviting us to reflect on the complicated relation of the actual crime site of the Sobibor extermination camp to (family) memory, archival sources, and material traces. In the first part of the book, renowned scholars introduce readers to the relevance of space for key aspects of Holocaust Studies. ...
The subject of transnational lives has only recently gained importance in historical research. With its transnational approach to “mobility and biography,” this volume brings together research on aspects of mobility and biography across different times and spaces to open up new interdisciplinary perspectives. Networks, movements and the capacity to become socially or spatially mobile in and across Europe are not only analysed as structural factors, but rather seen as connected to concrete practices of mobility among different groups in the spheres of business, politics and the arts: from Jewish merchants via legal and financial advisors all the way to musicians.
How did a kremlin, a fortified monastery or a wooden church in Russia become part of the heritage of the entire world? Corinne Geering traces the development of international cooperation in conservation since the 1960s, highlighting the role of experts and sites from the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation in UNESCO and ICOMOS. Despite the ideological divide, the notion of world heritage gained momentum in the decades following World War II. Divergent interests at the local, national and international levels had to be negotiated when shaping the Soviet and Russian cultural heritage displayed to the world. The socialist discourse of world heritage was re-evaluated during perestroika and re-integrated as UNESCO World Heritage in a new state and international order in the 1990s.
Debates on the role of Christian Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe too often remain strongly tied to national historiographies. With the edited collection the contributing authors aim to reconstruct Christian Democracy’s role in the fall of Communism from a bird's-eye perspective by covering the entire region and by taking “third-way” options in the broader political imaginary of late-Cold War Europe into account. The book’s twelve chapters present the most recent insights on this topic and connect scholarship on the Iron Curtain’s collapse with scholarship on political Catholicism. Christian Democracy and the Fall of Communism offers the reader a two-fold perspective. The fi...
Established in Pernitz/Feichtenbach in 1938, the Heim Wienerwald served the SS association Lebensborn as a maternity home to increase the birth rate of "Aryan" children. This volume brings together recent research on the history of the Heim Wienerwald based upon unique sources: the articles focus on the maternity home in the wider context of National Socialist racial policy, presenting findings on the regulations for keeping births within Lebensborn secret, the requirements for admission to Lebensborn, and the assessment of mother and child. Secondly, the volume examines everyday life in this facility and the extent to which the stay of pregnant women and mothers was regulated in the context of National Socialist ideology. Thirdly, it provides an insight into the experiences and everyday life of the staff , especially the student nurses. Fourthly, the volume deals with the children born in the Heim Wienerwald who did not meet the "selection criteria" of the SS and were murdered as part of the National Socialist child "euthanasia" programme.
Der Band vereinigt zwölf Beiträge des am 4. März 2019 ebenso früh wie unerwartet verstorbenen Historikers Jürgen Zarusky. Darunter befinden sich mehrere bislang unveröffentlichte Manuskripte. Die Texte spiegeln die zentralen wissenschaftlichen und politischen Themenfelder, mit denen sich der Chefredakteur der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte auseinandergesetzt hat: politische Justiz, nationalsozialistische und stalinistische Herrschaft sowie Widerstand und Verfolgung. Als maßgebliches methodisches Instrumentarium dient dabei der Diktaturvergleich. Quer dazu liegt mit der Erinnerungspolitik eine weitere Thematik, die für Jürgen Zarusky stets von großer Bedeutung war, betrachtete er den Beruf des Zeithistorikers doch auch als politische Profession. Andreas Wirsching leitet den Band mit einer Würdigung der wissenschaftlichen Persönlichkeit Jürgen Zaruskys ein.