Product Description

How does a political system rebuild after a cataclysmic military defeat? How can a society, and its political infrastructure, resurrects itself or, in the case of Germany after World War II, be resurrected in such a way as to ensure long-term political stability?

Politics After Hitler is the first book to demonstrate the importance of America, Britain, and France in the development of party politics in Germany after 1945. In the wake of the war, rightists of all descriptions, Communists, nationalists, and founders of small splinter parties all came under intense and deliberate pressure from the Western occupying forces. The occupiers arrived in Germany in 1945 without firm plans for reviving German politics and were forced to improvise by hastily constructing a licensing system for new parties. The Allies then used their licensing powers to limit and steer party politics in desirable directions, disempowering reactionary and hypernationalist forces, diluting fears of a Communist revolution, and preventing the political fragmentation that led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic a generation earlier.

Based on extensive archival research, Politics After Hitler concludes that interference by the occupying forces made a stable and moderate party system in the FRG much more likely than has previously been assumed. The Allied occupation of Germany was therefore a resounding success in helping move the German political system toward the stability it enjoys to the present day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2946307 in Books
• Published on: 1995-03-01
• Released on: 1995-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

About the Author

A former Fulbright scholar to the Federal Republic of Germany, Daniel E. Rogers is Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Alabama.

Customer Reviews

Revealing U.S. Influence
Rogers' analysis of post-war German politics takes a hard look at the emergence of political parties and the influence of the occupying powers with a general focus on the years 1945 to 1949. Rogers' central thesis is directed towards the Western Allies' fears of a revival of political instability in Germany and the resulting Allies' controls exercised over the renaissance of German political life. Rogers' central interest is not, consequently, the emergence of larger mainstream parties but Allied responses to smaller groups on the political extremes. Rogers argues that Allied support for moderate political parties in the post-war era laid a stable foundation upon which a sovereign West German state would subsequently be built. Rogers attempts to demonstrate that the officials on the scene were knowledgeable about the German past, but were more afraid of recreating an evil Germany than they were of doing anything to make a Communist takeover of western Germany possible.