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During the final decade of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), young citizens found themselves at the heart of a rigorous programme of socialist patriotic education, yet following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the emphasis of official state rhetoric, textbooks and youth activities changed beyond recognition. For the young generation growing up during this period, ‘normality’ was turned on its head, leaving a sense of insecurity and inner turmoil. Using a combination of archival research, interviews, educational materials and government reports, this book examines the relationship between young people and their two successive states in East(ern) Germany between 1979 and 2002. This time-span straddles the 1989/1990 caesura which often delimits historical studies, and thus enables not only a detailed examination of GDR socialisation, but, crucially, its influence in unified Germany. Exploring the extent to which a young generation's loyalties can be officially regulated in the face of cultural and historical traditions, changing material conditions and shifting social circumstances, the book finds GDR socialisation to be influential to post-unification loyalties through its impact on the personal sphere, rather than through the official sphere of ideological propaganda. This study not only provides insight into the functioning of the GDR state and its longer-term impact, but also advances our broader understanding of the ways in which collective loyalties are formed.
As an opposition movement National Socialism displayed an alarming predisposition to violence and intolerance and purveyed a political message laced with anti-Semitic racialism. After setting the theme in a wider context and surveying the relationship between National Socialism and the established parties and institutions of Weimar, this book focuses on the Nazis themselves. The ideological origins of Nazism, its programme and use of propaganda to project its message are examined, after which the creation of the Nazis' formidable, if brittle, organisational basis is considered. Following a discussion of what the Nazis were selling and how they tried to market their wares, attention turns to the potential customers, middle- and working-class, who supported the Nazis in varying measure and for reasons which were in part similar, in part very different. Hitler's contribution to the rise of National Socialism is accorded detailed attention within this framework. Conclusions must follow from a consideration of the evidence and to betray them at the outset would be premature. However, in general terms this book seeks to reconcile some of the more traditional, classic explanations for the rise of Nazism with the most recent, not least through a re-appraisal of the role and function of the concept of national solidarity within National Socialist ideology. The grim consequences of this particular evocation of national solidarity make any study of Nazism a profoundly discomforting task.
Going against the grain of much of the scholarship on "the 70s," therefore, this book presents an array of reasons for claiming that American culture enjoyed a curious renaissance precisely because its shortcomings were most apparent. The activism and radicalism of the "other America" resonated abroad and picked up admirers along the way, even if these (often youthful) admirers were not the standard "publics" sought out by public diplomacy campaigns. The book explores this environment along two tracks which give organizing shape to our narrative. Firstly, the problems of projection. How did American cultural and information officials approach their work in the new 1970s era of "fear, uncertainty, and doubt"? Secondly, the encounters at the receiving end. How were public diplomacy programs received in various parts of the world, each often undergoing their own historic convulsions? Thirdly, the fact that America's increasingly raucous social and political diversity produced unexpected results abroad. A fourth theme concerns the changing worldwide context. U.S. public diplomacy had always maintained a global conceit and a universalist ethos. Fifth, and central to the approach of this book, is the often unrecognized but crucial fact that both ends of the transmission and reception axis are important to understand the full dynamics of public diplomacy practise. The book closely calibrates American soft power to the hard power wielded by the United States, even in this period.
In May 1958, and four years into the Algerian War of Independence, a revolt again appropriated the revolutionary and republican symbolism of the French Revolution by seizing power through a Committee of Public Safety. This book explores why a repressive colonial system that had for over a century maintained the material and intellectual backwardness of Algerian women now turned to an extensive programme of 'emancipation'. After a brief background sketch of the situation of Algerian women during the post-war decade, it discusses the various factors contributed to the emergence of the first significant women's organisations in the main urban centres. It was only after the outbreak of the rebellion in 1954 and the arrival of many hundreds of wives of army officers that the model of female interventionism became dramatically activated. The French military intervention in Algeria during 1954-1962 derived its force from the Orientalist current in European colonialism and also seemed to foreshadow the revival of global Islamophobia after 1979 and the eventual moves to 'liberate' Muslim societies by US-led neo-imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the women of Bordj Okhriss, as throughout Algeria, the French army represented a dangerous and powerful force associated with mass destruction, brutality and rape. The central contradiction facing the mobile socio-medical teams teams was how to gain the trust of Algerian women and to bring them social progress and emancipation when they themselves were part of an army that had destroyed their villages and driven them into refugee camps.
a renewed burst of ideological propaganda in which the pamphlet played a significant role. As one contemporary noted, ‘when a pamphlet goes unanswered, people are persuaded that it is a sign that one agrees with what is contained therein’; or, as another claimed, ‘silence is taken as evidence of the accused party’s guilt and acquiescence’. The need for counter-propaganda was thus paramount. The charge of universal monarchy was answered by reasoned denials and by pointing to the political rather than the religious machinations of France’s enemies: how else could
anticipated around eighteen thousand participants from some 150 countries along with thousands of tourists. Predictably, Soviet authorities used this festival as an instrument of ideological propaganda against the West and most festival attenders came from pro-communist countries. They were to attend concerts, political lectures and exhibitions devoted to the issues of anti-imperialism. In an attempt to prevent foreigners from bringing AIDS on to Soviet soil, a couple of weeks before the festival officials from the Health Ministry ordered staff at Soviet
competing demands. On the one hand, there was a top-down requirement imposed by the administration of state and party to introduce ideological propaganda into television programmes, with the aim of forming a socialist population and stabilising the political system with the help of the media. On the other hand, there was a bottom-up requirement to satisfy the audience’s demand for entertainment after a hard day’s work, which was largely incompatible with explicit political education or intellectual propaganda. In response to these contrasting demands, GDR television
', in Conan Fischer (ed.), The Rise of National Socialism and the Working Classes in Weimar Germany, Providence, Rl, Oxford, 1996, pp. 217-36. 32 Ian Kershaw, 'Ideology, Propaganda, and the Rise of the Nazi Party', in Peter D. Stachura (ed.), The Nazi Machtergreifung, London, Boston, Sydney, 1983, p. 173. 33 Cf. Kershaw, Hitler. 1889-1936, p. 309. 34 Quoted in Bracher, German Dictatorship, p. 189. 35 Hans Mommsen, 'National Socialism. Continuity and Change', in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism: A Reader's Guide. Analyses, Interpretations, Bibliography, Harmondsworth
evacuation programs, and hence were inevitably accompanied by ideological propaganda. With the expansion of the Greek government's evacuation program, the DSE also broadened the scope of its own program to include children from areas under the control of the National Army (Brown 2003a , Danforth and Van Boeschoten 2012 , Kitanoski and Doneski 2003 ). The humanitarian aspect of saving children was indicated as the main reason for both evacuation campaigns. There was also the incentive to raise the fighting spirit of the parents, who knew that their
were able to disseminate their propaganda and restrict the flow of the ideas into the region’ (Wells, 1997: 106). Censorship was legally reinstated as early as September 1968, only three months after it was abolished, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CC-CPC) started to demand a pro-Soviet orientation from all the media: ‘The media system was purged of all reformists and was turned into a machine which spouted emotional, ideological propaganda whose intensity remained practically unchanged until the fall of communism in 1989’ (Kelly