Volume 54, Issue 4

Weshalb sind deutschsprachige Volksgruppen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges nur im östlichen Teil Europas kollektiv aus ihrer angestammten Heimat vertrieben worden? Und warum beschränkten sich die westlichen Staaten darauf, vom dänischen Nordschleswig über das belgische Eupen-Malmedy bis zum italienischen Südtirol eine individuelle politische Säuberung gegen besonders belastete Kollaborateure des Dritten Reiches durchzuführen? Die komplexen Gründe für diese unterschiedlichen Entwicklungen erörtern Manfred Kittel und Horst Möller in einem Aufsatz, der die Ergebnisse eines international vergleichenden Projekts im Auftrag des Deutsch-Tschechischen Zukunftsfonds resümiert und dabei vor allem die Frage nach der Vergleichbarkeit der sogenannten Benesˇ-Dekrete stellt. Why is it that ethnic Germans were, at the end of World War II, collectively expelled from their traditional homelands only in the Eastern part of Europe? Why is it, on the other hand, that, from Northern Schleswig to Eupen-Malmedy in Belgium and to South Tyrol, the Western states confined themselves to carrying out a political purge against those individuals who were directly accused of collaboration with the National Socialists? The authors of this article argue that the different extent to which the population in Eastern Europe was terrorized under the National Socialist occupation, as opposed to the population in Western Europe, cannot be regarded as a decisive reason for the different policies regarding ethnic Germans after the war. It is of much greater importance that in Eastern Europe, a whole lot of factors interacted with each other and in this very combination caused the expulsion: Previous nationalist motives that had long layered up in the nation-states in question, which had only been (re)founded in 1918 and which were not yet very settled in their existence, a much higher percentage of German minorities compared Western Europe, the (assumed) potential threat these ethnic Germans constituted, and, last but not least, the fact that the mass exodus of the Germans fitted perfectly into Stalin's social revolutionary and geo-strategic plans for the countries of his new sphere of influence east of the Iron Curtain.

After the revolution of 1918, agrarian interest groups as well as workers' and soldiers' councils competed for controlling the councils which had formed in rural regions. In some regions the old agrarian pressure groups succeeded in using these councils to stabilize their own organizational basis and to reach the unity of all agrarian interests, a unity that had been questioned during World War I. In 1919, August von Davier, a big landowner from Saxony-Anhalt, suggested to the most important agrarian organizations in Prussia that they should create their own national representation of agricultural interests on the basis of newly formed councils. All existing associations, including both workers' unions and employers' associations, were to be part of this project, but the main emphasis was to be on the representation of the farmers. The latter were to represent agrarian interests in a planned “national economic council” (the so called “Reichswirtschaftsrat”), leading a clear front against the industrial organizations. These new farmers' and agricultural workers' councils, which were headed by Davier's comrades-in-arms, were formed in several Prussian provinces, and they cooperated closely with the local authorities to organize the food supply there. Davier's project was long discussed in agricultural circles, but was finally rejected by the big landowners and the government, as the new farmers' and agricultural workers' councils questioned both the leading role of the old agrarian associations and the state's dispensation of justice regarding the councils.

The “Conservative Revolution” has long been regarded as a particularly German phenomenon in European intellectual history. In this essay, the author argues that the interwar period in Britain can be regarded as a time of “Conservative Revolution”, too. During and after the world economic crisis a new form of right-wing intellectual discourse developed whose advocates denied that parlamentarism and democracy were original British concepts. After an introductory part that looks at the extensive literature on the subject, the second part of the essay gives an introduction to the British neo-Conservatives' ideology and their interpretation of history. The third part is a case study that deals with the idea of “true conservatism” in the English Review Group, while the fourth part looks at how this group of intellectuals tried to translate their ideas into politics. The final part of the essay gives a summary and attempts to put the “Conservative Revolution” in Germany into a European frame.

This essay examines both the structure of the staff and the staff policy in the German Ministry of the Interior in the period between 1943 and 1945. Under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, who was not interested in his office, undersecretary Wilhelm Stuckart rose to de facto head at the ministry. Himmler's influence on the interior management of the department is to be rated as rather marginal; and he relied on Stuckart's expert knowledge and on his identification with the SS. The undersecretary stood out due to his radical nationalist attitude as well as his striving for a perfect administrative reform in the whole of Europe. Stuckart put the civil servants' professional qualifications before their party membership when this seemed to make sense for his plans at the ministry. The decisive result of his staff policy was that the number of top officials was almost halved. Still, the top level officials in the department retained a very homogenous identity as a group, although they were certainly inclined towards National Socialism. So the intended shift from a sense of responsibility towards the institution to a kind of “allegiance to the party” was not realized.

The strategic embargo which the United States had initiated and then established together with its allies pursued the aim to impede the development of new armament technology in the socialist states. This embargo confronted the Federal German government with a number of difficult decisions: Because of diverging interests regarding the policies concerning global security, foreign trade, Europe and the two German states, the government of the Federal Republic pursued a strategy which was both stubborn and inconsistent in parts. Washington advocated an integration of the economic relations with the GDR into the “embargo regime”, but this plan was met with strong objection on the Rhine. The Federal Ministry of Economics even tolerated it when West German companies obviously contravened the embargo. Contrary to the findings of previous research in this field, the Federal Government did certainly not present itself as an absolutely loyal agent which always kept to the guidelines given by the USA. In 1955, Washington reacted to Bonn's “misbehaviour” and installed a “special committee” that watched over transactions between West Germany and East Germany that were rated as questionable with regard to international security. At the same time the United States expanded the network of institutions in which the Federal Republic of Germany, which was acting increasingly self-confident, was integrated within the American concept of “embedded security”.The fast-growing economic and political importance of the Federal Republic of Germany revealed itself clearly in 1957/58 when some West European states pulled out from Washington's embargo strategy. Not only did the government at Bonn take on the role of an important advocate of West European interests. It was also suggested that the members of the West German government should act as widely accepted mediators within the embargo regime.