Volume 55, Issue 2

The Czechoslovak political crisis from the end of World War II to 1948 did not have a preordained conclusion. It was not determined solely by the weight of the emerging blocs and it was not simply for the Kremlin to dictate. This article examines the intelligence dimension of the contest between Stalinism and democracy. At the center of the study are Colonel Charles Katek, chief of the American Military Mission, and Spencer L. Taggart, an American diplomat in postwar Prague. The Americans who were in the business of collecting secrets in postwar Prague had access to some of the highest-ranking officials. It would be hard to imagine any other country where there existed such a harmony of interests between the intelligence collectors and their sources. Moreover, Katek and Taggart were highly educated, they understood the history of Central Europe, and they spoke Czech. Nevertheless, the cause of democracy suffered a swift and humiliating defeat. This article seeks to identify its causes.

The Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth is considered the epitome of National Socialist cultural representation. Holger R. Stunz investigates the genesis of this phenomenon and highlights the decisive role the year 1933 played, when the Festival experienced an organisational and financial transformation, as well as new structures to the makeup of the audience. The practice of the regime to hand out free tickets influenced the self-image of the Festival as an independent institution as well as the composition and disposition of the audience. The eminent position of the Festival was only possible due to Hitler's personal decisions, who also interfered in artistic questions of principle. 1933 marked the beginning of an abeyance, which lasted until the end of the “Wartime Festivals”.

For all of his life, the British historian Herbert Butterfield saw himself as the advocate of German historiography in Great Britain. It was precisely the examination of the German historiographical tradition as well as German contemporary history and politics that shaped Butterfield's theoretical thinking on history. Ultimately, this formed Butterfield's Christian-conservative philosophy of history of the late 1940s and 1950s, which lead him to deliberations on the theory of totalitarianism. In the young Federal Republic, Butterfield's theses were received eagerly and also outside of the field of historiography, as their apologetic tendency fit into the climate of the politics of memory in the 1950s. This paper focusses on this German-British „dialog of historians” and thereby points towards the European dimension of the history of the historiography of the 20 th Century.

Hannah Arendt's thesis about a “society of laborers without labor” formulated fifty years ago seems more up to date than ever. Her afterthought “nothing could be worse” also seems to be coming true. At a time when it seems realistic for Western industrialised countries that less and less time will have to be spent working for a living with simultaneously rising commodity supply, this partial freedom of gainful occupation is increasingly becoming a problem for those dismissed. And those who still have work are confronted with the paradoxical demand that they have to work more instead of less – and also longer and more intensively. In view of rising labour participation however, the end of work-driven society in the sense of a decreasing importance of gainful employment is currently not in sight. The predominant parole “as long as you have a job” indicates a massive crisis of this work-driven society. The question as to the reasons, the quality and the possible consequences of this crisis is at the centre of this article. In this context, a radical change in society is also diagnosed, which however does not signal the end of work-driven society in general. Rather, work itself will change fundamentally.

At the end of November 1943 in the German Army High Command Headquarters near Angerburg, Major Joachim Kuhn, co-conspirator of the military resistance against Hitler, buried drafts of orders and radio proclamations which were to be issued and broadcast after Hitler's assassination to enable a coup. In February 1945, as a prisoner-of-war in Soviet custody, Kuhn had to show this hiding place to his captors. The documents were taken to Moscow and eventually placed into the archive of the KGB. They provide the key to Tresckow's central role in the conspiracy against Hitler in 1943. They also throw new light upon the surprisingly broad agreement in the Wehrmacht and specifically in the Army High Command with attempts to disempower Hitler.