Volume 56, Issue 3

Already in autumn 1932, private economic forces resulted in the first stage of recovery from serious crisis in Germany. They were also primarily responsible for the continuation of the business cycle upswing in 1933. In contrast, public employment creation programmes were relatively unimportant, while other Nazi regime actions even disrupted entrepreneurial confidence during much of 1933. In 1934/35 however, further endogenous stimulation of growth was largely suppressed, with state demand and rearmament taking over in its place. As a consequence, the economic development of Germany was increasingly distorted and destabilized.

The accounts of the survivors of the resistance circle in the Army Group Centre (Heeresgruppe Mitte), especially the memoirs of Fabian von Schlabrendorff and Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, have been criticized in the last few years for being untrustworthy and tendentious. Therefore this study examines the traditions of the assassination plans in 1943 and 1944 in the light of hitherto unevaluated sources. In summary, the reports of Schlabrendorff and Gersdorff are confirmed, differentiated and supplemented.

Karl Maria Hettlage, State Secretary in the West German Federal Ministry of Finance from1959 to 1962, had formerly served as a close aide to Albert Speer during the Third Reich. In a leading position in Speer's ( Generalbauinspektion ), the office in charge of the planned reconstruction of Berlin, Hettlage had taken an active part in the expulsion of Berlin's Jews from their homes. As head of the department for finance and the economy in the Ministry of Armaments, he had participated in the establishment of the notorious Dora-Mittelbau project. After 1945 Hettlage managed to sanitize his CV and successfully portrayed himself as a member of the resistance. Exonerated by a denazification commission, Hettlage managed to jump-start his career in post-war West Germany. As State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, he even played an important role in the formulation and implementation of West German compensation ( Wiedergutmachung ) for the victims of Nazism.

In October 1966 the public broadcaster WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) screened the TV documentary “Heia Safari”, written by the journalist Ralph Giordano. It caused one of the greatest TV scandals in the Federal Republic during the 1960s. The program painted a very gloomy picture of Germany's colonial presence in Africa. It also attacked the unbroken positive memories of this chapter of Germany's imperial past which still prevailed half a century after the loss of the colonies. The documentary also attests to the artistic freedom journalists enjoyed with public-owned TV stations during the mid-1960s and to a culture of provocation favoured by publicists such as Giordano, who aimed at stirring up discussions and promoting their own careers. A comparison with other historical TV documentaries produced by WDR during this period reveals parallels in the reactions of the audience.

State symbols are a form of political communication. They are not only used by state institutions, as football matches and demonstrations show. In Germany the eagle serves as such a symbol, its history stretching back to the times of Charlemagne. The Federal Eagle or Bundesadler came into existence during the Weimar Republic; this period is also the basis for the exceptional number of diverging variants which exist today. Every constitutional body has its own eagle, the President, the Federal Diet or Bundestag, the Federal Council or Bundesrat, the Federal Government and the Federal Constitutional Court, each eagle diverging slightly or significantly from the others. Not all these “Federal Eagles” are protected by law, though the rules of corporate design, and, more significantly, manifest constitutional arguments would actually favour a different approach to the usage of this symbol.