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Studies of postwar Germany, from 1945-1955, have concentrated on the American influence as a military occupier, the development of German reconstruction and national identity, and memory of this period from the German perspective. Within the memory analyses, firsthand accounts have been analyzed to understand the perspectives of Germans living through the postwar period. Absent from this historiography is an account of American memories and firsthand perspectives of the occupation, particularly during the 1950-1955 period. This thesis employs oral histories of American veterans stationed in postwar Germany, American propaganda and popular cultural mediums during the early 1950s, and modern historiographical trends to provide an understanding of how Americans remember the German postwar decade. American veterans remembered this period, and their encounters with local Germans, as a positive experience. These positive memories were mediated by 1950s Cold War rhetoric and propaganda and were subsequently predicated upon the men's perspective as occupying soldiers. Their recollections align with American popular memory delineating the military occupation as ending in 1949 upon the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany, therefore overshadowing the 1950-1955 period of occupation. The ways in which Americans remember the postwar occupation in Germany, particularly from 1950-1955, inform broader memory and historical narrative trends of this era.

The Allied Occupation of Germany, 1945-49, was intended to transform the war-torn Third Reich into a peaceable nation through a series of far-reaching political, economic, and social reforms. But amid the growing tensions between East and West these radical plans would be significantly altered, culminating in the formation of two German states in 1949. Historians have tended to view the occupation as a backdrop to the nascent Cold War or a transitional period in the history of modern Germany. Yet this thesis suggests that British participation in the Allied occupation was, in fact, much more than simply an exercise in political pragmatism or a contribution to the rebuilding of war-torn Europe. Rather, this undertaking catalysed Britain's political and public confrontation with Nazism, laying some of the most significant and durable foundations of the postwar Anglo-German relationship. This research utilises contemporary mass media sources and official records to explore British images and perceptions of Germany under occupation, scrutinising the interactions of decision-makers, the media, and the public. It begins with an examination of the pervasive culture war that emerged in wartime Britain over the precise interpretation and resolution of the so-called 'German problem'. The thesis then goes on to consider public portrayals of the occupation vis-à-vis the evolution of official policy, beginning in the summer of 1945 when British policymakers responded to popular demands for a 'hard peace' and approved a rigorous programme of denazification, re-education, and demilitarisation. In the coming years, scandals engulfed the public image of the British occupiers, threatening to undermine Britain's claims on 'winning the peace' and even prompting an official public relations campaign. The mass market press led calls for an abrupt end to the occupation, fearing it was undermining the nation's prestige while failing to adequately address the threat still posed by Germany. At around the same time, Britain's political and military leaders reassessed their position in the face of the Cold War, turning towards the reconstruction and rehabilitation of western Germany. By 1949, a clear dichotomy had emerged, with implications reaching far beyond the immediate postwar period: while anxieties over the 'German problem' remained largely intact amongst substantial sections of the British press and public, with many regarding the occupation as an abject failure, policymakers were firmly set on the path towards Anglo-German reconciliation and alliance.

In this inquiry I pursue two tasks. First, I locate the roots of Heidegger's philosophical project historically within a specific theological discourse bent on redefining the relation between religion and politics. Heidegger's main, if covert, intent was to combat the egalitarian, pluralistic impulses carried by a tradition of critical Christology, which leads from F.W.J. Schelling's (1775-1854) Philosophy of Revelation to the work of the radical theologian-philosopher Paul Tillich (1886-1965). These egalitarian impulses spring from a broadened understanding of religious community as a material communication community unified through the use of shared symbols into a community of understanding, knowledge, and interests. The theoretical expansion and deepening of such a communication model, I detect in the writings of the renegade Neogrammarian, Hermann Paul, here considered in light of the "neo-Idealist" initiative of one of Paul's most prominent critics, the Romanist Karl Vossler. Prior to the advanced theological exposition of symbolically mediated communication, in works such as Tillich's book Dynamics of Faith (2001; Engl. orig.1957), the Neogrammarian movement in language studies, I argue, holds the key to accessing the cloaked Christological subtext of Heidegger's thought. Second, after thus locating Heidegger's philosophical agenda within its intellectual-historical context, I expose how Heidegger manipulates philosophical rhetoric to achieve the suspension of Schelling's theological legacy. My analysis of Heidegger's rhetorical behavior is focused on his Letter on Humanism (written 1946, published 1949), a text very overt in both its philosophical biases and its politics. The Humanismusbrief comes the closest to revealing Heidegger's own self-positioning within his generation. The work's conclusion provides a brief look ahead, or Ausblick, to indicate the main features of how these findings about the Letter can be brought to bear on Heidegger's masterpiece fragment, Being and Time. Through this approach, Heidegger's inherently political philosophy gains a much clearer profile in the context of its formative phase in the waning days of the Weimar Republic and opens a new perspective on later attempts by its author to "re-apply" his philosophical program to the cultural situation of postwar Germany, as well as to the ethical-epistemological problems remaining after twelve years of German isolationism. / text

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In the years immediately following the Second World War, the main part of Latvian literature was produced by writers living outside Latvia. To this day Latvian literature continues to be written outside Latvia, albeit to a much smaller extent. This study examines those Latvian novels, written outside Latvia after the Second World War, which depict the realities of the early years of exile. The aim of the study is to describe the image of the world of exile as depicted in these novels. Borrowing from Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope, images relating to time and space in these novels are examined in order to discern a mental topography of exile common to all these novels - a chronotope of exile. The novels are read as part of a collective narrative, produced by a particular social group in unordinary historical circumstances. The novels are regarded as this social group’s common perception of its own experience of this historical reality. The early years of exile fall into two distinct periods: first, the period of flight from Latvia and life in and around the Displaced Persons camps of postwar Germany; second, the early years of settling in a new country of residence after emigration from Germany. A model of the perceived world is constructed in order to compare these two periods, as well as their divergence from a standard perception of oneself in the world. This model consists of various time-spaces radiating concentrically out from the individual – ranging from the physically and psychologically near-lying time-spaces of one’s personal and intimate life, through everyday social time-spaces, as well as formal societal time-spaces, to the more distant abstract and conceptual perceptions of one’s place in the universe. Basic human concepts such as home, family, work, intimate relationships, social administration, and most notably the homeland – Latvia – are plotted at various points within these models. Divergences between the models describing the perception of time and space in the two early periods of exile thus become apparent.