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This article looks at the transnational impact of two diaries written by the female German journalists Ruth Andreas-Friedrich and Ursula von Kardorff, whose journals shed light on German wartime experiences, resistance activities, and, to a lesser extent, the press. In the postwar years, both journalists sought to influence (West) Germany's relationship with its former enemies, in particular the United States. In their autobiographical writing, they presented both an image of Germany as a victim of Nazism, as well as an early acknowledgment of German crimes. In this way, they achieved a balanced narrative that received a positive reception from American and German audiences. Though the ways in which Friedrich and Kardorff presented aspects of journalism and everyday life in the Third Reich were not unique, their dual identity as women and journalists underlay their ability to act as “legitimate” mediators for Germany's rehabilitation. Western allied occupation authorities and overseas audiences viewed them, in contrast to men, as largely apolitical because they were women, and as objective witnesses because they were journalists. Through their autobiographical writings, both journalists situated themselves among the predominantly male US and German elites devoted to developing amicable relations between the two countries via soft-power diplomacy., Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die transnationalen Auswirkungen zweier Tagebücher, die der beiden deutschen Journalistinnen Ruth Andreas-Friedrich und Ursula von Kardorff. Die Tagebücher sind auch im Hinblick auf deutsche Kriegserfahrungen, Widerstandsaktivitäten und – in geringerem Ausmaß – die Presse aufschlussreich. Beide Journalistinnen versuchten in den Nachkriegsjahren das westdeutsche Verhältnis zu dessen ehemaligen Feinden, insbesondere den Vereinigten Staaten, zu beeinflussen. In ihren autobiographischen Schriften präsentierten sie ein Bild von Deutschland, das selbst Opfer des Nationalsozialismus war, lieferten aber gleichzeitig ein frühes Eingeständnis der deutschen Verbrechen. Dadurch erreichten beide eine ausgewogene Schilderung, die sowohl vom amerikanischen als auch vom deutschen Publikum positiv aufgenommen wurde. Obwohl das, was Friedrich und Kardorff über die Facetten von Journalismus und Alltag im Dritten Reich zu sagen hatten, nicht einzigartig war, trug ihre doppelte Identität als Frauen und Journalistinnen dazu bei, dass man sie als „legitime“ Mediatoren der Rehabilitation Deutschlands ansah. Die westlichen Besatzungsbehörden und Leser in Übersee betrachteten die beiden im Gegensatz zu Männern als weitgehend apolitisch, weil sie Frauen waren, und als objektive Zeitzeugen, weil sie Journalistinnen waren. Durch ihre autobiographischen Schriften konnten sich die beiden Journalistinnen unter den überwiegend männlichen US-amerikanischen und deutschen Eliten etablieren, die mit Hilfe von soft-power Diplomatie freundschaftliche Beziehungen zwischen den beiden Ländern fördern wollten.

This article examines the role of local, female propagandists utilized by the German army on the Eastern Front during WWII. Although the work they undertook aligned with postwar notions of collaboration, the propagandists’ experiences at the hands of the Wehrmacht, in a context of a violent war and repressive occupation, constitutes coerced labour in multiple forms. Regardless of the women’s motivations for working for the Wehrmacht, they entered a relationship of domination and dependence with the occupation force. While female propagandists numbered far fewer than their male counterparts, they held a particular importance for German high command who believed that their “feminine” traits, such as empathy and charm, helped the Wehrmacht influence and control the largely female civilian population. At the same time, their work on the frontlines encouraging Red Army soldiers to defect crossed traditional gender boundaries. In this task too, the women were valued for their gender with German authorities believing that Soviet soldiers, largely deprived of female contact, would be particularly receptive to the charm of a woman’s voice. Such coerced labor on behalf of the Wehrmacht rendered these women vulnerable not only to German violence, but also to Soviet accusations of collaboration and its associated reprisals.

This article uses memoirs, newspapers, and archival documents to analyse how four German women journalists became entangled in ideological conflict between Nazism, communism, and liberal democracy from the 1930s to the 1950s. Using the concept of a ‘long’ Cold War, it demonstrates how from the Third Reich to the Federal Republic of West Germany, the experiences and autobiographical writing of German women journalists who had been arrested and imprisoned by the Soviets contributed to Germany’s national identity as both a victim and a bulwark of (potential) Soviet aggression. Publishing their experiences provided these female journalists with a unique and historically specific political agency: their words echoed contemporary discourses about the supposed communist threat and how women and ideas about women were inherent in such rhetoric.

Le présent article s’intéresse, à partir d’une profession stratégique pour le IIIe Reich – les journalistes allemandes –, aux représentations de la violence qui accompagnent la conquête, puis les projets de germanisation nazis, à l’Est. Après avoir présenté l’historiographie d’un champ de recherche en grande évolution depuis deux décennies – celui de la participation des femmes à la violence (exterminatrice) nazie –, les auteurs suivent le parcours de quatre femmes journalistes (Ilse Urbach, Liselotte Purper, Renate von Stieda et Helen Rahms) afin de saisir une éventuelle spécificité féminine à rapporter la violence extrême entre 1939 et 1945.

This masters’ thesis analyses the connections between the first allied military trials held in postwar Germany and German public opinion toward the British and American occupation forces. Focused on the Belsen trial, held in the British occupation zone from September to November 1945, and the Dachau trial, held by the American military government in the U.S. occupation zone between November and December 1945, this study seeks to highlight the importance both trials held for the British and the Americans in establishing positive relations with the Germans. Using Belsen and Dachau as case studies, it argues that, while they were essential to British and American denazification and re-education programs, they also had to be conducted in a manner that ensured the best possible relationship the German public and the occupation forces in both the American and British occupation zones. I demonstrate that, from the initial steps implemented to set up the trials through their conclusion, both powers took German concerns and reactions to the judiciary procedures into account: first by anchoring the charges and the trials themselves in international law preceding the Second World War; then by providing the right to a defense to the accused. Both factors, the Allies believed, allowed them to claim a moral authority over their occupation zone. The memoir’s examination of the trials and their purpose is complimented by an analysis of the press coverage of the trials and public opinion surveys taken after the trials. This study states that the press coverage was oftentimes one the first instances in which Germans were confronted to the atrocities committed in the concentration camps. Finally, this study argues that, as a part of larger programs, the trials had a limited success as a tool to implement positive relations between the British and American occupation forces and the German population.

La collaboration française active au service de l’Allemagne, aussi désignée sous l’expression de collaborationnisme, se déploie sous plusieurs formes entre 1940 et 1944. Ce mémoire se penche sur la branche armée de cette collaboration, soit plus précisément sur la Légion des Volontaires Français contre le bolchevisme (LVF). La LVF fut l’organe armé des partis politiques pro-allemands parisiens qui resta en activité entre juillet 1941 et août 1944. Combattant sous l’uniforme de la Wehrmacht, ces hommes volontaires représentaient sur le front de l’Est l’avant-garde d’une France rénovée. Cependant, ce retournement de veste se devait d’être expliqué à une population française fragilisée par la défaite de 1940 et hostile à l’occupant. C’est donc que la LVF aurait justifié son engagement auprès de l’Allemagne et tenté de dynamiser l’enrôlement de volontaires au travers d’une réécriture de l’histoire et d’une exaltation du soldat volontaire. Initialement, en 1941, la participation à l’invasion allemande en Russie centra le discours sur les hommes se portant volontaires, le renouvellement du pays et l’idée d’une revanche napoléonienne. Vers 1942, la volonté d’intégrer la France dans l’Europe d’Hitler engendra l’avènement d’un récit proposant une histoire franco-allemande qui retournait l’étiquette de l’ennemi héréditaire vers l’Angleterre. Les bouleversements de 1943-1944 ont forcé la propagande à présenter la défense du continent comme une continuation historique et que les légionnaires, forts de leurs exploits militaires et de leur foi, représentaient toujours l’âme nouvelle de la patrie. Pourtant, l’adaptation du discours propagandiste aux évènements extérieurs ne porta pas les résultats espérés et la LVF resta une organisation peu populaire souffrant d’un manque d’effectif. Soutenu par des documents de propagande, une abondance de sources politiques et d’articles de presse, ce mémoire vient cerner deux aspects uniques et pourtant centraux du discours public de la LVF. En se penchant sur des notions telles que l’utilisation de l’histoire et la redéfinition du rôle masculin pendant l’occupation, ce mémoire vient décortiquer plus en profondeur un univers propagandiste riche et intriguant qui mérite davantage d’attention.

Ce mémoire a pour sujet les communautés de caves qui émergent à Berlin dans le contexte des bombardements alliés durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Nées de la proximité prolongée de la population dans les abris antiaériens et de l’expérience commune du front intérieur, ces communautés offrent à leurs membres un soutien à la fois matériel et émotionnel. Se concentrant sur la période allant de janvier à juin 1945, cette recherche se penche sur la question du rôle des communautés de caves dans la survie des Berlinoises et sur l’impact de l’arrivée des soldats soviétiques sur leurs modes de survie individuels et collectifs. En nous appuyant sur des égo-documents et en empruntant les angles du genre, du quotidien et de la survie, nous soutiendrons que l’esprit communautaire qui émerge entre les Berlinoises dans les abris antiaériens affecte l’expérience et la survie de ces femmes, offrant à chacune des chances de survie plus égales, tant pendant la guerre, dans le contexte des bombardements, que dans l’après-guerre, dans le contexte de l’occupation soviétique et des violences sexuelles. Malgré des épreuves quotidiennes communes telles que la destruction, le manque de nourriture, le contact avec la mort et les violences sexuelles, les expériences relatives à cette période sont multiples, variant d’une Berlinoise à l’autre en fonction de divers facteurs personnels. Comme nous le verrons, les communautés permettent d’équilibrer les chances de survie de chacune face aux défis du quotidien.

This thesis studies how culture propagated by the Nazi regime during the Second World War influenced young Germans and contributed to their acceptance of National Socialist values. It asks: How did youth culture act as a vehicle of propaganda under the Third Reich and what impact did it have on German youth? By focusing on the hitherto under researched areas of children’s literature, toys and games, my research helps us to better understand the nature of Nazi propaganda, in particular the importance of informal education. Through play and reading young Germans were indoctrinated in Nazi ideology about the quest for a so-called pure race, conquest and expansion in East and West Europe, and anti-Semitism. These cultural activities led to an immersive emotional experience for young Germans which aroused their enthusiasm for contributing to and benefiting from a world ruled by Nazism. The entertaining nature of this cultural propaganda turned the violence and exclusion intrinsic to the National Socialist vision of the world into euphemisms, by trivializing their seriousness. This phenomenon helps us to understand why, even after the war, Germans persisted in seeing their youth under the Nazi regime as a relatively positive experience. The cultural aspect of the indoctrination of German youth is an underexplored dynamic of German history that I explore in this thesis.

This master’s thesis analyses Italian women discourses on their living conditions in the feminine press during the fascist era, from 1922 to 1937. On the basis of three publications, l’Almanacco della donna italiana, La Donna Italiana: rivista mensile di lettere, scienze, arti e movimento sociale femminile and Il Giornale della donna, which will become, in 1935, La Donna Fascista, this study tries to demonstrate that maternity, employment and leisure are all present in the discourses, and that they have been written about openly. It is possible to note an evolution of the feminine points of view with the different events happening at the time, like Matteotti’s assassination and the new work legislation. Journalists share their ideas with multiple techniques. They use the parameters of the fascist regime to justify the role and services to which they pretend, as well as the gendered society division to self-assign some tasks and the ideals carried by the ideology to justify points of view. Therefore, despite freedom of expression restrictions during Benito Mussolini’s regime, women do have some latitude in the discourses related to their living condition, which have the particularity of being written strictly for a female audience. This thesis demonstrates the particularities of women’s discourses in a totalitarian society. To do so, the publication selection has been studied by statistical analysis first to seek out common subjects and journalists, and then by comparative analysis to demonstrate similarities and differences in the topics’ treatment.

Après la défaite des troupes françaises en juin 1940, bouleversée, la France est grandement chamboulée à plusieurs niveaux : territorialement, des parcelles du territoire national sont soit annexées par le Reich ou sont occupées par les vainqueurs allemands et italiens. Politiquement, à Vichy, un régime autocrate émerge mené par le maréchal Philippe Pétain. Sur le plan de la presse, en France occupée, les journaux qui ont refusé le contrôle allemand se sabordent ou s’exilent en zone libre. Sous la forte censure allemande, les journaux restants deviennent des vecteurs de la propagande nationale-socialiste. De 1940 à 1944, les journaux diffusent abondamment des articles, des chroniques politiques et des communiqués officiels de l’Occupant relatant les nouvelles militaires se déroulant sur les différents fronts à travers l’Europe. Dans ce mémoire, l’objectif est de brosser un portrait des représentations du Troisième Reich qui sont mises de l’avant par la presse parisienne qui traite d’affrontements majeurs : la bataille d’Angleterre, l’opération Barbarossa, la bataille de Smolensk, la bataille de Kiev, la bataille de Moscou, la bataille de Stalingrad, la bataille de Monte Cassino, les bombardements alliés sur Paris en avril 1944 et la bataille de Cherbourg. Notre corpus est composé de divers textes publiés dans quatre quotidiens : Le Matin, le Paris-soir, Le Petit Parisien et L’Œuvre. Dans cette étude, d’une part, nous montrons que les journaux exaltent copieusement les victoires et faits d’armes des soldats de l’armée allemande, la Wehrmacht. Ils insistent d’ailleurs sur la nature historique et exceptionnelle des opérations à grande échelle menées par l’Allemagne. Quant aux ennemis anglo-américains et soviétiques, dans les quotidiens, ils sont décrits tels des barbares qui tuent sans vergogne des civils européens. De plus, la presse met l’accent sur une soi- disant inaptitude de ces soldats alliés au front face à la puissante armée du Reich. D’autre part, les chroniqueurs politiques français d’extrême droite se montrent très enthousiastes au nouvel ordre européen dominé par le Troisième Reich. Ces derniers considèrent que la France doit jouer un rôle tant politique que militaire afin de soutenir ses alliés allemands et européens dans la guerre contre l’Union soviétique et les démocraties occidentales.

This master’s thesis analyzes the dynamics between the German Democratic Republic and its citizens through complaint letters that East Germans sent to the State between 1953 and 1967 regarding housing problems. It argues that the complainants adopted “socialist values” throughout their discourses as a way of justifying the legitimacy of their complaints. In other words, they used the discourse and principles of the state against it in order to demand action and a resolution to their problems or concerns. This thesis not only highlight these various strategies, utilizing a “history from below” approach, but it also investigates the state’s reaction to the complaints of its citizens. It argues that the state responded overall better in the 1960s as it did in the 1950s, showing evolution in the relationship between state and society as well as a shift in the state’s way to understand socialism. By the 1960s the East German government had had time to slowly adapt its domestic politics towards the population’s needs. The analysis of these letters is at the crossroads of two methods: First I employ a discursive analysis that allows me to identify the recurring strategies by which the state and its citizens sought to influence each other. Second, I use a statistical analysis of the State’s responses coupled with an examination of domestic politics that allows me to capture the changing attitude of the government towards its population.

During the 1930s, France was hit by a political, economic, and diplomatic crisis which revealed many divisions in society. French journalists, seeking a solution to the national crisis, showed a particular interest towards their neighbor across the Rhine after the nomination of Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on January 30th, 1933. Hitler took advantage of France’s weakness and divisions to question but also oppose and act against the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles until the outbreak of World War II on September 1st, 1939. The objective of this research is to analyze how the French national press reacted to German revisionism from 1933 to 1939. In this context, the press’ perception of Hitler’s actions and how its opinions changed (or not) over time reveals the ways in which French newspapers interpreted events in Germany that affected France itself. By consulting editorials and opinion articles from five daily newspapers of different political orientations, namely L’Action française, L’Humanité, Le Figaro, Le Petit Parisien and Le Temps, this memoire analyse the opinion of the French national press on the revision of the Treaty of Versailles. This study contributes to the historiography of the interwar period and France’s reaction to German aggression in two ways. First, it shows that the press was not blind to Hitler’s revisionist plan. It also demonstrates that the French press remained divided concerning the actions of Nazi Germany until 1939. The protection of the Treaty of Versailles’ clauses and its system, which maintained the balance of power in Europe, polarised the French press and created a weakened national feeling until the outbreak of World War II. German revisionism fuelled the disagreements in the daily newspapers studied from 1933 to 1939.

Ab Herbst 1944 wurden schätzungsweise 12 Millionen Deutsche aus den östlichen Provinzen des Reiches oder aus verschiedenen zentral- und osteuropäischen Ländern Flüchtlinge oder Vertriebene. Dennoch fand die Behandlung dieser Personen nach ihrer Ankunft in den Westzonen in der Historiographie außerhalb Deutschlands bisher kaum Beachtung. Anhand der Untersuchung eines Flüchtlingslagers im oberfränkischen Bamberg, widmet sich diese Masterarbeit dem Ziel, die verschiedenen Gruppen innerhalb der Flüchtlingsbevölkerung zu identifizieren und die komplexen Entscheidungsprozesse der Stadt, der Diözese und der deutschen Hilfsorganisationen bezüglich der Integration der Neuankömmlinge zu analysieren. Vor dem Hintergrund der prekären Wohnungsnot, dem Fehlen von Basisgütern und der Politisierung der humanitären Hilfen, hebt diese Studie die Unterschiede, sowie die Bevorzugung einzelner Flüchtlingsgruppen zum Nachteil anderer hervor. Diese Arbeit widmet sich in besonderem Maße der Geschlechter- und Sozialgeschichte, um die in der traditionellen Geschichtsschreibung häufig vernachlässigten historischen Analysekategorien miteinzubeziehen. Weiterhin liegt der Fokus auf den deutschen Nachkriegsdebatten zur Entwicklung einer neuen Ordnung von Politik, Ökonomie, Gesellschaft und Geschlecht. Ich werde daher versuchen, im Kontext der aufkommenden Viktimisierung im Zuge der Gestaltung einer westdeutschen Identität und Erinnerungskultur, zu verstehen wie und warum manche Gruppen eher Zugang zu Nahrung, Wohnraum, Arbeit und medizinischer Versorgung erhielten als andere.

"Although 'entanglement' has become a keyword in recent German history scholarship, entangled studies of the postwar era have largely limited their scope to politics and economics across the two Germanys while giving short shrift to social and cultural phenomena like gender. At the same time, historians of gender in Germany have tended to treat East and West Germany in isolation, with little attention paid to intersections and interrelationships between the two countries. This groundbreaking collection synthesizes the perspectives of entangled history and gender studies, bringing together established as well as upcoming scholars to investigate the ways in which East and West German gender relations were culturally, socially, and politically intertwined"--