List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi INTRODUCTION 1 PART ONE: From War to Postwar 17 CHAPTER ONE: Impending Defeat: Military Losses, the Wehrmacht, and Ordinary Germans 19 CHAPTER TWO: Confronting Defeat: Returning POWs and the Politics of Victimization 43 CHAPTER THREE: Embodied Defeat: Medicine, Psychiatry, and the Trauma of the Returned POW 70 PART TWO: Making Citizens 95 CHAPTER FOUR: Survivors of Totalitarianism: Returning POWs and the Making of West German Citizens 97 CHAPTER FIVE: Antifascist Conversions: Returning POWs and the Making of East German Citizens 126 CHAPTER SIX: Parallel Exclusions: The West German POW Trials and the East German Purges 153 PART THREE: Divergent Paths 177 CHAPTER SEVEN: Absent Presence: Missing POWs and MIAs 179 CHAPTER EIGHT: Divided Reunion: The Return of the Last POWs 203 CONCLUSION: Histories of the Aftermath 227 Notes 233 Bibliography 307 Index 359
A thoughtful, well-researched, and important new book that will complement the best scholarship on postwar Germany and Europe. -- Eric Weitz, University of Minnesota Homecomings expertly intertwines high political history, history of civil society, cultural histories of representations, and the social history of everyday life. A significant contribution to the field. A must-read. -- Elizabeth Heineman, University of Iowa
Frank Biess is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego.
With Homecomings, Biess has enriched our understanding of the formative post-war years in both East and West Germany. It is a masterful piece of scholarship--and beautifully written. -- Bill Niven Institute of Historical Research This impressive book on the return of German prisoners of war and their reception in society in both East and West Germany over the 1945-55 decade fills an important gap in post-WW II German history. Choice Frank Biess, with methodological sophistication, analytical skill, and stylistic felicity, succeeds brilliantly in analyzing the return of German prisoners of war (POWs) to the two German states from Soviet captivity. -- Gunter Bischof International History Review Homecomings is a tour de force. It represents the best of recent historiographical trends and is the result of wide-ranging and creative use of archival resources. -- Robert D. Billinger, Jr. German Studies Review Frank Biess excellent book shows why it is important to understand not only what post-war Germans remembered about World War II but also how these memories affected their behavior. What distinguishes Biess' book ... is his insistence that German representations of the Nazi past deeply affected social relations, shaped social policies, and produced important material consequences for millions of Germans. It is an impressively rich synthesis of cultural and social history. -- David F. Crew Central European History Biess's study is based on extensive primary research, and he negotiates his varied secondary sources with an impressive intellectual ease... This book is highly recommended to those interested in postwar Germany in particular or in sociocultural responses to the aftermath of war in general. -- Timothy Vogt Journal of Modern History
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