Synopses & Reviews
Throughout the Cold War era, the Iron Curtain divided Central Europe into a Communist East and a democratic West, and we grew accustomed to looking at this part of the world in bipolar ideological terms. Yet many people living on both sides of the Iron Curtain considered themselves Central Europeans, and the idea of Central Europe was one of the driving forces behind the revolutionary year of 1989 as well as the deterioration of Yugoslavia and its ensuing wars.
Central Europe provides a broad overview and comparative analysis of key events in a historical region that encompasses contemporary Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia. Starting with the initial conversion of the "pagan" peoples of the region to Christianity around 1000 A.D. and concluding with the revolutions of 1989 and the problems of post-Communist states today, it illuminates the distinctive nature and peculiarities of the historical development of this region as a cohesive whole. Lonnie R. Johnson introduces readers to Central Europe's heritage of diversity, the interplay of its cultures, and the origins of its malicious ethnic and national conflicts. History in Central Europe, he shows, has been epic and tragic. Throughout the ages, small nations struggled valiantly against a series of imperial powers--Ottoman Turkey, Habsburg Austria, imperial Germany, czarist Russia, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union--and they lost regularly. Johnson's account is present-minded in the best sense: in describing actual historical events, he illustrates the ways they have been remembered, and how they contribute to the national assumptions that still drive European politics today. Indeed, the constant interplay of reality and myth--the processes of myth-making and remembrance--animates much of this history.
Since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the unanticipated problems of transforming post-Communist states into democracies with market economies, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the challenges of European integration have all made Central Europe the most dynamic and troubled region in Europe. In Central Europe, Johnson combines a vivid and panoramic narrative of events, a nuanced analysis of social, economic, and political developments, and a thoughtful portrait of those myths and memories that have lives of their own--and consequences for all of Europe.
Review
"Written by a sophisticated historical analyst, this book is nevertheless more accessible to non-specialists than any comparable work. Lonnie Johnson explains the region's paradoxes objectively, but also with deep sympathy.... Travelers, officials, and businessmen who wish to understand the contradictions of this vital, appealing, but often alarming heart of Europe must read this illuminating narrative." -- Daniel Chirot,
University of WashingtonSynopsis
Throughout the Cold War era, the Iron Curtain divided Central Europe into a Communist East and a democratic West, and we grew accustomed to looking at this part of the world in bipolar ideological terms. Yet many people living on both sides of the Iron Curtain considered themselves Central Europeans, and the idea of Central Europe was one of the driving forces behind the revolutionary year of 1989 as well as the deterioration of Yugoslavia and its ensuing wars.
Central Europe provides a broad overview and comparative analysis of key events in a historical region that encompasses contemporary Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia. Starting with the initial conversion of the pagan peoples of the region to Christianity around 1000 A.D. and concluding with the revolutions of 1989 and the problems of post-Communist states today, it illuminates the distinctive nature and peculiarities of the historical development of this region as a cohesive whole. Lonnie R. Johnson introduces readers to Central Europe's heritage of diversity, the interplay of its cultures, and the origins of its malicious ethnic and national conflicts. History in Central Europe, he shows, has been epic and tragic. Throughout the ages, small nations struggled valiantly against a series of imperial powers--Ottoman Turkey, Habsburg Austria, imperial Germany, czarist Russia, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union--and they lost regularly. Johnson's account is present-minded in the best sense: in describing actual historical events, he illustrates the ways they have been remembered, and how they contribute to the national assumptions that still drive European politics today. Indeed, the constant interplay of reality and myth--the processes of myth-making and remembrance--animates much of this history.
Since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the unanticipated problems of transforming post-Communist states into democracies with market economies, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the challenges of European integration have all made Central Europe the most dynamic and troubled region in Europe. In Central Europe, Johnson combines a vivid and panoramic narrative of events, a nuanced analysis of social, economic, and political developments, and a thoughtful portrait of those myths and memories that have lives of their own--and consequences for all of Europe.
About the Author
Lonnie R. Johnson has taught for a variety of institutions in Vienna, Austria, and has travelled extensively in Central Europe. He currently is the editor of
KOOPERATIONEN: Higher Education, Science and Research in Austria, published by the Austrian Academic Exchange Service.
Table of Contents
PART I: TOWARDS CONTINENTAL DOMINION
1. Plans for the administration of occupied territories before the outbreak of war
2. Stages in the territorial 'new order' in Europe
3. The preferred 'new order': territories annexed de jure and de facto
4. Administration and safeguarding of the German sphere of power
5. The exploitation of the occupied territories
6. German rule in the occupied territories: pretension and reality
PART II: THE MOBILIZATION OF THE GERMAN ECONOMY FOR HITLER'S WAR AIMS
1. Preparations for total war
2. Improvisation in lieu of planning: the 'transitional economy'
3. Makeshift solutions in Spring 1940
4. The victor's hubris: Germany loses its lead in armaments after the French campaign
5. The crippling of armaments production
6. The road into crisis
7. Beginnings of a reorganization of the war economy at the turn of 1941/1942
PART III: THE MANPOWER RESOURCES OF THE THIRD REICH IN THE AREA OF CONFLICT BETWEEN WEHRMACHT, BUREAUCRACY, AND WAR ECONOMY, 1939-1942
1. Organization and implementation of military mobilization
2. The wehrmacht manpower situation at the outbreak of war
3. 'Man management': population distribution in the area of tension between wehrmacht and war economy (Sept. 1939-June 1941)
4. The development of military manpower control up to the summer of 1941
5. The winter crisis of 1941-1942: The distribution of scarcity or steps towards a more rational management of personnel
6. Blitzkrieg or total war? Ideological and political-military implications of the reaction to the trauma of the First World War
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX OF PERSONS