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Broken lives : how ordinary Germand experienced the 20th century / Konrad H. Jarausch.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, c2018Description: xiii, 446 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780691174587 (hardback).
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 23 306.20943 JAR 012497
Contents:
Introduction Narratives of German experiences PART I: PREWAR CHILDHOOD 1. Imperial ancestors 2. Weimar children 3. Nazi adolescents PART II: WARTIME YOUTH 4. Male violence 5. Female struggles 6. Victims' suffering PART III: POSTWAR ADULTHOOD 7. Defeat as new beginning 8. Democratic maturity 9. Communist disappointment Conclusion Memories of fractured lives.
Summary: Broken Lives is a gripping account of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of ordinary Germans who came of age under Hitler and whose lives were scarred and sometimes destroyed by what they saw and did.Drawing on six dozen memoirs by the generation of Germans born in the 1920s, Konrad Jarausch chronicles the unforgettable stories of people who lived through the Third Reich, World War II, the Holocaust, and Cold War partition, but also participated in Germany's astonishing postwar recovery, reunification, and rehabilitation. Written decades after the events, these testimonies, many of them unpublished, look back on the mistakes of young people caught up in the Nazi movement. In many, early enthusiasm turns to deep disillusionment as the price of complicity with a brutal dictatorship--fighting at the front, aerial bombing at home, murder in the concentration camps-becomes clear.Bringing together the voices of men and women, perpetrators and victims, Broken Lives reveals the intimate human details of historical events and offers new insights about persistent questions. Why did so many Germans support Hitler through years of wartime sacrifice and Nazi inhumanity? How did they finally distance themselves from this racist dictatorship and come to embrace human rights? Jarausch argues that this generation's focus on its own suffering, often maligned by historians, ultimately led to a more critical understanding of national identity-one that helped transform Germany from a military aggressor into a pillar of European democracy.
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Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode
Book Book Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore 306.20943 JAR 012497 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 012497

Includes bibliographical references (pages 383-435) and index.

Introduction Narratives of German experiences
PART I: PREWAR CHILDHOOD
1. Imperial ancestors
2. Weimar children
3. Nazi adolescents
PART II: WARTIME YOUTH
4. Male violence
5. Female struggles
6. Victims' suffering
PART III: POSTWAR ADULTHOOD
7. Defeat as new beginning
8. Democratic maturity
9. Communist disappointment
Conclusion Memories of fractured lives.

Broken Lives is a gripping account of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of ordinary Germans who came of age under Hitler and whose lives were scarred and sometimes destroyed by what they saw and did.Drawing on six dozen memoirs by the generation of Germans born in the 1920s, Konrad Jarausch chronicles the unforgettable stories of people who lived through the Third Reich, World War II, the Holocaust, and Cold War partition, but also participated in Germany's astonishing postwar recovery, reunification, and rehabilitation. Written decades after the events, these testimonies, many of them unpublished, look back on the mistakes of young people caught up in the Nazi movement. In many, early enthusiasm turns to deep disillusionment as the price of complicity with a brutal dictatorship--fighting at the front, aerial bombing at home, murder in the concentration camps-becomes clear.Bringing together the voices of men and women, perpetrators and victims, Broken Lives reveals the intimate human details of historical events and offers new insights about persistent questions. Why did so many Germans support Hitler through years of wartime sacrifice and Nazi inhumanity? How did they finally distance themselves from this racist dictatorship and come to embrace human rights? Jarausch argues that this generation's focus on its own suffering, often maligned by historians, ultimately led to a more critical understanding of national identity-one that helped transform Germany from a military aggressor into a pillar of European democracy.

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