Germany Since 1945: Politics, Culture, and Society

Abstract

The Federal Republic is the most enduring political formation in modern German history. In just a few years, by 2023, it will have lasted as long as the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Nazi period taken together. Over the last few decades, an entire series of mostly German language books have synthesized its history into a coherent though occasionally somewhat predictable narrative. Employing paradigms such as modernization, Westernization, liberalization or Americanization, historians have traced the gradual evolution of the Federal Republic from the unconditional military, political and moral collapse of the Third Reich to an at least seemingly well-functioning, prosperous and multicultural democratic state. After the collapse of state socialism in 1989, the Federal Republic managed to absorb the former East Germany, whose history then often featured as a negative counterpoint to West German success. And since historians have gained access to East German files up to 1989, the history of the GDR became its own growth industry.