Christof Mauch - Böcker

Surveying the expanding conflict in Europe during one of his famous fireside chats in 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt ominously warned that "we know of other methods, new methods of attack. The Trojan horse. The fifth column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery. Spies, saboteurs, and traitors are the actors in this new strategy." Having identified a new type of war-a shadow war-being perpetrated by Hitler's Germany, FDR decided to fight fire with fire, authorizing the formation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to organize and oversee covert operations. Based on an extensive analysis of OSS records, including the vast trove of records released by the CIA in the 1980s and '90s, as well as a new set of interviews with OSS veterans conducted by the author and a team of American scholars from 1995 to 1997, The Shadow War Against Hitler is the full story of America's far-flung secret intelligence apparatus during World War II.In addition to its responsibilities generating, processing, and interpreting intelligence information, the OSS orchestrated all manner of dark operations, including extending feelers to anti-Hitler elements, infiltrating spies and sabotage agents behind enemy lines, and implementing propaganda programs. Planned and directed from Washington, the anti-Hitler campaign was largely conducted in Europe, especially through the OSS's foreign outposts in Bern and London. A fascinating cast of characters made the OSS run: William J. Donovan, one of the most decorated individuals in the American military who became the driving force behind the OSS's genesis; Allen Dulles, the future CIA chief who ran the Bern office, which he called "the big window onto the fascist world"; a veritable pantheon of Ivy League academics who were recruited to work for the intelligence services; and, not least, Roosevelt himself. A major contribution of the book is the story of how FDR employed Hitler's former propaganda chief, Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstengl, as a private spy.More than a record of dramatic incidents and daring personalities, this book adds significantly to our understanding of how the United States fought World War II. It demonstrates that the extent, and limitations, of secret intelligence information shaped not only the conduct of the war but also the face of the world that emerged from the shadows.

The United States and Germany during the Twentieth Century presents a wide ranging comparison of American and German societies during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The two countries - the world's leading 'rising powers' of the time - were both more similar and more different than is widely understood. Above all, their dual encounter with modernity brings out the richness of both societies as they faced unprecedented internal and external challenges, sometimes in isolation, but more often in combination or in parallel with one another.

The United States and Germany during the Twentieth Century presents a wide ranging comparison of American and German societies during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The two countries - the world's leading 'rising powers' of the time - were both more similar and more different than is widely understood. Above all, their dual encounter with modernity brings out the richness of both societies as they faced unprecedented internal and external challenges, sometimes in isolation, but more often in combination or in parallel with one another.

This collection examines the urban spaces of Berlin and Washington and provides a comparative cultural history of two eminent nation-states in the modern era. Each of the cities has assumed, at times, a mythical quality and they have been seen as collective symbols, with ambitions and contradictions that mirror the nation-states they represent. Such issues such stand in the centre of this volume. The authors ask what these two capitals have meant for the nation and explore the relations between architecture, political ideas, and social reality. Topics range from Thomas Jefferson's ideas about the new capital of the United States to the creation of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, from nineteenth-century visitors to small-town Washington to the protesters of the 1968 student movement in West Berlin. This lively collection of essays speaks to audiences as diverse as historians, urban sociologists, architects and readers interested in cultural studies.

Catastrophes, it seems, are becoming more frequent in the twenty-first century. According to UN statistics, every year approximately two hundred million people are directly affected by natural disasters—seven times the number of people who are affected by war. Discussions about global warming and fatal disasters such as Katrina and the Tsunami of 2004 have heightened our awareness of natural disasters and of their impact on both local and global communities. Hollywood has also produced numerous disaster movies in recent years, some of which have become blockbusters. This volume demonstrates that natural catastrophes—earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc.—have exercised a vast impact on humans throughout history and in almost every part of the world. It argues that human attitudes toward catastrophes have changed over time. Surprisingly, this has not necessarily led to a reduction of exposure or risk. The organization of the book resembles a journey around the globe—from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and from the Pacific through South America and Mexico to the United States. While natural disasters appear everywhere on the globe, different cultures, societies, and nations have adopted specific styles for coping with disaster. Indeed, how humans deal with catastrophes depends largely on social and cultural patterns, values, religious belief systems, political institutions, and economic structures. The roles that catastrophes play in society and the meanings they are given vary from one region to the next; they differ—and this is one of the principal arguments of this book—from one cultural, political, and geographic space to the next. The essays collected here help us to understand not only how people in different times throughout history have learned to cope with disaster but also how humans in different parts of the world have developed specific cultural, social, and technological strategies for doing so.

Shades of Green examines the impact of political, economic, religious, and scientific institutions on environmental activism around the world. The book highlights the diversity of national, regional and international environmental activism, showing that the term "environmentalism" covers an entire range of perceptions, values and interests. It demonstrates that each instance of environmental activism is shaped by historically unique circumstances, highlighting within each chapter the ideological, social, and political origins of efforts to protect the environment. Discussing issues unique to different parts of the world, Shades of Green shows that environmentalism around the globe has been strengthened, weakened, or suppressed by a variety of local, national, and international concerns, politics, and social realities.

Shades of Green examines the impact of political, economic, religious, and scientific institutions on environmental activism around the world. The book highlights the diversity of national, regional and international environmental activism, showing that the term "environmentalism" covers an entire range of perceptions, values and interests. It demonstrates that each instance of environmental activism is shaped by historically unique circumstances, highlighting within each chapter the ideological, social, and political origins of efforts to protect the environment. Discussing issues unique to different parts of the world, Shades of Green shows that environmentalism around the globe has been strengthened, weakened, or suppressed by a variety of local, national, and international concerns, politics, and social realities.

For better or worse, the view through a car’s windshield has redefined how we see the world around us. In some cases, such as the American parkway, the view from the road was the be-all and end-all of the highway; in others, such as the Italian autostrada, the view of a fast, efficient transportation machine celebrating either Fascism or its absence was the goal. These varied environments are neither necessary nor accidental but the outcomes of historical negotiations, and whether we abhor them or take delight in them, they have become part of the fabric of human existence.The World beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe is the first systematic, comparative look at these landscapes. By looking at examples from the United States and Europe, the chapters in this volume explore the relationship between the road and the landscape that it traverses, cuts through, defines, despoils, and enhances. The authors analyze the Washington Beltway and the Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as iconic roads in Italy, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and Great Britain. This is a story of the transatlantic exchange of ideas about environment and technology and of the national and nationalistic appropriations of such landscaping.

For better or worse, the view through a car’s windshield has redefined how we see the world around us. In some cases, such as the American parkway, the view from the road was the be-all and end-all of the highway; in others, such as the Italian autostrada, the view of a fast, efficient transportation machine celebrating either Fascism or its absence was the goal. These varied environments are neither necessary nor accidental but the outcomes of historical negotiations, and whether we abhor them or take delight in them, they have become part of the fabric of human existence.The World beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe is the first systematic, comparative look at these landscapes. By looking at examples from the United States and Europe, the chapters in this volume explore the relationship between the road and the landscape that it traverses, cuts through, defines, despoils, and enhances. The authors analyze the Washington Beltway and the Blue Ridge Parkway, as well as iconic roads in Italy, Nazi Germany, East Germany, and Great Britain. This is a story of the transatlantic exchange of ideas about environment and technology and of the national and nationalistic appropriations of such landscaping.

Throughout history, rivers have run a wide course through human temporal and spiritual experience. They have demarcated mythological worlds, framed the cradle of Western civilization, and served as physical and psychological boundaries among nations. Rivers have become a crux of transportation, industry, and commerce. They have been loved as nurturing providers, nationalist symbols, and the source of romantic lore but also loathed as sites of conflict and natural disaster.Rivers in History presents one of the first comparative histories of rivers on the continents of Europe and North America in the modern age. The contributors examine the impact of rivers on humans and, conversely, the impact of humans on rivers. They view this dynamic relationship through political, cultural, industrial, social, and ecological perspectives in national and transnational settings. As integral sources of food and water, local and international transportation, recreation, and aesthetic beauty, rivers have dictated where cities have risen, and in times of flooding, drought, and war, where they've fallen. Modern Western civilizations have sought to control rivers by channeling them for irrigation, raising and lowering them in canal systems, and damming them for power generation. Contributors analyze the regional, national, and international politicization of rivers, the use and treatment of waterways in urban versus rural environments, and the increasing role of international commissions in ecological and commercial legislation for the protection of river resources. Case studies include the Seine in Paris, the Mississippi, the Volga, the Rhine, and the rivers of Pittsburgh. Rivers in History is a broad environmental history of waterways that makes a major contribution to the study, preservation, and continued sustainability of rivers as vital lifelines of Western culture.

This collection examines the urban spaces of Berlin and Washington and provides a comparative cultural history of two eminent nation-states in the modern era. Each of the cities has assumed, at times, a mythical quality and they have been seen as collective symbols, with ambitions and contradictions that mirror the nation-states they represent. Such issues such stand in the centre of this volume. The authors ask what these two capitals have meant for the nation and explore the relations between architecture, political ideas, and social reality. Topics range from Thomas Jefferson's ideas about the new capital of the United States to the creation of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, from nineteenth-century visitors to small-town Washington to the protesters of the 1968 student movement in West Berlin. This lively collection of essays speaks to audiences as diverse as historians, urban sociologists, architects and readers interested in cultural studies.

Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.Germany is a key test case for the burgeoning field of environmental history; in no other country has the landscape been so thoroughly politicized throughout its past as in Germany,and in no other country have ideas of 'nature' figured so centrally in notions of national identity. The essays collected in this volume — the first collection on the subject in either English or German — place discussions of nature and the human relationship with nature in their political co texts. Taken together, they trace the gradual shift from a confident belief in humanity ’s ability to tame and manipulate the natural realm to the Umweltbewußtsein driving the contemporary conservation movement. Nature in German History also documents efforts to reshape the natural realm in keeping with ideological beliefs — such as the Romantic exultation of 'the wild' and the Nazis' attempts to eliminate 'foreign' flora and fauna — as well as the ways in which political issues have repeatedly been transformed into discussions of the environment in Germany.

Melancholia, hope and America's environmentsParadise Blues is an unconventional history of the United States of America, an unusual travel guide that follows and renders visible the country's paths of nature, history and civilisation. Christof Mauch is a leading German historian who has spent many years in the US. Here he attempts, from a European perspective, to grasp the diversity of American culture and the transformation of its environments, combining travel reporting with nature writing, personal observation and philosophical reflection. Mauch seeks the familiar in unfamiliar places and the curious in places that seem common and well- known. His wanderings in space and time, his serendipitous and planned encounters with places and people, bring to light the tension and ambivalence in most Americans' attitudes towards their often-perilous environment, the intertwining throughout history of valuation, conservation and destruction. Interactions between human beings and the environment have settled like sediment down the centuries and may be read in the present - in the form of landscapes and collective memory, in bodies of water and the earth's strata, tree rings and human cells. One of Mauch's dominant themes is that the grand hopes and bitter disappointments of the American paradise are not equally distributed - the blues is the voice of the dispossessed and disadvantaged; and here environmental injustice toward Black, Indigenous and other marginalised people is a recurring and haunting motif. This is a book of melancholia and hope - Mauch exposes the beauty, the imperilment, at times the wreckage, of the American environment. And he shows us that, more powerfully than abstract ideas, governmental edicts or technological forces, stories reveal the infinite discoveries to be made in humans' relationship to nature - in beautiful landscapes where danger lurks as well as in visions and behaviours that change the world and ecosystems. Above all, stories demonstrate that where we come from and where we are going are intimately connected and therefore nothing has to remain as it is.

Other countries - from Yellowstone to serengeti - had long since had their large national parks when Germany's first national park was founded in 1970 in the Bavarian Forest. How did it come about? Why did the local "Waidlers" fight against the national park? How has the park's management dealt with conflicts over bark beetles, red deer and lynx? Does the national park region benefit from tourism? These and other critical questions are answered in this volume on the Bavarian Forest by experts from different disciplines. Prominent contemporary witnesses from the national park and its planning also have their say.