Wayne Geerling – författare

This book explains how ideology can be better integrated into economic history analysis, arguing that if economists and economic historians are to fully understand economic behaviour a much deeper appreciation of ideological processes is required. The book has two parts. The first part presents a comprehensive theory of ideology and ideological change that can be easily incorporated into economic analysis; the second provides an empirical case study of ideological change from East Germany of the 1960s.The book demonstrates how current restrictive views of ideology found within mainstream economics can be enhanced by adopting a more expansive, multidisciplinary understanding of ideology and its role in the processes of economic change. Merging a view of ideology as a fluid and politically practical concept with the framework of change offered by institutional economics, the authors use this theory to provide an in-depth analysis of how the ideological case for the New Economic System in East Germany and for de-Stalinisation more generally in the 1960s was built. Rich in archival material, the book both deepens our understanding of economic change in the communist world in the post-Stalin era and demonstrates the multifaceted role of ideology in economic decision making. With a cutting-edge approach, this book will be a valuable resource for students of economics, economic history, political economy, as well as of communist and German history.

Dieses Buch präsentiert einerseits eine neue und umfangreiche Datenbank, die minutiös aus Prozessakten des nationalsozialistischen Volksgerichtshofes erstellt wurde. Andererseits erläutert es auf dieser Datenbasis und am Beispiel des Widerstandes gegen den Nationalsozialismus neue Wege, aus einer quantitativ-historischen Perspektive Sozialgeschichtsforschung zu betreiben.

This book presents and uses a major, new database of the most serious forms of internal resistance to the Nazi state to study empirically the whole phenomenon of resistance to an authoritarian regime. By studying serious political resistance from a quantitative historical perspective, the book opens up a new avenue of research for economic history.The database underpinning the book was painstakingly compiled from official state records of treason and/or high treason tried before the German People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) between 1933 and 1945. It brings together material on resistance groups stored in the archives of the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria with previously inaccessible files from the former German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union. Through searching these records, the authors have been able to reconstruct in hitherto unattainable detail the economic, social, political, ethnic and familial profiles, backgrounds, and influences of all 4,378 civilians of the Third Reich active in Germany, Austria and the outside territories for whom there are complete records.The findings of their research afford fresh, new interdisciplinary insights and perspectives, not only on the configuration, timing, impact and profile of resistance to the Nazi state, but also on a range of real-world behaviours common within authoritarian states, such as defection, reward and punishment, and commitment to group identities. The book’s statistical analysis reveals precisely the who, how, where and when of serious resistance. In so doing, it advances significantly our understanding of the overall pattern and nature of serious resistance within Nazi Germany.

This book presents and uses a major, new database of the most serious forms of internal resistance to the Nazi state to study empirically the whole phenomenon of resistance to an authoritarian regime.

East Germany’s economic history is typically told as a story of the unravelling of an inherently flawed system. Unencumbered by political preconceptions, it offers a more realistic understanding of East German economic history than that derived from stagnant debates about the clash of systems.

East Germany’s economic history is typically told as a story of the unravelling of an inherently flawed system. Unencumbered by political preconceptions, it offers a more realistic understanding of East German economic history than that derived from stagnant debates about the clash of systems.