Peter von Zahn's Cold War Broadcasts to West Germany: Assessing America (Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media) - Hardcover

Nathans, Eli

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3319506145 ISBN 13: 9783319506142

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Synopsis

This book examines the pioneering radio broadcasts and television documentaries about the United States made in the 1950s by the influential West German journalist Peter von Zahn. Part intellectual biography, part analysis of significant debates in West Germany, part study of an intensive encounter with the United States, the book helps explain the transformation of postwar West Germany. As a soldier in the Wehrmacht in World War II, Zahn held the militantly elitist views typical of young men in Germany’s educated middle class. He reconsidered these positions in his postwar broadcasts. At the same time he coldly assessed the capacity of the United States to win the Cold War. His broadcasts examined McCarthyism, the African-American civil rights movement, and numerous aspects of American culture and politics. Zahn’s broadcasts were one important voice in West German debates about the defects and virtues of modern democratic societies and especially of the United States, debates whose intensity reflected recent German experiences with the failure of the Weimar Republic and with Nazism.  Zahn’s analyses of the United States remain startlingly relevant today. 

About this title

Review:

“With his portrait of Peter von Zahn, Nathans presents us with a picture of the postwar period of the Federal Republic that was determined neither by consensus on political subjects nor by a society primarily focused on consumer goods.  Instead, he illustrates the processes of Westernization and liberalization of Germans through the example of an early and critical foreign correspondent.  The book is worth reading” (Reinhild Kreis, H-Soz-Kult, (March 2019))

About the Author:

Eli Nathans is Associate Professor of European History at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. He has previously published books on the history of German citizenship policies and the career of a senior official in the Nazi administration of justice.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 3319506145
• ISBN 13: 9783319506142
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 355