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Pertti Ahonen. After the Expulsion: West Germany and Eastern Europe, 1945–
1990. New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Pp. viii, 313

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tion with the regime by working toward concrete becoming consumer citizens. Where the collection falls
improvements in consumption. short is in providing information about Nazi consumer
Judd Stitziel tells a story of failure in his article society and the continuation of a Volksgemeinschaft
about East German fashion shows. In its ambition to mentality after the war. There is no doubt that 1945
keep pace with or even surpass its capitalist rival, the represents a deep caesura in German history, but, as
East German regime tried to create a socialist "cloth- Michael Geyer and Konrad Jarausch have recently
ing culture." Although the socialist fashion designers pointed out, this discontinuity can only be understood
failed and East Berlin could never keep up with Paris, within the wider framework of twentieth-century Ger-
London, or Milan, the East German govenment had many.
crossed a significant threshold toward modern con- MICHAEL WILDT
sumer culture by rejecting the orthodox communist Hamburg Institute for Social Research
argument that fashion is symbolic of bourgeois deca-
dence. Nevertheless, the discrepancy between the PERTTI AHONEN. After the Expulsion: West Germany and
dreams created by the German Fashion Institute and Eastern Europe, 1945-1990. New York: Oxford Uni-
the reality of the retail trade was felt sharply by most versity Press. 2003. Pp. viii, 313.
East German consumers.
Eli Rubin focuses on a similar discrepancy with In its first decades, as the Federal Republic of Ger-
respect to plastic consumer goods. Because of the many (FRG) attained a measure of sovereignty within
continuous shortage of oil as the main raw material, the Western alliance, its relations with Eastern Europe
East German plans to raise plastics production per remained tied up in questions about Germany's bor-
capita never succeeded. Nonetheless the efforts the ders. Those borders were provisional, West German
GDR made to improve and extend the production of leaders asserted for two decades, relying on a partic-
everyday plastic consumer goods indicate how much ularly restrictive reading of the declarations of the
the image of plastics corresponded to mainstream Potsdam Conference, and could only be settled by a
discourse about the connection of socialism, moder- final peace treaty, making any intermediate normaliza-
nity, technology, and functionality. tion of relations impossible. West German insistence
Jeff R. Schutts focuses on the success story of on these legal arguments, which appeared increasingly
Coca-Cola in West Germany, where Coke became one unrealistic to most of their allies (and even to many
of the dominant symbols of a Westernized consumer West Germans by the 1960s), obstructed relations with
culture. Forty-five percent of all West Germans polled neighbors such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, and
in 1958 answered that they found the American way of with the Soviet bloc as a whole, until Willy Brandt's
life "not so good," but more than ninety percent Ostpolitik after 1969 began a new era.
admitted three years later that they had tried Coca- One barrier to normal relations with Eastern Eu-
Cola; forty-four percent of them drank it "often." In rope was the Federal Republic's claim to be the sole
West Germany, Westernization was documented in legitimate German state, and its refusal to maintain
practice rather than by public confessions. Unfortu- diplomatic relations with any state that recognized the
nately, Schutts has missed an opportunity to research German Democratic Republic (GDR). In his percep-
responses to Coca-Cola in East Germany, which might tive and well-researched book, however, Pertti Ahonen
have been an interesting subject for a comparative contends that German immobility was attributable not
perspective. only to the exigencies of the international system (what
The West German postwar years are usually de- he calls Staatsriison arguments) but also to the domes-
cribed as an "economic miracle." S. Jonathan Wiesen tic political influence of the "expellees" (Vertriebenen)
asks whether there was something unique about the who had fled Germany's former eastern territories in
consumer displays and advertising-in particular the the last months of the war. The nearly twelve million
annual German industry exhibition in West Berlin and expellees, organized in a variety of pressure groups,
the activities of the Berlin office of the J. Waiter posed a serious political challenge, as they demanded
Thompson ad agency-that gave life to this miracle. a return to their traditional Heimat and refused to
Although there were similarities in form and function accept that these territories were forever lost. Every
to earlier exhibitions, Wiesen emphasizes that West major West German political party chose rhetorically
Germany was a postwar society, and, after dictator- to cater to them, promising border revisions both out
ship, mass crimes, and devastated cities, West Ger- of electoral calculation and out of fear that these
mans were now able to recuperate a form of economic dispossessed and (at least initially) disadvantaged cit-
patriotism. Finally, Robert P. Stephens researches izens could provide fertile ground for the kind of
drug consumption in Hamburg during the 1960s. radical nationalist politics that had doomed the We-
These essays are preceded by a careful introduction imar Republic. No politician was willing to challenge
by David F. Crew that spans the scope of postwar them publicly, even though most admitted privately
consumption in both Germanies. Crew sharpens the that the chances of satisfying their demands were
focus on the rivalry of economic systems, the legitima- negligible. The result was two decades of diplomatic
tion of policy by its ability to create a consumer society, stagnation, and continuing suspicion of German mo-
and the diverse ways, especially in East Germany, of tives in Eastern Europe.

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW APRIL 2005

Ultimately, the expellees, despite their occasionally age, gender, profession, and religious affiliation en-
extreme rhetoric, never became the threat to West ables the reader to compare various sections of GDR
German democracy many feared. In part because of society. The book is based on a treasure trove of
their solicitous courting, the major parties gained the material from the former East German archives.
loyalty of most of the expellee rank and file, hastening Madarasz argues that East Germany did not remain
the collapse of the expellee political party (the Union stable between 1971 and 1987 because of repression
of the Expelled and Disenfranchised, or BHE). Fur- alone. Acceptance of the Communist system by the
thermore, federal social policies and increasing pros- general population and integration of key social
perity hastened the expellees' integration into West groups through participation in official structures and
German society by the 1960s. Ahonen concedes that, compromise with the authorities were also essential
from this perspective, the efforts to neutralize the factors. The author sheds new light on channels of
expellees were a success. Nonetheless, he argues that communication between state and society (such as the
West German leaders were unnecessarily timid, and he petitions system) and the ability of certain groups to
concludes his discussion with the sobering assessment: negotiate with the regime for special privileges. GDR
"Many subsequent problems at home and abroad society, according to Madarasz, was diverse, differen-
could have been avoided had the Federal Republic's tiated, and capable of articulating its own interests.
elites invested less time in nourishing illusionary hopes State officials often felt obliged to bargain with their
and shown more courage in preparing the ground for subjects for the sake of political and social stability. In
what they knew would be painful but necessary deci- this way an uneasy equilibrium was achieved in East
sions" (p. 279). Germany until Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, de-
Ahonen's conclusions are convincingly argued, and stabilized the situation after 1987. The book is there-
his book on the whole offers a clear and compelling fore a much-needed corrective to accounts written in
narrative of the development of expellee organizations the immediate aftermath of the Cold War that focused
and their influence on policy up to 1969, covering the disproportionately on state oppression as the reason
period after 1969 in a brief concluding chapter. for the GDR's survival.
Ahonen's focus on the relationship between domestic Despite its pioneering research, however, the book
politics and foreign policy is especially admirable and does have significant shortcomings. For example, the
suggests potential comparisons with other pressure author launches an exaggerated attack on totalitarian
groups both in Germany and elsewhere (such as Cuban theory, which, whatever its faults, has stood the test of
exiles in Florida). The only significant criticism, out- time. Certainly, if one takes a simplistic definition of
side of a noticeable (if inevitable) tendency to cast this term, Madarasz has a point. But totalitarianism
expellee leaders only as fools or knaves, is Ahonen's does not necessarily entail the total repression of
almost reflexively negative view of Konrad Adenauer. society by the state but rather its enforced fusion with
After criticizing Adenauer and others for catering to state structures. Although totalitarianism might mean
expellee revanchism with promises of reunification, slightly different things to different scholars, that is no
Ahonen then castigates Adenauer when he urged reason to jettison it altogether.
"patience" on Ostpolitik, claiming that this proves he Perhaps it would have been better to take a more
had little interest in unification (p. 126). Ahonen's nuanced view and characterize East Germany as an
arguments place him within a rich and complex liter- "inefficient bureaucratic" as opposed to "charismatic
ature on Adenauer and unification but also risk hold- terrorist" totalitarian state. This would have clearly
ing Adenauer to a different standard than other distinguished the GDR from Adolf Hitler's Germany
politicians. and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, while simultaneously
That criticism aside, Ahonen's work will be essential making it plain that the central mission of the ruling
reading for all students and scholars of postwar West Socialist Unity Party (SED) was to control as much of
German politics and diplomacy. East German society as possible in the name of
RONALD J. GRANIERI communist ideology, regardless of its ultimate failure
University of Pennsylvania to do so. If one takes totalitarianism as a relative
rather than an absolute concept, Honecker's GDR was
JEANNETIE Z. MADARASZ. Conflict and Compromise in undoubtedly one of the most totalitarian states in the
East Germany, 1971-1989: A Precarious Stability. New Soviet bloc, even if it did not reach Orwellian stan-
York: Palgrave MacmiIIan. 2003. Pp. xvi, 276. $69.95. dards of perfection. Of course, it is all too easy to find
fault with existing concepts and much more difficult to
In this important monograph, Jeannette Z. Madarasz come up with new ones. Since the author does not
provides an extremely illuminating, original, and so- attempt to do this, her book lacks a theoretical frame-
phisticated analysis of the complex relationship be- work. To simply describe the GDR as a "dictatorship"
tween state and society in East Germany (also known like any other is inadequate since it fails to acknowl-
as the German Democratic Republic or GDR) during edge the unprecedented degree to which society was
the period of Erich Honecker's rule. She takes as the supervised by the state in East Germany.
basis for her study four social groups: young people, Madarasz also understates the importance of the
women, writers, and Christians. This combination of repressive context within which the compromises she

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW APRIL 2005

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