Hinter der geheimen Aufrüstung der Weimarer Republik stand ein lagerübergreifender Wehrkonsens. Die Republikaner sahen sie in den Krisen der ersten Jahre als Form des Republikschutzes an. Später blieb die Unterstützung bestehen, obwohl die geheime personelle Rüstung zur Hochburg eines staatsfeindlichen Paramilitarismus wurde.
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Vorspann Der Kalte Krieg und die deutsche Teilung liefern eine Fülle tragischer, komischer, verschlungener und geheimnisvoller Geschichten. Eine davon erzählt Rüdiger Bergien, der einer verdeckten, die Grenzen der Legalität strapazierenden Kooperation zwischen dem Siemens-Konzern und dem Ministerium für Staatssicherheit nachspürt. Wie der Potsdamer Historiker auf der Basis bislang unbekannter Quellen zeigen kann, profitierten beide Seiten von diesem Geschäft mit Großrechnern, Programmen und Peripheriegeräten aller Art. Siemens gewann einen guten Kunden und ein "Versuchskaninchen" beim Einsatz neuer Software; der Staatssicherheit gelang mit westdeutscher Hilfe dagegen der Sprung ins digitale Zeitalter – freilich um den Preis lästiger Abhängigkeit bei Systempflege und Schulung, den Ost-Berlin bis zum Fall der Mauer zu zahlen hatte.
The Communist ruling parties of East Central and Eastern Europe in the post-1956 era developed 'softer' methods of staying in power, both vis-a-vis the societies they ruled as well as within the Party itself, methods which proved more effective than 'purges' and 'party discipline'. This article investigates these methods, taking the East German 'Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands' (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) or SED as a case study and focusing on one specific control procedure in particular: the 'brigade deployments' of the Central Committee apparatus of the SED, that is 'on the job inspections' of subordinate party organs. A systematic analysis of Central Committee brigade deployments shows that, rather than serving to punish these organs, the inspections were primarily a means of consensus creation in which brigade members effectively used staged performances and a 'language of intimacy' to keep their comrades 'in line'. Though ultimately still a form of repression, this 'performative' style of party rule was much more subtle than the common conception of monolithic power machines would suggest.
Vorspann Wie weit stützte die Weimarer Republik die geheimen Rüstungs- und Mobilmachungsvorbereitungen der Reichswehr? Handelten die Militärs nur im eigenen Interesse oder konnten sie auf eine Rückendeckung von Staat und Verwaltung vertrauen? Dokumentenfunde im polnischen Wojwodschaftsarchiv in Posen lassen die Beziehungen zwischen Reichswehr, Politik und Administration in einem neuen Licht erscheinen.
The impact of the Reichswehr's program of clandestine armament on Weimar Germany's civil society is a phenomenon largely overlooked by post-war historiography. Not only did it fail to identify the wide support enjoyed by the illegal preparations for a general mobilization on the national and local levels, but it also failed to address the question why the officials collaborated with the Reichswehr under the aegis of "national defense" at all. The reasons for both omissions are easy to find. While the role played by civilians within the militarization of society has been largely ignored (due to the historiographical dominance of the interpretation model of the army as an autonomous "state within the state"), the few authors who recognized its importance considered a more detailed analysis of civilian dispositions to be dispensable in view of the well-known nationwide anti-Versailles sentiment.
"The ruling communist parties of the postwar Soviet Bloc possessed nearly unprecedented power to shape every level of society; perhaps in part because of this, they have been routinely depicted as monolithic, austere, and even opaque institutions. Communist Parties Revisited takes a markedly different approach, investigating everyday life within basic organizations to illuminate the inner workings of Eastern Bloc parties. Ranging across national and transnational contexts, the contributions assembled here reconstruct the rituals of party meetings, functionaries' informal practices, intra-party power struggles, and the social production of ideology to give a detailed account of state socialist policymaking on a micro-historical scale"--