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A groundbreaking new history of the people at the centre of Europe, from the Second World War to today In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, morally and materially. The German people stood condemned by history, responsible for a horrifying genocide and a war of extermination. But by 2015 Germany looked to many to be the moral voice of Europe, welcoming almost one million refugees. At the same time, it pursued a controversially rigid fiscal discipline and made energy deals with a dictator. Many people have asked how Germany descended into the darkness of the Nazis, but this book asks another vital question: how, and how far, have the Germans since reinvented themselves? Trentmann tells the dramatic story of the Germans from the middle of the Second World War, through the Cold War and the division into East and West, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunited nation's search for a place in the world. Their journey is marked by extraordinary moral struggles: guilt, shame and limited amends; wealth versus welfare; tolerance versus racism; compassion and complicity. Through a range of voices - German soldiers and German Jews; environmentalists and coal miners; families and churches; volunteers, migrants and populists - Trentmann paints a remarkable and surprising portrait over 80 years of the conflicted people at the centre of Europe

Free trade stories -- Bread and circuses -- Uneasy globalizers -- Consumers divided -- Visible hands -- Losing interest -- Final days

Andreas Wirsching has written an ambitious paper about the rise of the 'consumer society' in the twentieth century and its implications for historical research. I should say at the outset that I am sympathetic to his warnings against a Whig history. The career of the 'consumer society' needs to be historicised. My main problem is that 'the consumer society' is used in multiple, slippery ways in this article which moves back and forth between treating it as an ideological construct, an analytical concept and as a material reality of how people live their lives. It sometimes appears as 'paradigm', yet at other times it is the real thing, 'a burgeoning consumer society'.

Consumer culture has moved to the centre of contemporary debates about society, identity and citizenship. This article cuts a critical, comparative pathway through the literature to point to new directions for historical work. Initially driving research, concepts like 'consumer revolution', 'consumer society' and 'consumerism' have become problematic analytical concepts for understanding the changing dynamics, practices and meanings of consumption. Historical research has lost touch with theoretical and conceptual developments in the social sciences. Engaging with recent work on urban spaces, retailing, work-place, scarcity, the state and consumer politics, this article develops perspectives to frame historical debate. Problematizing a stage-theory of global convergence, the article draws attention to divergence and disjunctures. Instead of drawing a contrast between 'traditional' culture and 'modern' acquisitive, consumerist mentality, it emphasizes the persistence of social and collective dimensions of consumption practices and identities. Instead of privileging a utility-maximizing individual or self-fashioning and self-oriented individual, it points to contingent civic sensibilities and political practices of consumers. To foster dialogue with the growing interdisciplinary field of consumer studies, historians need to broaden their conception of consumption, become more self-critical of invoking an essentialist consumer and unitary western model of consumerism, and instead, be more sensitive of how historical actors have developed their knowledge of consumption and identity as 'consumers'.