Germany

2009

Letter From Berlin: Twenty Years After

Paul Hockenos

The commemorations marking the fall of the Wall were joyous. But divisions still plague unified Germany.
A Makeshift World

Barry Schwabsky : Photography

For the photographer Thomas Demand, Germany is like any other country because it is haunted by history.
German Party Politics: Color Them Blurry

Katha Pollitt

Leftist parties in Germany offer a range of choices but no cohesive challenge to the right.
Iron Hans

Benjamin Lytal : Fiction

Novelist Hans Fallada resented the constraints of the Nazi era but did not desist in his craft.
Germany's Turkish Obama

Paul Hockenos : Turkey

Might a Deutschturke one day become chancellor of Germany? The prospect lies in the distant future.

Obama: Filling a Vacuum in Berlin

Norman Birnbaum : Barack Obama

A nation whose citizens have been largely turned off to politics held Barack Obama in a fervent embrace, viewing America once again as a place of new possibilities.
Green Days

Anson Rabinbach : Foreign Leaders & Political Figures

The biography of Joschka Fischer tells the story of postwar Germany.

German GWOT Misfire

Neil Smith : Europe

The government is using antiterrorist laws to suppress political dissent.
I'm Not the Man I Used to Be

Andreas Huyssen : History

The reasons for Günter Grass's silence about his membership in the Waffen SS remain safely hidden in his new memoir.
Why It Happened the Way It Did

Richard J. Evans : Non-Fiction

Ian Kershaw's latest work analyzes ten decisions that shaped the outcome of World War II.
Faraway, So Close

Omer Bartov : World War II

In his memoir Five Germanys I Have Known, Fritz Stern revisits his family's past and finds that he has never been quite at home.

War Criminals, Beware

Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith : International Criminal Court/War Crimes Tribunals

Human rights advocates are pressing German courts to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and other Bush Administration officials for war crimes. They just might succeed.
The Strange Silence of Günter Grass

Norman Birnbaum : Countries

By concealing for a near-lifetime that he had served in the Waffen SS, literary giant Günter Grass treated himself with an indulgence he did not hesitate to deem a moral defect in others. And for that, we are all losers.
The Red Flag, From Berlin to West Bengal

Alexander Cockburn : India

The left may be a dusty relic in Germany, but in the Indian state of Kerala, it has made formidable gains on a platform of reform and smart economic policies.
Green Power

Mark Hertsgaard : Environment

The Green Party fell from power in recent German elections, but Greens continue to be the party to watch, a progressive influence on the world's third-largest economy.

The War of the Liberals

Stephen Holmes : Progressives, Liberals, & The American Left

Power and the Idealists clings to the notion that the Iraq War was waged for humanitarian ideals, while At the Point of a Gun documents the inner torment of humanitarian interventionists who, without forgetting Rwanda and Bosnia, have gazed into the Iraqi abyss.
Fighting the Abyss

Noah Isenberg : Cultural Criticism & Analysis

Although The Aesthetics of Resistance delves into leftist notions of art and class struggle, this account of an anti-Nazi youth group in Germany seems outdated now.