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 | | Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949 by Carolyn Woods Eisenberg ISBN-10: 9780521392129 ISBN-10: 0-521-39212-8 ISBN-13: 9780521392129 ISBN-13: 978-0-521-39212-9 Hardcover 1996-04-26 Cambridge University Press Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description In this fresh and challenging study of the origins of the Cold War, Professor Eisenberg traces the American role in dividing postwar Germany. Drawing upon original documentary sources, she explores how U.S. policy makers chose partition and mobilized reluctant West Europeans behind that approach. The book casts new light on the Berlin blockade, demonstrating that the United States rejected United Nations mediation and relied on its nuclear monopoly as the means of protecting its German agenda. | ||
Book Description In this fresh and challenging study of the origins of the Cold War, Professor Eisenberg traces the American role in dividing post-war Germany. Drawing upon original documentary sources, she explores how U.S. policy-makers chose partition and mobilized reluctant West Europeans behind that approach. The book casts new light on the Berlin blockade, demonstrating that the United States rejected United Nations mediation and relied on its nuclear monopoly as the means of protecting its German agenda. | ||
Reviews | ||
Ms.Eisenberg is not accurate, and I have no relationship to her Listen, Ms. Eisenberg, let's get the facts. There was no bullying, and it was not America that divided Germany. It was one man, and only one man, that allowed Russia to go into Berlin and divide the city even though our military should have been the military to go in. That man, a demented Roosevelt that should never have been allowed in office for four terms, acted contrary to every sensible leader's position in the U.S. To even remotely claim that America made this decision is not only not acceptable, it is untenable, and should be deeply repented of. It is my opinion that you have made this position to sell a book, and to earn dollars doing it. | ||
A book all Americans should read This is a book all Americans should read, but probably won't. Although stylistically undistinguished, it tells a vitally important story about the origins of the cold war. Few criticisms of the Soviet Union's diplomacy are more damning than the way it imposed dictatorship in Eastern Europe. What Eisenberg's book suggests however, is that the partition of Germany was not the result of Stalinist bullying, but American preference for it over a neutral social democratic state. Relying on more than 70 sets of private papers and files, Eisenberg shows how the United States subtly weakened denazification, decarterlization and the American committment to ensure the war-ravaged Soviet Union its share of German reparations. Gradually they decided that economic recovery and political security required an American allied Germany even if the Soviet quarter remained a Communist dictatorship. As Ambassador Walter Bedell Smith bluntly put it "The difficulty under which we labor is that in spite of our announced position, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification in any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seemed to meet most of our requirements." With Truman having only a vague idea of the real issues, the United States ignored Soviet plans for reunification, forced plans for currency reform, and refused international proposals for mediation of the Berlin Blockade crisis. The consequences of this decision were incalcuably tragic for Central Europe and the world. | ||