The temptation of despair : tales of the 1940s /
Werner Sollors.
- Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, (c)2014.
- 1 online resource (x, 390 pages)
Includes bibliographies and index.
Introduction : before success -- March 29, 1945 : between the no longer and the not yet : peace breaks out gradually in Central Europe -- May 7, 1945 : malevolent rectangles of spectral horror : a photographer and his subject -- June 23, 1945 : after Dachau : of private vengeance, collective guilt, life in ruins, population transfers, and displaced persons -- October 4, 1945 : dilemmas of denazification : Karl Loewenstein, Carl Schmitt, military occupation, and militant democracy -- January 8, 1946 : are you occupied territory? : black G.I.s in fiction of the occupation -- April 24, 1946 : the race problem in the house on Lilac Road : occupation children and the film Toxi -- August 20, 1948 -- May 6, 1977 : Heil, Johnny : Billy Wilder's A foreign affair, or, The denazification of Erika von Schlutow -- Coda : comic relief? -- Afterword.
The Temptation of Despair is a book about coming to terms with the mid-1940s, the contradictory emotions of a defeated people-sorrow and anger, guilt and pride, despondency and resilience-as well as the ambiguities and paradoxes of Allied victory and occupation.
9780674416314
Reconstruction (1939-1951)--Germany. Denazification. Social psychology--Germany. World War, 1939-1945--Influence. World War, 1939-1945--Art and the war. World War, 1939-1945--Literature and the war. World War, 1939-1945--Motion pictures and the war. World War, 1939-1945--Motion pictures and the war.