Germany

Outbreak of the Second World War: Who were the ‘guilty men’?

01 September 2009
Prime minister Neville Chamberlain broadcast that Britain was in a state of war with Germany at 11.12am on 3 September 1939. The Second World War had begun two days earlier when the German dictator, Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland.

Do growth figures herald an economic recovery?

18 August 2009
Recent figures showing Japan, Hong Kong, France and Germany creeping out of the recession have been hailed in some quarters as heralding the end of the global economic crisis.

The fight against ‘mechanical Marxism’

02 June 2009
In September 1940 a German Jewish refugee committed suicide after he fled occupied France into Spain and was then told he would be turned over to Hitler’s Gestapo.

Lohengrin - Royal Opera House

05 May 2009
Richard Wagner’s operas represent the high point of German romanticism, a movement of protest against the alienation and fragmentation of the new industrial capitalism.

Can countries become bankrupt?

03 March 2009
"There’s a rumour going around that states cannot go bankrupt," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said recently at a private bank event in Frankfurt. "This rumour is not true."

Letters

24 February 2009
Letters

The truth behind ‘Valkyrie’ and the coup against Hitler

27 January 2009
On 20 July 1944 a group of German army officers attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler by exploding a bomb in his Wolf’s Lair headquarters.

Hamas has the right to resist Israeli terror

20 January 2009
Herschel Grynszpan, a young Jewish man, walked into the German embassy in Paris in November 1938 and shot a Nazi diplomat dead.

Stop the War: Mobilising a mass response to imperialism

13 January 2009
Lindsey German introduced a session on imperialism and the Stop the War Coalition.

Bernard Madoff: a Wall Street crook

15 December 2008
The German playwright Bertolt Brecht once asked, "What is the crime of robbing a bank compared to the crime of owning a bank?"

A split ruling class with no answer to the crisis

15 December 2008
Gordon Brown has been stung by remarks from Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, who described Britain’s response to the economic crisis as "crass Keynesianism".

Berlin’s days of hope turned into despair

09 December 2008
The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) betrayed the ideas it had fought for for over 50 years when it decided to support the slaughter of the First World War.

Workers’ councils had power to run society

02 December 2008
Around a million German workers joined mass strikes against the First World War in January 1918, after almost four years of slaughter.

Horrors of war gave birth to new struggle

25 November 2008
In an anti-war poem Bertolt Brecht, the German playwright and poet, tells the story of the First World War.

How a workers' uprising ended the First World War

18 November 2008
It is widely claimed that the 1918 November Revolution in Germany failed. But it succeeded in ending the First World War – the biggest and bloodiest war in human history up to that time.

SPD’s move right benefits the German left

16 September 2008
The German SPD, one of the world’s oldest mass Labour parties, is in a deep and growing crisis. It has been moving steadily rightwards, is haemorrhaging support and has recently suffered a leadership coup at the hands of those most associated with the party’s embrace of neoliberalism.

Barack Obama is already moving to the right

16 July 2008
US presidential candidate Barack Obama arrives in London to meet Gordon Brown next week. It’s part of his tour of key US allies, including France, Germany, Israel and Jordan.

Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945

10 June 2008
Between the two world wars there was a massive expansion of interest in photography across central European countries including Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary.

Activists plan protests over Afghanistan

10 June 2008
Some 500 peace and anti-war activists from ten countries met in Hanover, Germany, last weekend to plan how to step up the campaign against the war in Afghanistan.

Rudi Dutschke and the German student movement in 1968

29 April 2008
The political storm that broke out across the world 40 years ago affected every part of the globe. But with much of the media focusing on the student protests and mass strikes in France in May 1968, it is possible to miss the significance of some of the other revolts.