Easier Fatherland: Germany and the Twenty-First Century

by Steve Crawshaw

Germany is the most important and powerful country in Europe. And yet it remains strangely little understood - by itself, as much as by the rest of the world. It is in a state of remarkable flux, confronting the demons of the past, whilst also seeking to make the West and the East into one country - a much greater challenge than it seemed. The coming enlargement of the European Union, which will bring much of formerly communist Eastern Europe into the EU, will make Germany more pivotal than ever. So what makes this country tick?

For decades after the Second World War, the country remained strongly polluted by the Nazi legacy; there was little attempt to confront the past. For today's younger generation, by contrast, Nazism was a weird aberration that they themselves have difficulty in understanding. The book will explore those changes, and how German society itself is still in the midst of enormous change.

The story takes us through three periods: Before the Poison (pre-1933), The Poison (1933-45) and - the heart of the book - the period of Coming to Terms, and the changes that this period has brought to the shape of the country. The coming to terms with the past overlaps, from 1990 onwards, with the East-West story, where mutual misunderstanding has been rife.

Genres: History

250 pages, Paperback

First published January 6, 2004

About the author

Steve Crawshaw is Director of the Office of the Secretary General at Amnesty International, which he joined as international advocacy director in 2010. From 2002 to 2010, he was UK director and UN advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. He joined the Independent at launch in 1986, where he reported on the eastern European revolutions, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Balkan wars.

He is co-author with John Jackson of Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity and Ingenuity Can Change the World, preface by Václav Havel (Jon Snow: ‘brilliant’). His previous books were Easier Fatherland: Germany and the Twenty-First Century (John le Carré: ‘rare and long overdue’) and Goodbye to the USSR: The Collapse of Soviet Power (Ryszard Kapuściński: ‘fascinating and vivid, should be read’).

He studied Russian and German at the universities of Oxford and Leningrad (St Petersburg), and lived in Poland from 1978 to 1981.