Join us in watching the much-anticipated biennial award program honoring Between Containment and Rollback: The United States and the Cold War by Christian Ostermann, History and Public Policy Program director at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In the aftermath of World War II, American policymakers turned to the task of rebuilding Europe while keeping communism at bay. In Germany, the U.S. prioritized the political, economic, and, eventually, military integration of the fledgling Federal Republic with the West. The extraordinary success story of forging this alliance has dominated our historical understanding of the American-German relationship.
Most East Germans were largely left out of the story of U.S.–German relations, who found themselves caught under Soviet control and dearly paid the price for the country’s division. Ostermann takes an international approach — drawing on recently declassified documents from American, Russian, and German archives—to write the East Germans, both the leadership and general populace, back into history.
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