Topics in German Cultural Studies: The Global Cold War: Two Germanies, One World

Catalog description

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Taught in English. Current topic description: How did the splitting of a country no larger than Montana nearly 40 years ago shape the world we know today? When the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, it didn't just divide a city. It crystallized a global competition in which both German states actively courted allies, exported ideologies, and intervened in conflicts far beyond Europe. West Germany deployed the Hallstein Doctrine and bankrolled development projects across Asia and Africa to win diplomatic recognition and block communist influence, while East Germany sent Stasi advisors to Vietnam and construction specialists to North Korea, trained guerrillas in Angola, and negotiated agreements about the recruitment of foreign workers from Vietnam, Mozambique, and Cuba as part of its own rival bid for Third World solidarity. Two states, one divided nation, and a planet as their chessboard. This course follows the moves and machinations of each German state during the Cold War and the repercussions for ordinary people across the globe. We trace how the Korean War hardened Germany's division just as it split the Korean peninsula, how the Cuban Missile Crisis brought nuclear war to the doorsteps of Berlin as much as Havana, how the Vietnam War radicalized student movements on both sides of the German border, and how Gorbachev's reforms in Moscow reverberated simultaneously through East Berlin, Beijing, and Warsaw in 1989. Germany is our entry point - but the Cold War we uncover is one that ran through every continent. The Cold War was not only a geopolitical contest but a system of asymmetric power relations that reproduced and extended colonial hierarchies. This course asks students to examine how both German states instrumentalized Third World solidarity while simultaneously extracting labor and political loyalty from postcolonial nations. By working with primary sources, scholarly readings, and film, students will develop skills in historical and comparative analysis, research, and critical writing.