Pfeifer, Douglas C. Drei Deutsche Marinen. Auflösung, Übergänge und Neuanfänge

Douglas C. Peifer's analysis of the development of military structures in the two post-war German states on the basis of the process of formation of their two navies is not only the overdue reappraisal of a hitherto neglected aspect of military and naval history. It is also a contribution to Germany's political history from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1950s: the insights into the processes of demilitarisation and rearmament provide a complex but differentiated picture of the transition from former enemy to ally in the respective power blocs.

And they trace how the reorganisation of German society on both sides of the "Iron Curtain" was implemented by occupiers and occupied. Such an analysis cannot do without recourse to the developments that led to the surrender of National Socialist Germany. Douglas C. Peifer therefore meticulously pursues the question of continuities and discontinuities between the Kriegsmarine and the Bundesmarine or Volksmarine. They reflect not only the ideological differences between East and West, but also very navy-specific traditions of consciousness. And they clearly reveal how early after the end of the war the protagonists of the Cold War drew on the personnel and material resources of the defeated enemy in the context of intelligence activities. Douglas C. Peifer's study is impressive not only because of its solid material base based on archival analysis and eyewitness interviews, but also because of the author's fluent writing style, which Eva Besteck has masterfully translated into German. Volume 14 of the series "Kleine Schriftenreihe zur Militär- und Marinegeschichte".