The German Red Cross(es) and Humanitarianism in Divided Germany, 1945-1965

Abstract

This dissertation studies the history of the German Red Cross of the German Democratic Republic and the German Red Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany. The dissertation begins with Germany’s defeat and capitulation in the Second World War into the occupation period, situating the pre-1945 German Red Cross in the chaos of the war’s end and its dissolution and ban by the Allied Powers. It investigates the aid work of new regional Red Cross societies in the Western occupation zones and the political debate about the Red Cross’s place in a socialist East Germany. The dissertation also analyzes the new national Red Crosses’ formation in 1952 and their domestic activities. These are two parallel histories of states with many similarities, while existing separately from one another and with differing ideological visions for the future. The German Red Crosses remained linked by their pasts and the circumstances of the present. This reality is reflected in their efforts to join the International Red Cross from 1952 to 1956, and in their collaboration to reunify families separated by the inter-German border. The dissertation argues that the histories of the German Red Crosses and humanitarianism contributes to our understanding of the fundamental predicaments faced by divided Germany in the early-Cold War. The Red Crosses shaped the responses to the challenges facing the region, whether they be the immediate suffering and long-lasting aftereffects wrought by total war, new anxieties about a nuclear future, or the need for modern disaster response and public health infrastructures. And humanitarianism was never purely altruistic. It was a useful political tool for East and West Germany and their peoples, who sought stability and peace and the successful completion of their ideological projects: creating socialism in the East and a liberal capitalist order in the West.