That is a pretty big ask! The best text I've personally read is Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, which is more political, but given the nature of the European Union a lot of the history is necessarily economic. This book deals specifically with Europe.
Fucking hell. Go read a book about this instead of just blabbing about.
Tony Judts Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 is a fine starting point, though admittedly just gives an overview. It has a great bibliography though, so yea, good starting point.
Nobody said the EU was responsible for peace from before that particular union was created but it's a result of and a continuation of, thoughts and ideas from the immediate post war period and the treaties and communities founded at that time. Sheesh.
Tony Judt's book: 'Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945' is worth reading. Although not specifically focused on Germany alone, it does provide the reader with a good general coverage of post 1945 events, and provides context for Germany's post war growth.
https://www.amazon.com/Postwar-History-Europe-Since-1945/dp/0143037757
As some background, this was written by a historian who's losing his battle with ALS, a motor neuron disease that traps sufferers in increasingly unresponsive bodies. He's the author of Postwar: a History of Europe Since 1945.
Then here.
Finished the first chapter of Postwar. Europe really solved nationalism by becoming even more nationalistic...
Give "Postwar" by Tony Judt a read. It's incredibly detailed and goes over the history of Europe from 1945.
> He got very pissed off at me. Apparently he took offense because in addition to that story (He was Austrian, btw), his parents apparently also helped hide people from the Germans. >
Austria was a breeding ground for Nazism, as was Germany. There was a reason virtually no resistance or opposition to the Third Reich's annexation of Austria happened. Funny enough, after the war they tried to paint themselves as the first victims of Nazi Germany, ignoring that it was wrong and the population of Germany's as well as the Spanish people in Guernica were victims of the Nazi aggression before them.
> uh... he lived through it
Yeah, doesn't mean he tells you the truth - or that you do tell the truth now. The SS people did not have numbers tattooed like the iconic pictures of people from concentration camps, but 20 cm above their elbow in direction of the axilla a two letter identification of the Blood Group.
> his parents apparently also helped hide people from the Germans.
Good if that was the case, then he wouldn't have a reason to be angry when people tell the Austrian's were enthusiastic about Nazism at the beginning of the Anschluss. As he knows that the majority did nothing against the regime.
> Sorry if the claims of someone who lived through it don't line up with your personal views.
Sorry that your story on Reddit doesn't match my decades of knowledge about the subject one of em living in Berlin and being involved with some people who study that time and publish on it.
> Well, it was noted that towards the end, everyone from young boys to old men were pressed into service
True, but not the SS and not with reasonable threat of death. The Volkssturm isn't the SS.
> do your own damn research.
I did and it doesn't align to your story. More important I listened to people who actually do research and publish and study the field.
> Your claim that it's a fake claim is a pile of nonsense
Don't be shamed, you are wrong. As I told you already and tell you in this post again.
> Prove your disproof first
Deliver me proof and I might think about it, till it happens you are telling bullshit or a personal story online - which is fine.
Most important
You say your friend was under 12 years, of course he tells you bullshit.
> I'm currently reading Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt. The information I'm giving is me paraphrasing from...
It wasn't Vietnamese communists, you fucking twit. It was American and European communists.
Here is the founder of Greenpeace, and for a very long time the only director with a PhD, who left because it was taken over by political radicals.
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt has a good political history of the unification of greens, labor, feminists and communist radicals after the Vietnam War. When they no longer had a war to protest as a means to protest America (aka capitalism, which they all iroincally blamed for Nazism), they had to protest something else that would bestir public sentiment towards communism. They chose the environmental movement.
And you think it's not a global wealth redistribution scam? What do you think the proposed international cap & trade system is? And don't forget the Kyoto protocol, which requires us to spend inordinate amounts of money to abandon coal while the rest of the world gets cheaper prices.