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Based on Spanish, German, Polish and Romanian archives, this article explores some aspects of the Cold War that have hardly been studied until now: the activities of the Eastern Bloc secret services in Spain; the surveillance of Spanish diplomats; and Eastern European spies in Spain. The article examines the history of East-West relationships but adds the perspective of everyday life, using oral history and the records of the security police. The focus is on the importance of the surveillance of Spain as a Cold War country, which has almost never been researched in its connection to the Eastern Bloc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates tensions and dynamics in global socialism through a focus on Tanzanian students in East Germany between the late 1950s and 1990. Disciplinary techniques partially known from Tanzania and everyday strategies of survival explain why most students complied with official requirements, but did not necessarily agree with East German ideological tenets. Additionally, throughout the decades, mobility across the Iron Curtain remained an important strategy to further own interests. The article concludes that an analytical framework spanning several decades and paying attention to dynamics in the country of origin sheds new light on agency and mobility among 'East', 'West', and 'South' during the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case of early German-Israeli relations offers unique insight into the dynamics of the German Cold War. As this article shows, the two Germanys were ideologically and geopolitically antithetical, but vis-a-vis the question of relations with Israel East and West German representatives faced a situation that was uniquely related to the German past and to the German Cold War competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Mikhail Gorbachev and his entourage conducted their policy on the German Question in the situation of the rapidly accelerating Soviet political and financial crisis. Therefore, their foreign policy can only be understood through the prism of domestic concerns and circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With regard to the analysis of the history of the Cold War and the blocs' confrontation, the GDR is both a typical representative of the Eastern bloc alliance and an exception. In addition to processes intended by the Soviets to enforce political conformity, which were similar throughout the Eastern bloc, there were other formative influences, such as the GDR being part of a divided nation, the GDR being at the centre of the Cold War and the lack of legitimacy for SED rule under international law. The Warsaw Pact served the Soviet Union as an instrument for exerting political and military influence on the allied states. The military doctrine of attack as the decisive moment of warfare required extensive preparations for war in times of peace. For the Pact, the GDR was the area of operations for the military clash of systems in the western theatre of war. This function determined the demands on the armed forces, defence industry and security forces and also resulted in a bizarre way of thinking with regard to domestic security after the People's Uprising of 1953. In the 1950s, a co-ordinated domestic security system was established and on that basis a superordinate system of national defence which in its particular form made the GDR one of the most militarised states in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the thaw (1963) after the Cuban missile crisis, West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt proposed jointly-hosted Olympics on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Historians have dismissed this initiative as a propaganda stunt. It was not. Belying his reputation for realism, Brandt aimed to use popular culture and non-governmental organisations to ease the Cold War at its most dangerous flashpoint. The ensuing internal and public discourses illuminate how Brandt and his Eastern and Western opponents assessed the risks and rewards of a policy of cultural and political engagement. Amid the doubly-treacherous political terrain, only false starts permitted the architect of German-German detente to trace the boundary between the imaginative and the imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Cold War joined the decolonization process both camps had to answer the major challenges faced by the newly-independent states, that is political independence and economic development. Besides their own priorities in the Arab Middle East, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic offered their own models for modernization as alternatives and connected with a camp-choice. The research points out how Syrian and Iraqi regimes actually neutralized such a linkage and tried to secure their nation-building development through the exploitation of Cold War rivalry. German archives offer a deep insight into the troubled relations between Arab nationalism and Europe in the 1960s and mid-1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares and contrasts the impact of the Cold War upon three immigrant groups in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Spanish, Iranian and Croatian communities. In particular, it focuses on the manner in which relations between political movements within these communities and West German political milieux evolved during this period. Since ideological tension between the American and Soviet blocs had an impact on the homeland states of each of these immigrant communities, the global nature of Cold War conflict helped foster a set of, at times paradoxical, strategic alliances between immigrant political movements and West German state and party-political institutions. The attitude of an immigrant political movement towards Soviet Communism in general, and East Germany in particular, could therefore have a considerable impact on relations between its own ethnic community and the rest of West German society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]