"When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they promised to build a vibrant consumer society. But they faced a dilemma. They recognized that consolidating support for the regime required providing Germans with the products they desired. At the same time, the Nazis worried about the degrading...

Consuming Germany in the Cold War : consumption and national identity in East and West Germany, 1949-1989, an introduction / David F. Crew -- "A world in miniature" : the Leipzig Trade Fairs in the 1950s and East German consumer citizenship / Katharine Pence -- On the seam between socialism and...

"Antisemitic stereotypes of Jews as capitalists have hindered research into the economic dimension of the Jewish past. The figure of the Jew as trader and financier dominated the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But the economy has been central to Jewish life and the Jewish image in the world;...

"During the first decades of the twentieth century, modern states fighting World War I and II for the first time experimented with feeding--and starving--entire populations. Within the new globalizing economy, food became intimately intertwined with waging war. In Europe, starvation claimed more...

Der Autor W. König ist Professor für Technikgeschichte an der TU Berlin. Er beleuchtet in seinem anregend zu lesenden Buch die historischen Hintergründe und sozialen Zusammenhänge der modernen Konsumgesellschaft, die ein Phänomen des 20. Jahrhunderts sind. Dabei vergleicht er...