Review by Choice Review
West Germany's rapid reconstruction after WW II was guided by "a complex heritage of urban planning concepts and practices" that reached back to the 19th century and had been extensively developed during the Nazi period. This heritage, and its consequences for postwar Germany, is seen in the evolution of town planning. The Nazi regime provided urban planners with their first opportunity to undertake ambitious projects conceived before 1933; after 1942 this energy was diverted to reconstruction. A network of city agencies, architects, and urban planners formed during the Nazi years continued to mobilize scarce resources after the war. But this planning elite was slow to open its work to public input and to integrate itself into the democratic polity of the Federal Republic. Diefendorf gives thorough treatment of many aspects of reconstruction, such as restoring historic monuments, meeting the critical housing shortage, and redrafting building laws. This work, the product of ten years' labor, incorporates recent scholarship and sources from more than two dozen archives. It ends the account in the 1960s, when building in West Germany moved beyond reconstruction to more "robust, self-congratulatory" projects anticipating a prosperous future. Not only historians but students of architecture, urban planning, and historic preservation, as well as lawyers, environmentalists, and communitarians, will find much of absorbing interest in this dense but well-written history. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate and above. O. B. Burianek; Georgia College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
