Preface ix
I Zero Hour? 1
Never before was there so much beginning. And never so much end i
II In Ruins 13
Who's going to clear all that up again? Rubble clearance strategies 13
Ruined beauty and rubble tourism 27
III The Great Migration 39
Freed forced labourers and wandering prisoners-homeless forever 44
The expellees and the Germans' shocking encounter with themselves 63
On the road 80
IV Dancing Frenzy 89
"My poor shattered Mainz" 97
V Love Amidst the Rubble 115
Homecoming of the burned-out men 115
Constanze strolls through the world 125
"Greedy for life, thirsty for love" 131
A surplus of women-being in the minority assures men of their supremacy 137
Fair game in the East 142
Veronika Dankeschon in the West 147
VI Robbing, Rationing, Black-market Trading-Lessons for the Market Economy 161
The first redistributions-citizens learn how to loot 162
The logic of food ration cards 166
A nation of petty thieves-private initiative and criminality 172
The black market as a school of citizenship 187
VII The Economic Miracle and the Fear of Immorality 195
Currency reform, the second Zero Hour 195
Wolfsburg, the human plantation 204
Start-up-Beate Uhse discovers her business model while selling door-to-door 221
Is Germany drowning in filth? The fear of waywardness 229
VIII The Re-educators 237
The Allies go to work on the German psyche 237
IX The Cold War of Art and the Design of Democracy 267
A hunger for culture 267
How abstract art decorated the social market economy 272
How the kidney table changed people's thinking 288
X The Sound of Repression 297
Staying silent, talking, listlessly closing ranks 303
A miracle that it turned out so well 316
Afterword: Happiness 323
Acknowledgements 329
Notes 331
Bibliography 361
Index 371
Illustration Credits 393