Friendly Enemies

During the Cold War, Britain had an astonishing number of contacts and connections with one of the Soviet Bloc’s most hard-line regimes: the German Democratic Republic. The left wing of the British Labour Party and the Trade Unions often had closer ties with communist East Germany than the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). There were strong connections between the East German and British churches, women’s movements, and peace movements; influential Conservative politicians and the Communist leadership in the GDR had working relationships; and lucrative contracts existed between business leaders in Britain and their counterparts in East Germany. Based on their extensive knowledge of the documentary sources, the authors provide the first comprehensive study of Anglo-East German relations in this surprisingly under-researched field of study. They examine the complex motivations underlying different political groups’ engagement with the GDR, and offer new and interesting reflections on what this tells us about British political culture during the Cold War.

STEFAN BERGER is Professor of Modern German and Comparative European History at the University of Manchester, where he is also Director of the Jean-Monnet-Centre of Excellence. Between 2003 and 2008 he directed the European Science Foundation Programme on 'Representations of the Past. The Writing of National Histories in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe' (NHIST). He has published widely in the areas of historiography, national identity and labour history.
NORMAN LAPORTE is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Glamorgan. He has published widely on German and comparative communism as well as British-East German relations, including The German Communist Party in Saxony. 1924-1933 (Peter Lang, 2003). He is a co-founding editor of the journal Twentieth Century Communism.