Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky

Charlotte A. Lerg is assistant professor of American history at Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, and managing director of the Lasky Center for Transatlantic Studies. She is a board member of the Bavarian American Academy and has held research fellowships at the Library of Congress as well as at the German Historical Institute (Washington DC). Publications include The Continuity of Change. Reform Movements in U.S.-History (Dec. 2021) with Jana Weiß, and Universitätsdiplomatie (2019). Lerg also co-edits the series History of Intellectual Culture (HIC): International Yearbook of Knowledge and Society.

• List of AbbreviationsIntroduction: Journal of a ConscriptCharlotte A. Lerg and Maren RothChapter 1. Melvin J. Lasky’s Biography and DiaryMaren RothChapter 2. Not a Beginning but an End: Melvin Lasky, DiaristGeorge BlausteinChapter 3. Between Denazification and Reconstruction: US Occupation Policies and Practice in Germany 1945Jana AresinChapter 4. Clio continues to serve. Melvin J. Lasky as Combat HistorianCharlotte A. LergChapter 5. (Military) Masculinity and a Feminized Europe: The Gender Politics of Lasky’s DiaryKatharina GerundChapter 6. Lasky, Chronicler of Europe’s Twentieth CenturyMichael KimmageMelvin J. Lasky: Diary of a ConscriptAppendix A: List of Primary Literature in the Diary

“'The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky' offers not only a panoramic view of a country poised between devastation and an uncertain future but a gripping self-portrait of a man poised between unresolved youthful bewilderment and a mature clarity of conviction.” • Wall Street Journal“…the new English edition provides a riveting window onto a society in ruins and a historical moment when the world held its breath.”” • Los Angeles Review of Books“As someone who has edited private travel journals of Americans in Germany, I am very enthusiastic about this volume. I think we can learn much from the private journals of Americans in Germany.” • Thomas Adam, The University of Arkansas