Holger Nehring

Scotland’s unique geography and topography provided a useful base for Allied military preparations during the Cold War, a 40-year nuclear stand-off between the USA and the Soviet Union ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This book accompanies an exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland (13 July-26 January 24) which explores Scotland’s critical position on the front line. Scots played active roles as soldiers, within intelligence services and as part of voluntary civil defences. Also drawn on is Scotland’s rich history of Cold War-era protest. The physical legacy of the Cold War is revealed too – the ruined bases, forgotten bunkers and decommissioned nuclear power stations still evident across the Scottish landscape.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. How did European societies experience the Cold War? Politics of Security focuses on a number of peace movements in Britain and West Germany from the end of Second World War in 1945 to the early 1970s to answer this question. Britons and West Germans had been fierce enemies in the Second World War. After 1945, however, many activists in both countries imagined themselves to be part of a common movement against nuclear armaments. Combining comparative and transnational histories, Politics of Security stresses how these movements were deeply embedded in their own societies, but also transcended them. In particular, it highlights the centrality of the memories of the Second World War as a prism through which people made sense of the threat of nuclear war. By placing British and West German experiences side by side, Holger Nehring illuminates the general patterns and specific features of these debates, arguing that the key characteristic of these discussions was the countries' concerns with different notions of security. The volume highlights how these ideas changed over time, how they reflected more general political, social, and cultural trends, and how they challenged mainstream assumptions of politics and government. This volume is the first to capture in a transnational fashion what activists did on marches against nuclear warfare, and what it meant to them and to others. It highlights the ways in which people became activists, and how they were transformed by these experiences. Nehring examines how these two societies with very different experiences and memories of the cruelties and atrocities of the Second World War drew on very similar arguments when they came to understand the Cold War through the prism of the previous world war.

Current debates about taxes are dominated by references to foreign models. The contributors to this book explore how ideas about taxation were transferred between and within countries from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. They send out a word of caution to current policymakers looking for straightforward solutions from abroad.

Current debates about taxes are dominated by references to foreign models. The contributors to this book explore how ideas about taxation were transferred between and within countries from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. They send out a word of caution to current policymakers looking for straightforward solutions from abroad.