There can be little doubt that West German society underwent significant change in the two decades after the end of World War II caused in part by the influence of the United States in a period of often fierce competition and conflict with the Soviet bloc and its societal model. The degrees of social change and American hegemonic pressure, which varied from issue to issue, are reflected in the contributions to this section. They show that in some instances the transformations were quite dramatic, whereas other areas of society saw a type of reconstruction that restored what had existed before the rise of the Nazi dictatorship but did not recast it.

This introduction grapples with the question of restoration or reform in the western parts of Germany after the Nazi dictatorship and total war, on the one hand, and the American impact on German society during the two decades after 1945, on the other. I am concerned with the country's basic social structure as it emerged from the rubble of the “German catastrophe” after 1945 and try to address complex problems of social change and of influences that the United States, the hegemonic power of the West, may have exerted.