Mike Dennis is Professor of Modern German History at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of several monographs on the GDR, including Social and Economic Modernization in Eastern Germany from Honecker to Kohl (Pinter, 1993) and The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic 1945-1990 (Longman, 2000). He has co-edited numerous books on modern Germany, notably, with D. Steinert, Deutschland 1945-1990 (Wochenschau Verlag, 2005) and is currently engaged on a research project on elite sport in the GDR. Norman LaPorte is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Glamorgan. He has published widely on German Communism, including The German Communist Party in Saxony, 1924-33 (Peter Lang, 2003) and, with Stefan Berger, Friendly Enemies. Britain and the GDR, 1949-89 (Berghahn, 2010). He is co-founding editor of the journal Twentieth Century Communism.