About the Book
What has Germany made of its Nazi past?
A significant new look at the legacy of the Nazi regime, this book exposes the workings of past beliefs and political interests on how-and how differently-the two Germanys have recalled the crimes of Nazism, from the anti-Nazi emigration of the 1930s through the establishment of a day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism in 1996.
Why, Jeffrey Herf asks, would German politicians raise the specter of the Holocaust at all, in view of the considerable depth and breadth of support its authors and their agenda had found in Nazi Germany? Why did the public memory of Nazi anti-Jewish persecution and the Holocaust emerge, if selectively, in West Germany, yet was repressed and marginalized in "anti-fascist" East Germany? And how do the politics of left and right come into play in this divided memory? The answers reveal the surprising relationship between how the crimes of Nazism were publicly recalled and how East and West Germany separately evolved a Communist dictatorship and a liberal democracy. This book, for the first time, points to the impact of the Cold War confrontation in both West and East Germany on the public memory of anti-Jewish persecution and the Holocaust.
Konrad Adenauer, Theodor Heuss, Kurt Schumacher, Willy Brandt, Richard von Weizsacker, and Helmut Kohl in the West and Walter Ulbricht, Wilhelm Pieck, Otto Grotewohl, Paul Merker, and Erich Honnecker in the East are among the many national figures whose private and public papers and statements Herf examines. His work makes the German memory of Nazism-suppressed on the one hand and selective on the other, from Nuremberg to Bitburg-comprehensible within the historical context of the ideologies and experiences of pre-1945 German and European history as well as within the international context of shifting alliances from World War II to the Cold War. Drawing on West German and recently opened East German archives, this book is a significant contribution to the history of belief that shaped public memory of Germany's recent past.
Table of Contents:
Multiple restorations and divided memory; German communism's master narratives of antifascism - Berlin-Moscow;East Berlin, 1928-1945; from periphery to centre - German communists and the Jewish question, Mexico City, 1942-1945; the Nuremberg interregnum - struggles for the recognition in East Berlin, 1945-1949; purging 'cosmopolitanism' - the Jewish question in East Germany, 1949-1956; memory and policy in East Germany from Ulbricht to Honecker; the Nuremberg interregnum - divided memory in the western zones, 1945-1963; atonement, restitution, and justice delayed - West Germany, 1949-1963; politics and memory since the 1960s.
About the Author :
Jeffrey Herf is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. Among his books is Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich.
Review :
A fascinating account of how Marxist ideology hobbled East Germany's very limited efforts to come to terms with its Nazi and anti-Semitic past...Jeffrey Herf has written a thoughtful exercise in moral, cultural, and political analysis.-- "First Things"
A pioneering work based on hitherto inaccessible files in the East German archives. This is a study of the attitude of the East German regime toward the 'Jewish question' in general and the small Jewish communities in the former DDR in particular and it is a notable contribution to our knowledge.--Walter Laqueur
An extraordinary book on the politics of German memory after World War II...Herf argues that politics matters; that is, both East and West Germany came up very early on (during the first half of the fifties) with an 'official' memory that shaped, in the manner of a 'discourse, ' all further deliberations. Herf emphasizes the centrality of political elites and of formal political debates in shaping memory. More striking, he suggests that these debates were framed by prewar, German traditions; that is to say, that post-Holocaust memory is defined by pre-Holocaust agendas. Both points are well argued in a gripping narrative which should generate a lively debate.--Michael Geyer, University of Chicago
As Jeffrey Herf emphasizes in his judicious and nuanced study, the collapse of the anti-Nazi alliance between the Soviet Union and the western allies made all wartime solidarities with non-Communists suspect, even treasonous.--Linda Holt "The Observer"
How did the leaders of post-war Germany deal with the crushing memory of the Holocaust? Did they own up to it? Some did, while others tried to suppress or to marginalize it; but those who triumphed politically were the ones who had dared to face the problem. Gradually too, the German people have come to grips with their responsibility. This is the fundamental message of Jeffrey Herf's stimulating and original book.--Istvan Deak "New Republic"
In this innovative and stimulating study, Jeffrey Herf offers a comparative analysis of the development of official discourses on the past in the two German states that sheds much light on the ways in which postwar politicians sought to shape the memory of the National Socialist era in a manner that made sense to their own political outlooks and traditions.--Neil Gregor "Times Higher Education Supplement"
Jeffrey Herf has written an absorbing and detailed study of how postwar German leaders sought political power by establishing a "master narrative" of the Nazi period...He restores the Jews to their proper place at the center of German history--a place from which it had long been the goal of anti-Semites, and specifically Nazis, to remove them...This [is a] richly detailed, cogently argued and stimulating book...Beyond the scholarly value of the book, a reader also takes away from it a residue of sadness at the loss of what was once a largely symbiotic community of Jewish and non-Jewish Germans.--Henry Krisch "Studies in Contemporary Jewry"
Jeffrey Herf's fascinating analysis of how the two different German states faced their common past...belongs to a group of recent publications that change our understanding of the postwar period...[It] is one of the most important studies on postwar German history.--Michael Benner "Journal of Jewish Studies"
The most profound book to appear in the past decade on German history. [It shows that] the real continuity with the Nazi era was in East Germany [as opposed to the West], where the regime carried out anti-Semitic purge trials in the 1950s and assisted Arab terrorists.--Jacob Heilbrunn "New Republic"
This is a superbly researched book. The author has made effective use of the newly opened archives in the former East Germany as well as those in the Federal Republic. His treatment of evolving attitudes toward the Holocaust in the GDR is an especially valuable contribution toward a better understanding of the two Germanys...Herf's book is a tour de force that raises important questions and will do much to stimulate additional research.--Dietrich Orlow "Holocaust and Genocide Studies"
Divides Memory demonstrates how German politicians at the highest levels have dealt with the legacy of Nazi Germany since 1945. One of the book's many unique contributions is the manner in which it both weaves together, and draws clear distinctions between, the approaches taken by such disparate politicians as Konrad Adenauer, Walter Ulbricht, Paul Merker, and Theodor Heuss, to mention just a few...[Divided Memory] is a classic: clearly and engagingly written, based on wide-ranging research and the author's sure sense of the political winds of post-1945 Germany, Divided Memory lays bare the bewildering task of reconciling memory and politics in Germany, or anywhere else, for that matter.--Daniel E. Rogers "German Studies Review"
A divided Germany occupied the front line of the Cold War, with the result that politicians had an opening to manipulate the Nazi past to serve new purposes. In both Germanys, in different ways, such manipulation distorted the memory of Nazism and impeded natural justice. In his valuable new book, Divided Memory, Jeffrey Herf describes the causes and effects of this depressing outcome...Germans themselves have had to decide exactly what the response to Nazism ought to be. As Mr. Herf shows, they too often set about it expediently and evasively...Germany is reintegrated now, but the devious ways that its people came to terms with their past have left much shadow--David Pryce-Jones "Wall Street Journal"
An in-depth analysis of how, during the Cold War, the respective political leaderships of the two Germanys developed very different narratives concerning the legacy of the Third Reich and of the Holocaust in particular...[Divided Memory] illuminates much of the political cultures of the two Germanys. Herf also has provided a valuable case study of how the quest for memory and justice are largely subsumed by present-day nationalist and other political needs.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
As Jeffrey Herf persuasively argues in Divided Memory, postwar German confrontations with the country's Nazi past have not always been so persistent and widespread, and they certainly have never been as established in official German political discourse as they are today...Herf elucidates the complex dynamics that have shaped the political discourse of national memory to the present. Although his study centers on the first two decades after the war while drawing on prewar history, his probing analysis helps to explain how the stakes of memory have remained so high. As he writes in a brief methodological preface, 'History is the realm of choice and contingency.' The ingeniousness of his account lies in his faithful adherence to this principle.--Noah Isenberg "The Nation"
Groundbreaking...Divided Memory admirably subjects both East and West to equal scrutiny...Herf's history is invaluable to those who ponder how a united Germany might be expected to handle its burdensome legacy in the future. Using the German example to show that coming to terms with the past is a key element of liberal democracy, Divided Memory underscores a message relevant to societies around the world currently undergoing difficult political transitions.--Michael Wise "Forward"
In this masterful book, Herf demonstrates that the post-1945 politics of memory in both East and West Germany--and the ways the memory of the Holocaust was selectively represented or suppressed in each country--had a great deal to do with pre-1945 political attitudes and developments...In the book's riveting first half, Herf mines the rich material available on the east since 1989 and recreates a comprehensive portrait of the internal struggles among early postwar Communists over the representation of the past...Herf's findings and analysis challenge standard assumptions about the west as well...Divided Memory is an excellent study, one which is also eminently teachable. It provides both a comprehensive survey of extant scholarly insights and myriad of original arguments presented with admirable crystalline clarity.--Dagmar Herzog "German History"
Jeffrey Herf's study of the East and West German politics of memory deserves particular attention. It addresses a subject of central importance to the postwar history of both Germanies, while raising the larger conceptual question of how to write post-1945 German history from a post-1990 perspective...[This is] a very important book. It draws on a rich source basis, particularly in its East German parts, and is extremely well written. Most importantly, the author succeeds in synthesizing a wide range of issues into a clear, coherent, and sophisticated argument. Herf's study therefore provides a challenge to everybody pondering the complicated links between memory, democracy, and dictatorship in both postwar Germanies. In this sense, Divided Memory should become an indispensable point of reference for the ongoing debate on the myriad ways in which postwar Germans grappled and continue to grapple with a past that refuses to pass away.--Frank Biess "German Politics and Society"
