Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys

West and East Germans remember the Nazi past in divergent ways that reflect the ideological differences between socialism and communism. In this deep and valuable study, Ohio University historian Herf demonstrates how these two responses to the Nazi past permeated the entire history of the divided Germany. After 1945, only socialists and communists could point to an unbroken history of opposition to the Hitler regime and to their own persecution by the Nazis. West German leaders, especially the socialists, perceived this as giving them a kind of solidarity with the Jews. But even West German conservatives adopted this stance. Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany, rehabilitated German conservatism by ridding it of its anti-Western elements and by recognizing that Judaism is a major part of the Western tradition. The fact that this position was espoused by a conservative leader helped create the West German consensus on the Nazi past that saw reparations to the victims as a duty. East German Marxists associated Jewish with bourgeois capitalism, though, and opposition to anti-Semitism never became an important part of German communist ideology. The defeat of Germany by the Soviet Union and its allies also seemed to validate the theory that Nazism was merely a tool of reactionary capitalism. For East Germany, then, the important point was not the Holocaust, but the defeat of fascism. It's a complicated topic, but Herf does a fine job of treating it clearly without sacrificing either depth or nuance. (Oct.)