West Germans And The Nazi Legacy

West Germans And The Nazi Legacy

Synopsis

The revival of Nazi war crime trials by the start of the 1960s appeared to usher in a new era of West German reflection, soul-searching and critical confrontation with the murderous legacy of the Third Reich. For the first time, the Holocaust began to assume a central position within the public historical consciousness. War crime trials were accompanied by a new wave of commemorative activities, an outpouring of survivor testimony, novels and historical research, as well as cultural representations of the Nazi era in terms of films, plays and television series. West Germans and the Nazi Legacy constitutes a new history of the complex memory cultures that persisted within West Germany. It moves away from the much discussed diplomatic overtures by leading politicians, state-sponsored memorials and other public events to examine instead the attitudes of the ordinary people at the grass roots level of West German society.Utilizing the war crimes trials, this book focuses on responses to the prospect of continuing investigations, the reception afforded to those found to have been implicated in the crimes of the regime, and the sheer resonance that courtroom proceedings could generate within a local community. It draws upon case studies dealing with different modes of criminal behaviour, from the deliberately sadistic actions of individual concentration camp guards, to the level of knowledge held by police officers overseeing the

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