German National Identity After the Holocaust

Citation

Taylor, J. (2000), "German National Identity After the Holocaust", European Business Review, Vol. 12 No. 5, pp. 284-288. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2000.12.5.284.3

This book examines the attitude of Germans to their own past. It is not an easy subject, but those who persist with this book will find it contains a wealth of fascinating material.

The approach is thematic rather than chronological. For this reason the book is best approached as a series of separate essays with a sociological bias and underlying theme rather than narrative history. A comprehensive index assists this approach.

The work contains nine chapters in all. Two chapters on memory indicate the author’s interest in the psychology rather than the philosophy of her subject – there is, for example, no reference to Karl Jasper’s thesis of collective responsibility and the way in which it has influenced the intellectual landscape. The first and final chapters explore different theories of national identity and review recent literature on the subject. A similar approach is taken in chapter five, which examined recent historical analysis of the post‐war period. Further chapters are devoted to the problems posed by national anniversaries, the way in which concepts of citizenship and community differed in the two Germanies and, finally, possibly the most familiar material to British and American readers, the war crime trials of the 1960s – the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem and the Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt.

In exploring the historiography of her topic, the author herself remains for the most part non‐partisan, an approach that could be said to be one of the strengths of the book. Another strength is the undoubted erudition of the writer – a wide range of evidence is adduced in a tantalisingly allusive style. In these pages the reader will find reference to the Historikerstreit of the 1980s, in which conservative historians argued for a relativization of Germany’s crimes, especially in the light of the atrocities committed by Stalin in the name of Soviet Communism, whereas their left‐wing counterparts maintained that what had happened under Nazism was too terrible to be normalized in this way; to Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners which claims that many ordinary Germans were involved in the extirpation of the Jews, and to a travelling exhibition on the Wehrmacht organized by the Hamburg Institute of Social Research, which showed that war crimes were not solely the province of the SS and other specialist units, but could also be laid at the door of the soldiers and officers of the German Army itself.

This is to give but a brief and inadequate survey of the contents of the book, but one which it is hoped conveys the flavour. Additionally, there is much valuable material on the difference between West and East German traditions and the reception of the cultural and political heritage – the legacy of Prussia, for example, or the end of the war in Europe. There is also reference to the rehabilitation of Martin Luther in the GDR in time for the celebration in 1983 of the fourth centenary of his birth. However, the role of the Protestant Church as a cohesive moral force supporting and encouraging a national identity distinct from that which was developed by the Marxist state, a force particularly apparent in the closing months and days of the Democratic Republic, falls outside the author’s remit.

Most publishers require all quotations to be translated into English, and this book is no exception. However, the author is less considerate of the readers in other matters. Professor Fulbrook is determined to give a comprehensive survey of the literature, the footnotes are detailed and replace a bibliography. In writing a book which is designed to appeal to those with no German as well as to the specialist reader, the author might have considered employing other methods of reference – for example, citation by the author date system, with a short bibliography at the end of each chapter. Despite its shortcomings, the book is remarkably good value for the price and a welcome contribution to the history of Germany.