Abstract

Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

Based on careful, intensive research in primary sources, many of these essays break new ground in our understanding of a crucial and tumultuous period. The contributors, drawn from both sides of the Atlantic, offer an in-depth analysis of how the collective memory of Nazism and the Holocaust influenced, and was influenced by, politics and culture in West Germany in the 1960s. The contributions address a wide variety of issues, including prosecution for war crimes, restitution, immigration policy, health policy, reform of the police, German relations with Israel and the United States, nuclear non-proliferation, and, of course, student politics and the New Left protest movement.

Philipp Gassert teaches Modern History at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and is DAAD Visiting Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“The authors have taken great pains to identify the neuralgic points of 1968. The book is carefully edited, and all of the essays are solidly researched and immensely readable. The collection provides a good introduction on current German historiography in a concise form for an Anglo-American readership.”  ·  Journal of Cold War Studies

“As well as offering an immensely rich analysis of this particular period in post-war German history and its social, political, cultural, intellectual and moral facets, the volume provides material for further questions... In provoking these stimulating questions, this book should be considered as required reading for anyone interested in the dis/continuity of the Nazi past in German history."  ·  European History Quarterly

Alan E. Steinweis is the Rosenberg Professor of Modern European History and Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.