Customer Reviews

Adenauer's Germany and the Nazi Past

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Frei's book was very illuminating and insightful to me as I try to come to a better understanding of Germany's postwar experience. HIs ability to manage and think carefully about the tremendous complexities and contradictions that characterize Germany's attempt to break with its National Socialist past was important for me--an avid, diligent, but non-specialist reader of 20th century German history and culture--to see in action. Now that we know much more about the extent to which so many Germans knew about at least some of the Nazi atrocities, it's more tempting than ever to make easy judgments about how Germans did and did not adequately take responsibility for their past at the moment they reassumed sovereignty over their own nation. And, indeed, Frei's story ultimately does hold Germany accountable for its actions and omissions, but at the same time, he also teaches me how many questions I need to ask before I even think about judging the past. For that matter, Frei has very nicely modeled the kind of history that every nation needs to write about what it means to own up to the past that has for good and for ill shaped who we are.

My only complaint is that Frei is not always well served by his English translator. While I appreciate the desire to reproduce the sophistication and precision of Frei's German, the translation in both sentence structure and diction is often needlessly dense and difficult.