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Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys Paperback – March 31, 1999

ISBN-13: 978-0674213043 ISBN-10: 0674213041

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 560 pages
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 31, 1999)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0674213041
  • ISBN-13: 978-0674213043
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.4 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #793,170 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Numerous books such as Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich's recent The German Predicament (LJ 3/1/97) have examined in some manner the Nazi past versus the present world. Herf (history, Ohio Univ.) questions what Germany has made of its past: Is the memory different in the former East than in the West, and if so, why? Herf examines the papers and writings of the major personalities of the former East and West Germany, such as Walter Ulbricht and Konrad Adenauer. Herf feels that leaders who urged their compatriots to look their history in the face raised issues important to any country. Furthermore, they left behind "an often unpopular, discomforting, demanding, yet precious legacy." This study should be in larger academic libraries or large public libraries with strong collections on the Third Reich and Germany.?Dennis L. Noble, Sequim, Wash.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

An in-depth analysis of how, during the Cold War, the respective political leaderships of the two Germanys developed very different narratives concerning the legacy of the Third Reich and of the Holocaust in particular. Herf (History/Ohio Univ.) describes how, in Communist East Germany (GDR), the prevailing ideology of ``antifascism'' came to be divorced from Nazism; rather, it stood for opposition to the ``bourgeois capitalists'' in Bonn, London, Washington, and, ultimately, Israel. The GDR's leaders viewed themselves as victims of the Nazis, rather than as heads of one of the Third Reich's successor states, with all the obligations that might entail. Thus, in the early '50s, when some of the GDR's leading theorists advocated reparations to Jewish Holocaust survivors, they were purged from the party. The history of Holocaust memory in West Germany is decidedly more ambivalent. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer accepted the policy of reparations to the Jews, but he did so grudgingly while also ``integrating'' ex-Nazis into his Christian Democratic government and proceeding sluggishly in prosecuting suspected Nazi criminals. The ``heros'' of Herf's study are a number of West German presidents, particularly Theodor Heuss (in office 194959), who took the initially highly unpopular stance that postwar Germans should feel collective shame, if not collective guilt, for the Nazis' war crimes, as well as such Social Democratic leaders as Kurt Schumacher, Ernst Reuter, and Willy Brandt. Herf focuses almost exclusively on policy-makers; there is unfortunately little here on the role of public opinion in West Germany, and nothing on such cultural influences as the writer Gnter Grass, or on the roles of the small Jewish communities in each country. Still, this illuminates much of the political cultures of the two Germanys. Herf also has provided a valuable case study of how the quest for memory and justice are largely subsumed by present- day nationalist and other political needs. (20 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful By James V. Holton on July 16, 2005
Format: Hardcover
A previous view has mischaracterized this work as one that deals with attitudes toward Israel.

The primary purpose of this book is the role of the Holocaust in memory among the respective West and East German elites following World War II. It is not a broader work on social history, which one could argue needs to be done, but criticizing someone for the book he didn't write is misplaced.

Herff's arguments center around the coming to grips with the Holocaust in politics in the two German states. He asserts, correctly, that East German leaders chose to adopt the Marxist line that WWII was a fascist war, and the Holocaust a product of fascism rather than racism. The leaders did so in order to portray the installed Stalinist state as the legitimate government in eastern Germany and being utterly disconnected from the Nazis. The result was a whitewashing of historical memory, portraying Jews and other minorities as virtual martyrs of the East German state.

Herff further argues, and places blame, on West German leaders for failing to engage the Holocaust. However, he points out that Karl Adenauers efforts to engage conservatives on this issue was a forward-thinking move, and ultimately salvaged West Germany on this issue.

Ultimately, the issue of the two Germanys and Israel has to do with the evolution of historical memory rather than philo-semitism or philo-nazism.

This book will be useful for those seeking to understand the role of memory in WWII and the Cold War.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful By Alessandro on November 3, 2011
Format: Paperback
I'm really surprised there are only 3 reviews, so I thought I'd add a few words. The earlier, negative post is not entirely fair to Herf; I'd agree that Herf uses Israel as a litmus test, but not as exclusively or prominently as the earlier "customer review" asserted. For the most part, this is an extremely valuable, well-researched examination of the use/misuse of the Holocaust on both sides of the Berlin Wall during the Cold War (and beyond). It's justly considered a classic by scholars who work on these issues. In more recent years, Herf's work has become tainted by his political agenda (pro-"war on terror"), which perhaps was on the mind of the previous reviewer. But "Divided Memory" was published before this transformation in the author's perspective and agenda, and remains indispensable.
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3 of 7 people found the following review helpful By R. L. Huff on January 27, 2010
Format: Paperback
Professor Herf's attempt to deal with the memory of Nazism in the former halves of Germany gives too much whitewash to the West and lays too much tar on the East. The underlying theme seems to be which half did most to support Israel in the cold war, than who actually came to grips with the legacy of Nazism in postwar Germany.

Herf would have us believe that Adenauer opened the door to reparations and reconsiliation in West Germany; yet by Herf's own description Adenauer weathered the Nazi regime pretty well, protected by his fellow conservatives who actually ran the Nazi state on a daily basis after 1934. At no time did he speak out against Nazi barbarities in Germany or abroad. These favors were reciprocated when ex-Nazis needed peace and shelter after the war and found it under his wing. Adenauer came into brief conflict with Nazidom only after 20 July 1944, when like many nationalists he tried saving the German state from Hitler's sinking ship. The postwar public honors for the executed military conspirators proved no barrier to rehabiliating their executioners as a condition for creating the Bundeswehr. Chancellor Kohl's subsequent disgraceful performance at Bitburg, in a rising tide of nationalist self-justification, shows that it was the West's anti-establishment critics who truly pushed the Holocaust issue forward in West German public life.

The East was deserving of criticism also, as anti-Zionism was a back door through which some former Nazis could find a nest in the "anti-fascist state.
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7 of 26 people found the following review helpful By epreuss on November 2, 2004
Format: Hardcover
Herf applies a very simplistic test to determine the Nazification of both Germanies: did they side with Israel in the Middle East version of the Cold War or did they not? The trial against Paul Merker in the East, which had as its background East Germany's reluctance to pay reparations to expropriated Jews, serves as his prime evidence for the continuation of things Nazi in the GDR. But both of these arguments completely ignore the Marxist ideology underlieing the rationale of the East German leadership and bypass more complicated issues of political allegiance. Moreover, they totally eclipse the East German cultural discourse on the Holocaust, a discourse that was decades ahead of discussions in the West and still proves to be more sophisticated than most that is being written in Western academia.
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