The Beast Reawakens (review)

Book Reviews 153 antisemitism; it was also "German" antisemitism, the perpetuation of an antisemitism that had its roots in prewar Germany. Herf makes his case convincing by identifying resonances ofantisemitic KPD ideology from the 1920s in the writings ofUlbricht and other East German leaders. East Germany's relative reluctance to remember ("relative," that is, to West Germany's openness), "the division ofmemory in postwar Germany" cannot be explained in terms of geo-political pressures alone. The memory ofpolitics was also at work here. Divided Memory is lucidly written and forcefully argued. It is a searching, comprehensive study that tracks German responses to Nazism from the Weimar Republic to contemporary Germany. And yet despite its expansive breadth, Divided Memory delivers thoughtful and thorough readings ofmany individual texts and events, from early KPD manifestos to the recent historians' debate on the particularity of the Holocaust and Stasi files that have only just become accessible. But the focus of Herfs book is the early cold war era. As his title suggests, the central question here is that of the division of memory in a divided Germany. What makes his book a success is that it offers a fresh and persuasive answer to this complex and enduringly important question. Paul B. Reitter Department ofGerman University ofCalifornia, Berkeley The Beast Reawakens, by Martin A. Lee. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1997. 546 pp. $24.95. Frequently witnesses of important political and social events, journalists have often provided historians with fIrst-rate analyses. William Shirer's The Rise and Fall ofthe Third Reich (1959) is perhaps the best-known example of such a work. Another journalist, Martin A. Lee, picks up where Shirer left off. In his most recent work, The Beast Reawakens, Lee weaves a complicated picture ofthe post-1945 legacy ofHitler's National Socialism. Lee presents an alarming picture ofthe survival ofHitler's ideology and a growing circle offollowers. Manipulating East-West tensions for their own longterm agenda, former Nazi intelligence offIcers found a willing partner in a nascent Central Intelligence Agency. As the West German government underscored its commitment to a pro-West foreign policy and democratic government, the Socialist Reich Party and other post-war neo-Nazi groups espoused clearly former Nazi positions within their rhetoric and campaigned for a neutral Germany. As the Cold War heated up, denazifIcation became an unwelcome reminder of a recent past. Acting with 154 SHOFAR Winter 1999 Vol. 17, No.2 American support, the West German govemment found within the ranks offormer Nazi officers and soldiers the backbone of their new military. According to Lee, survivors ofHitler's Schutzstaffel (SS), namely, Otto Skorzeny, Abwehr (army intelligence) General Reinhard Gehlen, and Otto Remer, collaborated with other sympathetic parties (including the Vatican) in smuggling former Nazis out ofEurope with the assistance ofthe secret Odessa organization. As post-war Europe fell under the shadow of the Cold War, denazification inhibited an effective integration of former Nazis into the bipolar struggle and West German politicians quickly phased out denazification proceedings. In West Germany, former Nazi General Otto Remer headed the neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party and campaigned against the nascent republic. West Germany's first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, chose as a key advisor Hans Globke, whose involvement with the Nazisincluded links with the notorious Nuremberg Laws of 1935. The extensive neo-Nazidiaspora, Lee then argues, developed contacts with sympathetic parties throughout Europe (East and West) and the western hemisphere. With the demise of Communism in eastern Europe in the 1990s, these forces again entered the domestic political arena. In western Europe, fascistic neo-Nazi groups provided graphic examples oftheir existence in displays ofpublic violence and political organization. In Germany, the rising popularity of the Republikaner party, headed by a former SS soldier, Franz Schoenhuber, signaled the revival of organized xenophobic neo-Nazi sentiment. Within the United States, the Nazi ideology, as Lee asserts, found new supporters in the ranks of the Aryan Nations, the American Nazi Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Militia of Montana, as well as various self-proclaimed Christian groups, including Christian Identity. Similarly, Lee points to right-wing extremists in the United States, who demonstrated their own potential for terrorism in the bombing of the federal...