Postwar Germany and the Holocaust by Caroline Sharples (review)

Few modern states have started their existence under the cloud that attended the birth of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). To examine how the two German states and German society dealt with the legacy of the Holocaust, Sharples has adopted an appropriately interdisciplinary approach. The engagement with Germany’s past took place on the level of legislation, state finances (for example, reparations and restitution), prosecutions of alleged war criminals, diplomatic relations with formerly occupied states and with Israel, fine art and popular culture, memorials and monuments, religious discourse, and interpersonal relations. Although not all of these aspects receive equal attention in Sharples’ book, she strives to provide a wide-ranging view of how Germany coped with this burdensome inheritance.

The interweaving of the political and social elements is critical to understanding Germany’s nuanced, developing confrontation with its past. Both German states sought legitimacy through a contrast with the Nazi regime, but they also sought support from their citizenry through potentially exculpatory rhetoric or rhetoric that broadened the scope of wartime “victims” to include many beyond those directly persecuted by the Nazis. After all, the persecution of the Jews in prewar Nazi Germany affected the ordinary lives of millions of non-Jewish Germans; the Holocaust was simply part of soldiers’ wartime experience, especially in Eastern Europe; and the war itself came home to German civilians by 1944 and 1945. As a result, memory of the Holocaust, and Germany’s wartime actions more broadly speaking, permeated postwar German society. Sharples’ broad examination critically illuminates specific aspects of the story, such as the churches facing their own history under the Third Reich and re-examinating their relationship to Jews and Judaism, and debates about monuments and former concentration-camp sites. Notwithstanding the adage that the winners write the history books, in the case of post–World War II Germany, the losers built the memorials to their victims, in the process revealing the way that they wished to remember the past. Not neglecting popular culture, which likely reached and influenced more Germans than did the Holocaust memorials, Sharples looks at film and television representations of the Holocaust and the place of the Holocaust in secondary-school education.

A strength of the book is Sharples’ exploration of the different ways in which East and West remembered the Holocaust, which naturally reflected their own self-image and their ideologically tinged view of German history. Yet, she overstates the novelty of her conclusions regarding Holocaust memory in communist East Germany, a subject that has already undergone a thorough analysis. Moreover her book, which throughout its eight chapters maintains an ongoing dialogue with a voluminous scholarly literature, seems directed more toward an academic audience than a general readership. It will certainly appeal to scholars looking for an introduction to this complicated subject.