A German Generation: An Experiential History of the Twentieth Century (review)

In this book, Kohut, a historian with training in psychiatry, utilizes post- World War II interviews with sixty-two members of the Free German Circle born between 1900 and 1926 to track how this generation came to remember certain pivotal events and circumstances. Drawing together portions of the interviews in a series of combined memoirs and analytical essays, Kohut recounts German history as these individuals experienced it during and right after World War I, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime (including the collapse and immediate postwar years), and the subsequent years of the Federal Republic. Given that all of the people interviewed became enthusiastic supporters of the Nazi regime— at least in the beginning—the author does not come to like them. He tries, however, to take them at their word, while remaining sensitive to the issues of deriving accurate and realistic understanding from the products of oral history.

In part because these individuals met at regular intervals to discuss personal experiences and current events, they shared great commonalities in their views, at least by gender. Those readers who are interested in German women's history will ªnd Kohut's examination of gender distinctions particularly interesting. Kohut explores more than just the vast, and hardly surprising, differences between the struggles of men, broken and defeated in their return from prisoner-of-war status, and of women at home to re-establish some semblance of normality after Germany's defeat in World War II. Other noteworthy aspects of the gender issue surface in his accounts, such as the ways in which men's and women's evaluation of their labor-service experience diverged.

Common views about the turmoil in Germany after World War I, a desire for group identity, and an attraction for the Nazi movement— especially the labor service that the new government required—come to the fore in all of the interviews, as well as a real or pretended fear of the secret police (although, as is now well known, the German public essentially policed itself). A sense of group cohesion encouraged many Germans to look down on others and to look away when others, especially Jews, were persecuted. In the end, all of the interviewees saw themselves as victims of developments in which they themselves played no part.

Kohut's juxtaposition of interviews and analyses allows readers to ponder the main issues before the author presents his own deductions. This fruitful procedure highlights the generational divide between the interviewees in the postwar Federal Republic. A map of wartime Germany would have been helpful (and would have spared the author the error of placing Auschwitz in the Warthegau [163]). Kohut is particularly careful and convincing in showing how the interviewees turned their eyes and their memories away from the Holocaust. He might also have noted their disregard of the comparative successes of the Weimar Republic, which avoided total occupation of the country; saw the occupation end twelve, rather than forty-nine, years after the war; entered the international organization, the League of Nations, eight, rather than twenty-eight, years after defeat; acquired a permanent position on the League council; and so forth. But these are minor quibbles with a book that is both innovative and revealing.