By Konrad H. Jarausch
Within the spring of 1945, because the German military fell in defeat and the realm first discovered of the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust, few may have anticipated that, basically part a century later, the Germans might become a filthy rich humans on the leading edge of peaceable eu integration. How did the Germans be able to get over the shattering adventure of defeat in international struggle II and rehabilitate themselves from the disgrace and horror of the Holocaust? In After Hitler, Konrad H. Jarausch indicates how Germany's decision to stress civility and civil society, destroyed through the Nazi regime, helped repair the demoralized state throughout the post-war interval. in contrast to different highbrow inquiries into German efforts to accommodate the Nazi previous, After Hitler basically makes a speciality of the sensible classes a disoriented humans drew from their earlier misdeeds, and their fight to create a brand new society with a honest and deep dedication to human rights. After Hitler bargains a finished view of the breathtaking transformation of the Germans from the defeated Nazi accomplices and Holocaust perpetrators of 1945 to the civilized, democratic humans of modern day Germany.
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Extra info for After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans, 1945-1995
Sample text
Thus, the following reflections emerge from a transatlantic double perspective, which seeks to describe the extent of and explain the reasons for the transformation of my country of birth to skeptics in my adopted home. In this book I propose the thesis that a collective learning process took place after Hitler, bringing the Germans back from perpetrating unspeakable crimes to a sincere commitment to human rights. Unlike the intellectual preoccupation with German efforts to deal with the Nazi past (explored by Charles Maier and Jeffrey Herf), this investigation focuses primarily on the practical lessons that a disoriented people drew from their past misdeeds.
After exploring the alternative of Westernization, I settled on the concept of “civilization” as a standard for evaluating the metamorphosis of the Germans. While postcolonial critics have correctly condemned its misuse as justification for sexist and racist repression, several reasons support this terminological choice. First, prominent contemporaries, from Hannah Arendt to Franklin D. Roosevelt, used the notion of a German deviation from the values of Western civilization as a key argument. Second, in modifying the Sonderweg thesis, the Israeli-German historian Dan Diner suggested that the Holocaust constituted a rupture of common ethical norms, a veritable Zivilisationsbruch.
Would the Allies ever permit their former enemies to reconstitute a more civilized domestic order and return as an active subject to international affairs? 5 The Shock of Inhumanity The discovery of the ghastly war crimes in early 1945 triggered a deep, worldwide revulsion that darkened the German name for decades to come. 7 Still, it was the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp near the city of Weimar by American troops in April 1945 that provided undeniable proof. The deplorable condition of the 21,000 inmates, many of whom stood close to death, as well as the records of the prisoner committee that accounted for the murders of 32,705 people, banished any lingering doubts.
