The Genocidal Past in Western Germany and the Experience of Occupation,1945-6

Abstract

This article examines the re-educational aspect of the Anglo-American occupation of western Germany in 1945-6. It interrogates some of the key methods, messages and goals of the re-education programme with particular reference to the representation of Nazi genocide and the question of responsibility for it. It suggests that Allied policy contributed significantly, if often inadvertently, to fostering the two overriding postwar German responses to wartime atrocity and Nazism: the rejection of responsibility and the ‘relativization’, and even minimization, of the crimes committed.