The Shadow of Hitler

8. May 1945: Germany has lost the war, Nazism has failed and more than 55 million people are killed. "A zero, a break with the past, now everything will be different," say the Germans before the state is divided in two. East Germany built its war history, the myth of the anti-fascist resistance struggle, West Germany on its idea of Hitler and the SS as a sole responsibility of and an ignorant population.

Myth turn, however, cracks long before the wall, willingness to assume collective guilt increases and the Holocaust and the persecution of the Jews becomes increasingly difficult to deny. By analyzing Germany's attitude to its difficult past since 1945 – a reappraisal of speeches, museums, compensation settlements, history books and remembrance ceremonies – this book shows how Hitler's legacy has cast a shadow across Germany for almost sixty-five years.