Reckoning with the Unbearable Burden of the Past

is divided into four parts: "The German War and its Legacies 1942 to the 1960s"; "One Nation, Two States 1949 to 1989"; "After the Wall 1989 to 2022"; and "Trying to be Good 1950s to the Present."Frank Trentmann's rather sweeping historical overview of Germany begins with what has become in recent times a truism: "Awareness of the Holocaust is as important as ever" (5).For the writer as for the reviewer, it is always helpful when authors note, "This book follows Germans from the Second World War through the partition of their country and reunification (in 1990) to the present" ( 12).What might be a bit more problematic is when Trentmann says, "My book begins that story not at the end of the war but in the middle, in the winter of 1942-43" (13).This is awkward because on the very same page Trentmann mentions the years 1939 and 1941.Which is it: 1942-43 or 1939 or 1941?Even more embarrassing is to simply say, on an issue like the Holocaust, "Germany has been a world leader and is frequently held up as a model from which others can learn" (15), with no further comment, elaboration or assessment.Things do not get better when Trentmann simply notes that Germany's former chancellor "Helmut Schmidt" (20, 374), with his Nazi "armoured tank division drove to the outskirts of the encircled city . . .did not know anything about the war crimes committed by his Heeresgruppe Mitte" ("Panzerdivision bis an den Stadtrand . . .eingekesselten Stadt . . .wute aber nichts von den Kriegsverbrechen der Heeresgruppe Mitte").Virtually the same goes for the rampantly antisemitic Martin Luther (20).Inside Germany, the covering up of German antisemitism

Burden of proof · Political science · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis · Philosophy, History, and Historiography

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