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Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1988 3(2):137-150; doi:10.1093/hgs/3.2.137
© 1988 by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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WARDING OFF HISTORY: IS THIS ONLY A PROBLEM FOR HISTORIANS AND MORALISTS?*

WOLFGANG BENZ

Institut für Zeitgeschichte Munich

Historical treatment of Nazism has moved from positivism to historicism in West Germany, the current historians' debate signaling this shift. This serves the interests of those wishing to build a self-confident German national identity, requiring both an emphasis on the positive aspects of German history and a stepping out from under the shadow of Nazism. Such a reinterpretation of the Nazi period argues that Germans have done much penance and have successfully confronted their past. However, many Germans have actually exercised assorted defense mechanisms to ward off the past rather than confront it. Therefore, a historian's contribution to relativizing past events in order to help build national identity is both unwarranted and dangerous. The Nazi period cannot be rendered as merely one of many chapters of German history.

*First published in German in: Dan Diner (ed.), lst der Nationalsozialismus Geschichte? Zu Historisierung und Historikerstreit (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1987), pp. 17–33. Translated by Bill Templer. Institute for German History, Tel Aviv University.


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