German historians and the crucial dilemma

Abstract

Post-war German historiography is an interesting example of changing norms and the problem of satisfying a balance between explanation and (moral) judgement. Whereas national historians of Imperial Germany could feel in harmony with History, defeat and the peace of Versailles destroyed the belief in historical justice, so the bulk of the craft sympathized with Hitler's policy, although not always with his methods. The fall of the Third Reich and the revelation of its crimes caused a deep crisis of historical consciousness and attempts to deny or belittle personal responsibility and cooperation. After the 1960s however, a generation took over who could internalize the democratic norms and, through that, closed the gap between German and Western historiography. With the next generation after the reunification, critical revisionism of the national past even increased in so far as it included the first wave of post-war historiography with its apologetic tendencies. Historiography so became a striking example of a thorough national metamorphosis.