Moshe Zimmermann

The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939–1945

The list of books about World War II is seemingly endless, yet new ones keep coming out. Most seem to be “more of the same,” but not Oxford historian Nick Stargardt’s The German War. What makes this volume so valuable is its author’s attempt to answer the underlying question of how Germans justified this war to themselves. The six main chapter headings are in chronological order: “Defending the Attack,” “Masters of Europe,” “The Shadow of 1812,” “Stalemate,” “The War Comes Home,” and “Total Defeat.” Stargardt’s book is based on two kinds of historical sources: on the one hand, Third Reich documents about public opinion, first and foremost the secret service reports on the changing moods in the Reich (SD Stimmungsberichte), and on the other, private correspondence—parents and children, lovers, married couples, etc. By following sixteen pairs of correspondents for the duration of the war, it was possible to reconstruct not only the reaction of one person at a specific moment in time but the dynamics of reception and reaction to the war from the start to its bitter end. This methodological approach, a kind of balancing between macro and micro sources and perspectives, has become popular in historical literature, as in, for example, Saul Friedlander’s The Third Reich and the Jews (2007).

Berlin Rules: Europe and the German Way

When summing up their careers as diplomats, retired ambassadors usually write their memoirs. Sir Paul Lever, a senior foreign office official dealing with the EU in the 1990s and British ambassador to Germany from 1997 to 2003, chose a more systematic approach—authoring a monograph about “Europe and the German Way.” Lever examines Germany, with the UK (or Brexit) and the EU never far from his mind. The methodological scarlet thread running through the entire book is his comparison of the British and the German systems.

Holocaust Angst: The Federal Republic of Germany and American Holocaust Memory since the 1970s

The key focus of this book is how Germans have perceived and reacted to the public commemoration and remembrance of the Shoah in the United States. German Angst [fear, paranoia] is a popular topic among historians and social scientists who write about Germany, and Jacob S. Eder’s book, based on his awardwinning dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania, revolves around one of the most conspicuous German Ängste (pl.) of the last generations—that of being identified with “the bad German,” with Nazism, and the Third Reich. The author is a research fellow and lecturer at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena. His is not another book about American or Jewish-American public opinion and postwar Germany. Rather, it emphasizes the way German politics —or, more precisely, political leaders, diplomats, and nongovernmental organizations—perceived the representations of Germany in the US and tried to neutralize the effect of the emergence of a highly visible Holocaust memorial culture there (p. 6) that might “perpetuate a negative image of the Federal Republic” (p. 28). The aim of the (West-) Germans, Eder tells us, was a practical one—to maintain good relations with Germany’s most powerful ally, the US. What the author’s research is really about is postwar German history and Holocaust memory, with special attention paid to German perceptions of the Jew. In a way, it is the history of a bizarre victimhood—that of Germany as the victim of American Holocaust memorial culture.

What is the Holocaust

Collective memory is not an aim in itself, but rather an instrument for shaping a collective identity in the present. Where does the key event of the Holocaust fit in as an element of collective memory in the service of contemporary politics? In this contribution I concentrate mainly on the states most identified as successors of the perpetrators and the victims: Germany and Israel. How have public discussions in both countries changed the meaning and relevance of the Holocaust for their respective societies? What did the Holocaust become? What is the social and cultural function of what was left of the Holocaust in contemporary collective memory in both states?

Secrets and Revelations: The German Foreign Ministry and the Final Solution

Moshe Zimmermann is Professor of German History and Director of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous books and articles about nationalism, antisemitism, the history of sports, film and German-Jewish history, as well as about the Holocaust, collective memory in Germany and Israel, and German-Israeli relations. Prof. Zimmermann was on the five-member independent research committee charged with investigating the German Foreign Ministry during and after the Nazi era and co-author of the book that emerged from the committee’s work, Das Amt und die Vergangenheit: Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik. This text has been adapted from his address before the Israel Council on Foreign Relations on December 6, 2010.

Zukunftserwartungen der deutsch-jüdischen Gesellschaft im langen 19. Jahrhundert

Abstract Future expectations expressed by societies of the past help the historian to develop better insight into their state of mind and understand their modus operandi. The article is one in a series of articles dealing with future expectations of the German Jews and is dedicated to their expectations during the long 19th century. An important source are articles that appeared in the German-Jewish press towards the end of a year, the time for making prognoses. The main objects of collective expectation change over time and vary in the different groups within Judaism (assimilationists, Zionists, Orthodox). The main issues dealt with are the challenge of modernity, assimilation, demographic revolution, anti-Semitism and Zionism. With World War I the pattern of approaching the future changes radically.

Von der Verbrennung von Büchern und Menschen

Heinrich Heine gehort zu jenen illustren Menschen, deren kluge Auserungen ideal als Zitate misbraucht werden konnen. Aus dem Kontext gelost wirken derartige Zitate — wohl zurecht — nicht nur pointiert und gebildet, geistreich und gewandt, sondern auch prophetisch. Leider handelt es sich in den meisten Fallen um eine ruckwarts begreifende Konstruktion, eine Prophezeiung, die dem Zitierenden gut ins Konzept past, nicht aber die Absicht des Zitierten im Rahmen des ursprunglichen Sinns der Gedankenzusammenhange berucksichtigt.