Description
In the years immediately following WWII, members of the German political elite rapidly shifted their loyalties away from Nazism and toward support of the fledgling democracy of the Federal Republic. In this study, Hayse (history, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey) examines the forces behind this transformation, ultimately concluding that it was due more to self-imposed pressure than to the Allies' social change policies. The focus is on higher civil servants, business leaders, and physicians in the state of Hesse during the period 1945-1955. The text is based upon the author's dissertation. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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The rapid shift of German elite groups' political loyalties away from Nazism and toward support of the fledgling democracy of the Federal Republic, in spite of the continuity of personnel and professional structures, has surprised many scholars of postwar Germany. The key, Hayse argues, lies in the peculiar and paradoxical legacy of these groups' evasive selective memory, by which they cast themselves as victims of the Third Reich rather than its erstwhile supporters. The avoidance of responsibility for the crimes and excesses of the Third Reich created a need to demonstrate democratic behavior in the post-war public sphere. Ultimately, this self-imposed pressure, while based on a falsified, selective group memory of the recent past, was more important in the long term than the Allies' stringent social change policies.
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