Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys

Rating:
Summary: Simplistic and simply wrong
Review: Herf applies a very simplistic test to determine the Nazification of both Germanies: did they side with Israel in the Middle East version of the Cold War or did they not? The trial against Paul Merker in the East, which had as its background East Germany's reluctance to pay reparations to expropriated Jews, serves as his prime evidence for the continuation of things Nazi in the GDR. But both of these arguments completely ignore the Marxist ideology underlieing the rationale of the East German leadership and bypass more complicated issues of political allegiance. Moreover, they totally eclipse the East German cultural discourse on the Holocaust, a discourse that was decades ahead of discussions in the West and still proves to be more sophisticated than most that is being written in Western academia.