Nearly sixty years after the defeat of Nazism, some in Germany now feel that the Germans were the victims--not least of relentless attempts to remind them of past crimes. This is the first examination of the shift in the culture of memory away from a focus on German perpetration, and towards one on German suffering. Students of German history, politics and culture will find this contextualization of current victim discourse within a wider historical framework invaluable.
Bill Niven is professor of contemporary German history at Nottingham Trent University and the author of many works on twentieth-century German history, including Facing the Nazi Past and The Buchenwald Child. He lives in Edwalton, UK.