But for many Germans it was an all-too-brief moment of openness, which did not endure beyond the immediate aftermath of defeat. By the time Hannah Arendt visited Germany in 1949, she was struck by her former fellow countrymen’s lack of emotional engagement and unwillingness to discuss what had happened. And when Ursula von Kardorff prepared her diary for publication in 1962, she quietly cut her acknowledgement of German guilt.
