Cruel Memory: How Germany Overcomes the Nazi Past

After Germany’s defeat in World War II, the country was faced with the need to overcome the legacy of the Third Reich’s totalitarian dictatorship. To become a democratic state, Germany had to rethink its history, understand the causes of Nazi crimes, and prevent the tragedy from happening again. From the Nuremberg trials and the search for the reasons behind the “German catastrophe” to the creation of memorial culture—shifting from a period of silence to an active culture of remembrance with museums, memorials, and textbooks—Russian scholar Alexander Boroznyak tells the complicated path Germany’s people have been taking for four generations now to confront the past. The author looks for answers to urgent questions: how was it possible for a criminal state to be supported? What does May 8 mean for German citizens? What lessons have millions of German families drawn from the past?