The German Trauma: Experiences and Reflections 1938-2001

by Gitta Sereny (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2001

  $15.76

  Gitta Sereny is one of the world's most respected journalists and historians. This book gathers together the best of her writing on Germany from over sixty years. It amounts to an extraordinary portrait of the country and its people, how they have come to terms with their Nazi past, both collectively and in specific instances - and how the burden of their guilt has altered the national identity. She writes about key individuals - Stangl, Speer - and the questions which their lives raise. The penetration and conviction of her writing throughout is startling and she constantly reminds us why it is important to consider the questions she addresses - war guilt, holocaust denial and the temptations of obedience.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $3.30

  IN 1945, Germany underwent a radical political transformation, moving certainty and irreversibility from dictatorship to freedom under a model federal constitution. But despite this remarkable public success, and the economic revival that accompanied it, the experience of war remains current in the imagination of Germans. Indeed, so total was their defeat, so complete was their culpability, that Germany's obvious dynamism has coexisted with the always open wound of their history. The fact that this wound exists and has been felt so deeply for more than half a century, has altered what has usually been thought of as the German character . This book gathers together the best of Gitta Sereny's writing on Germany from over sixty years. She writers about key individuals - Stangl, Speer, and the questions that their lives raise. She addresses the questions of war guilt, both among children of the high Nazis and more generally. She also deals fiercely with the Holocaust deniers.