This study reconstructs the development of the historical narrative that Konrad Adenauer communicated in his public statements about National Socialism and the role of the Germans in it. It can be expressed in the succinct formula that the misdeeds of the regime had been committed “not by the German people but in their name”. In these few words we see the kernel of a historical narrative that was the general consensus for a long time in West German politics.

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This study explores the question of why the Federal Government under Helmut Kohl supported the project of a national memorial for the murdered Jews, even though with the Neue Wache it was at the same time busy updating the tradition of commemorating German victims and the victims of German crimes without distinguishing between them. Did the Federal Chancellor’s decision conceal a sudden underlying change in strategy or was it rather a change of attitude?

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The subjects of the study are the five monuments that the Federal Government had built in Berlin over the last 20 years in memory of the victims of National Socialism: the New Guard House (Neue Wache), the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe [the so-called Holocaust Memorial], the Memorials to Homosexuals Persecuted under National Socialism and to the European Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, and lastly, the Memorial and Information Centre for the Victims of the National Socialist ‘Euthanasia’ Murders. more »