Vernichtungskrieg, Kalter Krieg und politisches Gedächtnis: Zum Umfang mit dem Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion im geteilten Deutschland

The divided political memory of the war on the Eastern Front is the subject of this article. It analyzes and contextualizes the ways in which the interpretation of the war against the Soviet Union (1941–1945) by political elites shaped postwar German political culture as old alliances crumbled and new alliances formed in the unfolding Cold War. This is the first comprehensive analysis of the memory of the Eastern Front focusing on the intersection of memory and politics and seeking to make a contribution to the history of Germans’ coming to terms with their past ({!Vergangenheitsbewältigung}). The politics of memory, i.e., the attempt to place a narrative of past events into the service of a present political cause long dominated both Germanies. This analysis, on the other hand, pays close attention to the individual biographies of the protagonists and argues that the often selective and ambiguous commemoration of the Eastern Front was not only the result of an ideology-driven instrumentalization of history in the shadow of the Cold War but was also rooted in the manifold individual encounters with the horrors of genocidal war on the various fronts of that unparalleled conflict.