| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, December 5, 2011 | 9:00AM - 5:00PM | Seminar Room 108N, Munk School of Global Affairs 1 Devonshire Place |
Much has been written about the troublesome confrontation with the Nazi Past in postwar Germany. Scholars have considered how Germans did or did not face their past and their role in the mass murder of millions of European Jews from many different vantage points: from the silence of the 1950s; to the many thousands of trials which had relatively dismal results; to the return of many old Nazis to their respective professions and doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges, professors, and civil servants; to the more nuanced and earnest reckoning that has happened in the last two decades. This conference will examine the relationship between violent anti-government terrorism in 1970s Germany and frustration with lingering elements of Nazism in that period. Just how much of the terrorist movement – which after all blossomed out of a sincere attempt by students in West Germany to change the rigidly conservative structure of the university system, a throwback from the Nazi period with many old Nazis still at the lectern – was a direct reaction to silence about the Nazi past? The conference will examine this question on various different levels: it will address the radical response to conservatism in the 1970s, the disconnect between the violent actions of the RAF and the lingering elements of Nazism in society and government, terrorism as a response to the silence of the perpetrator generation, the harsh crackdown and stiff sentences that terrorists received in comparison to Nazis on trial at the same time, and larger questions of the influence of the endless Nazi past on the 1970s and 1980s.
Participants:
Karin Bauer, Professor of German, McGill University
Annette Vowinkel, Institute of Contemporary History, Berlin
Karrin Hanshew, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina
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