Geisler suggests that this trend in West Germany changed in part with the broadcast of the "Holocaust" mini-series on German television in 1979. The series, which followed the history of two families, one the victim and the other the Nazi perpetrator, allowed the over 14 million viewers to identify with and potentially understand both sides of the equation. The discussion surrounding the airing of "Holocaust" allowed some to admit their complicity in the Nazi Regime by not acting against it (ibid.). The media event that was the airing of the "Holocaust" series could be considered to be another phase of the broader discussion of vergangenheits-bewältigung. In the '80's, this discussion would blossom into what is commonly called the Historikerstreit, or the historians' debate.
The historians' debate, which involved such thinkers as Ernst Nolte and Jurgen Habermas, essentially brought to attention several modes of vergangenheitsbewältigung, or perhaps more accurately, the avoidance of vergangenheitsbewältigung. Nolte advocated the view that the Holocaust was neither a unique nor a singular experience in human history. He noted other examples of genocide in this century alone. According to this approach, Germans should not be accorded a special guilt or shame due to the Nazi past, for they had not committed a special crime. Appealing though this argument may be to some, it is reminiscent of one of Hitler's own justifications for the Final Solution: "Who, after all, talks about the annihilation of the Armenians?" Hitler asked, recalling the almost forgotten mass murder of Armenians by Turks during World War I. Habermas criticized this viewpoint as being too apologetic for the Nazi regime (Postone 1990). Other themes included the desire to draw a line between Nazi times and the present, also know as the Shlußsstrich, and the idea of a settling of accounts with the Holocaust because of the suffering of the Germans after the war. Although the passions of this debate have died down, we will see that these issues play a significant role in postwar memorials, especially those created after reunification in 1990.
Next: East Germany's Vergangenheitsbewältigung
