Oddball
04-30-2005, 10:48 AM
Hitler's children
Nicholas Stargardt's Witnesses of War shows how those who grew up under Nazism were least able to confront it. David Cesarani sees the genocide from an entirely new perspective
Saturday April 30, 2005
The Guardian
Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis
by Nicholas Stargardt
336pp, Jonathan Cape, £20
At the close of the film Downfall two young Germans who have escaped the apocalyptic end of Hitler's Berlin ride to freedom on a bicycle through a tranquil forest dappled in spring sunshine. The scene implies that these youngsters, whose innocence has been abused by a cruel tyrant, will nevertheless found a new Germany cleansed of wickedness and informed by lessons of the past.
In fact, as Nicholas Stargardt shows in his magnificent new book, those who grew up under Nazism were least able to confront it after Hitler's fall. Unlike their elders they lacked any moral system against which to compare it or to which they could revert once it was gone. They could only "renounce" Nazism by denying their very identities. It was easier to avoid any confrontation with the past.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,6121,1473291,00.html
Nicholas Stargardt's Witnesses of War shows how those who grew up under Nazism were least able to confront it. David Cesarani sees the genocide from an entirely new perspective
Saturday April 30, 2005
The Guardian
Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis
by Nicholas Stargardt
336pp, Jonathan Cape, £20
At the close of the film Downfall two young Germans who have escaped the apocalyptic end of Hitler's Berlin ride to freedom on a bicycle through a tranquil forest dappled in spring sunshine. The scene implies that these youngsters, whose innocence has been abused by a cruel tyrant, will nevertheless found a new Germany cleansed of wickedness and informed by lessons of the past.
In fact, as Nicholas Stargardt shows in his magnificent new book, those who grew up under Nazism were least able to confront it after Hitler's fall. Unlike their elders they lacked any moral system against which to compare it or to which they could revert once it was gone. They could only "renounce" Nazism by denying their very identities. It was easier to avoid any confrontation with the past.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/history/0,6121,1473291,00.html