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From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers <drogers@jaguar1.usouthal.edu>
List Editor: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers <drogers@jaguar1.usouthal.edu>
Editor's Subject: Wehrmacht debate
Author's Subject: Wehrmacht debate
Date Written: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 10:44:38 -0600
Date Posted: Wed, 11 Mar 1997 11:44:38 -0500

Submitted by:   Ralph Leck
                HILECK@ruby.indstate.edu

Dear Colleagues:

Professor Bartov's comments concerning the Wehrmacht Ausstellung and
guilt immediately brought to mind a recent article in the AHR by
Robert Moeller.  The article examines the creation and politics of
collective memory.  Moeller chronicled the development in post-war
Germany of the myth of the victimized German soldier.  This myth was
the means by which many Germans resisted, and continue to resist,
reflection on complicity.  If Moeller is right, then the Wehrmacht
debate--one might surmise--has become vituperative because it
challenges a central collective memory maintaining the anti-communist
and ultranationalist myth of German victimization.

Ralph Leck
Indiana State University

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