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Book Review, Graham Hughes

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Decades of conflict with Soviet Russia compelled the West to come up with soothing explanations of the German Nazi past. If Germany was our gallant ally, standing fast in NATO against the menace of Communism, it somehow must be cleansed of any stain of original sin. This has been accomplished by portraying the Nazi years as a monstrous aberration--a characterization naturally fostered and promoted by the Germans themselves. Germany had struggled in the years of the Weimar Republic toward a democratic system and a just society. Under this view of things, a handful of evil maniacs, who incomprehensibly had succeeded …