Cover -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Mnemosyne - Mother of the Muses -- 1. Dialectics of memory and forgetting -- 2. History versus memory -- 3. Memory and identity -- 4. History and politics -- 5. A historian between media and politics -- Chapter 2. Between the end and the beginning -- 1. Legacy of the two World Wars -- 2. Coming to terms with the past -- 3. Guilt and shame -- Collective guilt: truth and myths -- Helplessness of an intellectual -- 4. Perpetrators and victims -- 5. In search of defensive strategies -- Innocent criminals -- Honest murderers -- Hitler and his 'clique' -- 'The disciplined', 'the patriots', 'the idealists' -- The 'big' and the 'little' person in a uniform -- Social 'normality' -- 6. Crime and punishment -- Denazification - a failed experiment -- Social reaction -- Chapter 3. Divided nation, divided memory -- 1. The winners of history: the German Democratic Republic in the shadow of anti-fascism -- 2. Burdened with history: the Federal Republic of Germany between myth and memory -- Community of silence? -- The return of history -- Patriotism after Auschwitz -- Identity of a 'normal' nation -- Chapter 4. The Berlin Republic: a marathon of memory -- 1. German turning points: 1945 and 1990 -- 2. Debates that changed Germany -- The Wehrmacht: a defence community? -- Daniel Jonah Goldhagen: an ordinary German as a Hitler's assistant? -- Martin Walser: Holocaust as a "moral bludgeon" -- Mourning as the conscience of history? -- Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe - a symbol of mourning or disgrace? -- How much past in the future? -- Chapter 5. Days of Remembrance -- 1. Memory as a ritual -- 2. 8 May: dialectics of defeat and liberation -- The German Federal Republic: the day of liberation -- The Federal Republic of Germany: day of mourning or celebration?.

In the reunited Germany -- 3. The Night of Broken Glass - The Holocaust as an identity dilemma -- 4. The war against Poland in German oblivion -- In the clutches of prejudice and propaganda -- On the way to the dialogue of memory -- Bibliography -- Zusammenfassung -- Index.