Berger on ABC Australia: The Guilt of War
Thomas Berger, Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, said that Germany and Japan took very different paths in reckoning with national guilt after World War II.
Berger made his case on Rear Vision, a radio program focused on historical perspective. It aired on ABC Australia on August 30, in an episode entitled “Germany, Japan, War Guilt and Redemption.”
From the text of the program:
Coming out of the Auschwitz trials, which ended by the mid-1960s, you had the beginning of the student movement worldwide. And in the German context, the student movement raised the question; ‘Where were you during the war, Dad? What did you do during the war, Mom?’ The ’68 generation raised that issue and became a weapon first in terms of intergenerational conflict but then it was picked up by the left in Germany, particularly the Social Democrats under the charismatic leadership of Willy Brandt, at that time the Mayor of Berlin and then the head of the Social Democratic party, then later Chancellor, who in many ways channelled the youthful energy of the ’68 generation by confronting the Nazi past in a way that the previous generation of German political leaders had been unwilling to do.
You can listen to the entire program here.
Berger is the author of War, Guilt and World Politics After World War II, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan and is co-editor of Japan in International Politics: Beyond the Reactive State. Learn more about him here.