Vol. 62 No. 4 1995 - page 590

590
PARTISAN REVIEW
great currents finally ended in exaggerated and indeed distorted forms as
communism and fascism - the first treacherous heir of liberal individual–
ism .. . the second as the culmination and bankruptcy of the mystical
patriotism which animated the national movements of the time."
Only when the comparable (though by no means identical) evil of
Nazi and Communist systems is at last confronted will the moral-politi–
cal accounting of this century be complete.
Carnes Lord:
Thank you. We'll go directly to Jeffrey Herf
Jeffrey Herf:
The opening of the archives of the former Communist
governments has ushered in a new phase of the reconstruction of the
history of twentieth-century Communism.
In
addition to the fictional
literature of disillusionment with Communism that has played such an
important role in the history of
Partisan Review,
historians will be offer–
ing accounts based on documents. For German historians, the fall of the
Wall has meant the opening of the archives of the Central Committee
of the Socialist Unity Party, as well as of the
Stasi
archives. As a result,
we have been able to reconstruct in unprecedented detail the history of
the treatment of the Jewish question after 1945 at the top levels of the
East German Communist Party and government.
I have argued elsewhere that the postwar era in both West and East
Germany can be described as one of "multiple restorations." That is, the
Allied victory meant both the suppression of Nazism as a significant po–
litical force, as well as encouragement of those non- and anti-Nazi Ger–
man political traditions which had been suppressed and driven into exile
in 1933. All of the leading political figures of the postwar era, from right
to left - Konrad Adenauer, Kurt Schumacher, Theodor Heuss, Ernst
Reuter, Walter Ulbricht, Wilhelm Pieck - had been active in politics
during the Weimar Republic. All had come of political age long before
1933. American and Soviet hegemony in this context did not mean the
imposition of foreign views on a German
tabula rasa
but the nurturing
and restoration of these traditions - conservatism, liberalism, social
democracy, and Communism. The Adenauer era was an era of restora–
tion but so too was the revival of tradition-bound Social Democracy
and the Communist Party. When these political leaders spoke to their
fellow Germans about the Nazi past, they did so in the idioms and lan–
guage of intact political beliefs.
In
a period of catastrophe and despair,
inherited ideologies and convictions became a more precious resource.
The restorative character of the era was evident in East Germany as well.
The continuity of Communist traditions before and after 1945 is evident
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