The Argument in Brief

A central goal of this book was to explain the divergent strength of the far right over the past two decades in Germany and Austria. My argument largely rejected structural and institutional factors, focusing instead on the political power of historical narratives. Ideas about the legitimacy of the far right shaped the reactions of political parties, the media, and civil society to right-wing populist challengers. These ideas about the lessons of history were forged at critical junctures through elite-led public debates about the Nazi past. These debates, which occurred in the mid-1980s, unfolded very differently in Germany and Austria, and these differences shaped the political culture and partisan politics in their societies.

In Germany, public debates about May 8th, Bitburg, and the singularity of the Holocaust produced the normalization and contrition frames. During the course of these debates, elite opinion converged on the latter. By the early 1990s, even the most conservative political party represented in the Bundestag (the CSU) had made critical examination of the Nazi past and atonement for its crimes a central part of its ideology and identity. The prevailing culture of contrition in Germany was reinforced by a set of discursive norms, a phenomenon I refer to as political correctness, German style. This culture filtered down to the general population. As the Goldhagen debate, the Wehrmachtsausstellung, and the development of the November 9th public rituals demonstrated, many ordinary Germans have embraced critical examination of Nazi atrocities.