The same people who insisted in Germany on the "singularity" of Nazi atrocities and rejected the very notion of historical comparison (for fear of relativizing the Holocaust and diminishing German responsibility) now speak of the "unparalleled" destruction of German cities and openly question the morality of the Anglo-American Bomber Command.
This reversal in the politics of German memory has alarmed many observers, who worry that Germany's current fascination with its own victimhood signals a desire to let the specificity of Nazi crimes fade into a historical continuum of other war crimes.
In fact, the recent interest in German suffering represents an extension of Holocaust memory, not its demise. What has changed is the willingness of the '68 generation to consider the full scope of wartime suffering- even that of their own parents and older relatives. Precisely because German recognition of the Holocaust is no longer in doubt, a new generation of Germans has come to understand the war in less ideological, less Manichean terms.
Individual suffering, not a simple tallying of perpetrators and victims, is beginning to emerge in striking historical detail and complexity.
