The revision of German Nazi past

Abstract

The first part of the paper analyses the revision of German Nazi past symbolically initiated by the visit of Reagan to the Bitburg Cemetery and later Nolte's text in which the author stated that Hitler defended Europe from "Asian barbarism" and that Germans should not be burdened with "moral responsibility". The second part of the paper deals with the reaction of German historians and the cultural and political public to the book by Daniel Goldhagen which proved that crimes were committed voluntarily by "ordinary Germans". The third part presents an analysis of the phenomenon where Serbs were equated with fascists in order to relativize Nazism and free the German nation from guilt for its Nazi past. For the German political elite, journalists and the dominant cultural elite, Serbs became the "new bad guys" and in this narrative from Nazi victims they became "Nazi criminals".