Legacies of Dachau The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 19332001 [Paperback]

A unified interpretation of the historical, political and remembered culture of Dachau concentration camp, first published in 2001.Auschwitz, Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau--the names of Nazi concentration camps stand out on the list of institutionalised horrors perpetrated in the twentieth century. This book examines Dachau--first among the Nazi camps and a model for the others--before, during and especially after World War II as a case study of the relationship between past and present, and between the official histories and personal memories of the past. It also offers an overarching interpretation of West German politics and culture from 1945 to the end of the millennium.Auschwitz, Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau--the names of Nazi concentration camps stand out on the list of institutionalised horrors perpetrated in the twentieth century. This book examines Dachau--first among the Nazi camps and a model for the others--before, during and especially after World War II as a case study of the relationship between past and present, and between the official histories and personal memories of the past. It also offers an overarching interpretation of West German politics and culture from 1945 to the end of the millennium.Dachau was the first among Nazi camps, and it served as a model for the others. Situated in West Germany after World War II, it was the one former concentration camp most subject to the push and pull of the many groups wishing to eradicate, ignore, preserve and present it. Thus its postwar history is an illuminating case study of the contested process by which past events are propagated into the present, both as part of the historical record, and within the collectively shared memories of different social groups. How has Dachau been used--and abused--to serve the present? What effects have those uses had on the contemporary world? Drawing on a wide array of sources, from government documents and published histories to newspaper reports and interviews with visls