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Yet, while (West) Germany embraced the lessons of the past and opted for the identity of a Western, liberal democracy, in the immediate postwar years, high levels of anti-Semitism were still prevalent among the population (Fulbrook, 1999, p. 148). Further, in the first 2 decades after the war there was a high degree of “toleration and elevation” of men who could be described as political opportunists and “immoral trimmers” of the Third Reich, such as Konrad Adenauer’s chief aide in the Chancellery, Hans Globke, and Rudolf Bilfinger, who had been involved in preparing the Nazi regime’s racial legislation (Fulbrook, pp. 61–62). While it is fair to say that the Federal Republic was, in many ways, constructed as the antithesis to Germany prior to 1945, it needs to be acknowledged that the past was remembered in very specific ways. While West Germany committed itself to Western democracy and restitution for Jewish victims, it took the Republic decades to openly address the question of Germans’ collective responsibility. As Grossmann (2000, p. 95) argues, while the Republic gained international recognition by embracing Western values and the payment of retributions, domestically much of its legitimacy was based on recognition of German victims and the rollback of Allied efforts at denazification and punishment of Nazi war criminals. Failed denazification went hand in hand with successful democratisation and stabilisation (Grossmann, pp. 95–96). Postwar Chancellor Adenauer’s approach to secure democratisation, by rehabilitating some of the rank and file of Nazism and presenting ordinary Germans as victims of the regime, won the day over those voices that were forcefully represented by social democrat Kurt Schumacher, who argued that opposition to Nazism could not mean “giving short shrift to the persecution of the Jews and the political opponents of the Nazi regime” (Herf, 1997, p. 273).
Some cultural events temporarily broke the silence surrounding Germany’s guilt. Bundespräsident Theodor Heuss (1949–1959), urged fellow citizens “to accept the burden of ‘collective shame for the Nazi past’” while at the same time “reminding them of the multiple, more humane continuities of German history” (Herf, p. 330). On the cultural scene, the American stage version of The Diary of Anne Frank (1956) gave a public voice to the victims of Nazism.