Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II
  • Cited by 62
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
August 2012
Print publication year:
2012
Online ISBN:
9781139109437
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139109437
Subjects:
Politics and International Relations, Comparative Politics
Information

Book description

When do states choose to adopt a penitent stance towards the past? When do they choose to offer apologies for historical misdeeds, offer compensation for their victims and incorporate the darker sides of history into their textbooks, public monuments and museums? When do they choose not to do so? And what are the political consequences of how states portray the past? This book pursues these questions by examining how governments in post-1945 Austria, Germany and Japan have wrestled with the difficult legacy of the Second World War and the impact of their policies on regional politics in Europe and Asia. The book argues that states can reconcile over historical issues, but to do so requires greater political will and imposes greater costs than is commonly realized. At the same time, in an increasingly interdependent world, failure to do so can have a profoundly disruptive effect on regional relations and feed dangerous geopolitical tensions.

Reviews

'Berger’s study focuses on one particular aspect of war guilt, namely the construction of an official narrative by the state in Germany, Austria and Japan to deal with economic, political, security and moral issues that arose as a consequence of their role in WWII. Berger proposes a methodological approach that makes use of historical determinism, instrumentalism and culturalist explanations in an eclectic manner … Berger’s comparative approach forms a valuable contribution that may also trigger further new research on the issues of war, guilt and penitence by other countries and in other parts of the world.'

Kurt W. Radtke Source: The Sungkyun Review

'… [an] exceptionally thoughtful and useful book …'

Wilfred M. McClay Source: Books and Culture

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents
References

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.