The primacy of the national past

Although global memory may not exist, there are certain aspects of the past that have transcended their original spatial confinements and entered historical consciousness in different parts of the world. Among the most well known and symbolically charged aspects of the human past are certainly the crimes and traumas of the Nazi era. In many countries, the atrocities committed during the Third Reich, particularly the shoa, occupy an important place in textbooks as well as in popular historical consciousness as they are transmitted and reinvoked on television, in newspapers, and other media. German fascism has also become an important subject of academic research and intellectual debate, even in regions such as East Asia or South Asia that were not directly affected by it. In many parts of the world there have been debates about the implications of the Nazi experience for notions of such fundamental concepts as modernity or Europe and its place in the world as well as – in some cases – human nature and God. The historical discourses surrounding the National Socialist past are certainly far from identical in different public spheres. However, this does not change the fact that important facets of the history of Nazism and its victims have been globalized in terms of their historical implications, connotations, and symbolism.