German memories of the SecondWorldWar are controversial, and they
are used to justify different positions on the use of military force. In
this book, Maja Zehfuss studies the articulation of memories in novels
in order to discuss and challenge arguments deployed in political
and public debate. She explores memories that have generated considerable
controversy, such as the flight and expulsion of Germans from
the East, the bombing of German cities and the ‘liberation’ of Germany
in 1945. She shows how memory retrospectively produces a past while
claiming merely to invoke it, drawing attention to the complexities and
contradictions within how truth, ethics, emotion, subjectivity and time
are conceptualised. Zehfuss argues that the tensions and uncertainties
revealed raise political questions that must be confronted, beyond the
safety net of knowledge. This is a compelling book which pursues an
original approach in exploring the politics of invocations of memory.