History Wars and the Holocaust
Mervyn Bendle writes at Quadrant Online:
Why would Australian historians travel to Germany to expound their dark and self-lacerating version of Australian history, likening the tragic situation of our indigenous people to a genocide or holocaust? The answer lies in a convergence of extremist ideology with Germany’s never-ending crisis of national identity as it struggles to find an acceptable formula””a “usable past”””around which it can construct a viable national identity (see Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany, 2001).
The monstrosities of Nazism have left a stain across German history that may take centuries to fade. This has generated an ongoing Historikerstreit (“historians’ dispute”) over the nature and direction of German history and the place of Hitler, Nazism and the Third Reich within it. This erupted in the 1960s and the late 1980s and has given rise to various new forms of Holocaust revisionism and denial. Read the story. See also: The Australian “History Wars” revisited – how the delegates spent a taxpayer-funded day at the Berlin Oktoberfest conference.
