War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II

Abstract

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.

The Role of Psychology in the Study of Social Reconciliation: a Review of Existing Relevant Literature on Inter-Personal, Inter-Group and Inter-State Conflict

“…Furthermore, the process of social amnesia can be harmful not only to the concrete society via losing its national identity and sense of correlation across generations, but also has a dramatic effect on interstate relations and delays reconciliation, especially in post-war periods when the peace between former enemies is too fragile. For instance, the confirmations of it can be found in well-elaborated works on Japanese politics of memory and the choice to neglect the historical facts in the construction of Japanese historical consciousness of the Second World War resulting in a lack of trust and worsening of inter-state cooperation (Berger 2012;He 2009;Tian 2002;Wang 2009;Ming 2006;Gong 2001).…”

“…Besides, state can choose to implement politics of apology (Rotberg 2006: 33-50;Brinks, Timms, Rock 2006), or choose to forget and forgive the former enemy (Levy and Sznaider 2006;83-102;Helmick and Petersen 2002;. Shriver 1995;Winter and Sivan 2000), or have some kind of historical amnesia (Barkan 2001;Berger 2012).…”

Guilt and Its Purification

“…Germany, for instance, is routinely delivering apologies, when invited to commemorations, while Japan seems to assume, falsely, that one apology should suffice. 19 To work as ritual events, apologies must be repeated and become better, more precise, and factually more accurate over time. The precision, veracity, and integrity of apologies provide a fairly precise measure of the degree of change after wrongdoing.…”

Ruling capital: emerging markets and the reregulation of cross-border finance

“…There is a large literature on the politics of memory that discusses how past traumatic events (or golden years) play a big role in the decision making of many political actors. The majority of this literature focuses on traumatic political events such as war, genocide, and dictatorship (for a recent analysis, see Berger 2013). Past traumas impact the collective memory of a nation and, in part, shape the identities of political actors.…”