ABSTRACT
Both in the Federal Republic and in the GDR, academic studies of the history of the German resistance have served political ends to an unmistakable extent. In this respect the two German states scarcely differ from most other nations in Western and Eastern Europe. The depiction of the immediate past years of the Second World War, during which patriots of all parties and walks of life had fought against the German forces of occupation, enabled Germany’s former victims to ‘recover their sense of national identity and to develop the idea of European union; it also helped to foster the cult of communist heroes and the communist system’ (Bracher, 1976a, p. 217).
