ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits the commonplace assumption that the generational revolts of 1968 opened the lid on the Nazi past in West Germany. The immediate postwar period saw the rapid conclusion of the denazification process. However, the dominant narrative of generational rupture glosses over the contours and nuances of the “abject silence” of the 1950s. The Ulm trial of 1958 and the Eichmann trial of 1961 helped foster more critical attitudes toward German war criminals. Concurrently, cinema and theater from this period show how treatments of the National Socialist past developed over the postwar period. As the long 1960s progressed, themes like the search for the decent German persisted, while the exploration of culpability as part of the everyday pushed audiences to examine their own moral compasses. Directors and playwrights including Wolfgang Staudte, Rolf Hochhuth, Peter Weiss, and Erwin Piscator appear in this examination of the historical reassessment of the Third Reich.
