ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that social democratic interpretations of certainhistorical events or periods have made possible, or even privileged, a particular conception of how to come to terms with Nazism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. De-Nazification in Austria was never limited to the prosecution of seriously incriminated Nazis, but was also explicitly aimed at eliminating the national socialist spirit from Austrian society, a rather more nebulous endeavor altogether. The social democrats in the provisional government and then in the first elected coalition government after November 1945 took full advantage of the opportunities this constellation presented. As a consequence of the Waldheim affair, and the attendant publicity given to contemporary Austrian history in its train, moral sensibilities—in both Western historical scholarship and in public life generally—have become far different from those prevailing in 1945.
