As one longtime observer of Germany writes, “it must be a historically unique phenomenon that a people has decided to commemorate its own crimes.” In no other country has the remembrance of a past atrocity become so politically salient, so institutionalized in elite political discourse, so much a part of both popular and political culture. In contemporary Berlin, one can visit the House of the Wannsee Conference, where the Nazi leadership planned the Final Solution; the Topography of Terror that stands on the site of the former Gestapo headquarters and documents the organization's crimes; the Jewish museum that traces the history of German–Jewish relations and the rise of anti-Semitism; and many other monuments and museums dedicated to the victims of Nazism. The gigantic Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Germany's central monument to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, stands across from the Reichstag. On November 9th, the chancellor, the president, and leading figures from every political party participate in massive demonstrations at the Brandenburg Gate to remember both the victims of the pogroms of 1938 and the contemporary victims of racism. A trip to other major German cities, and even to many small towns, would similarly expose a visitor to Germany's “culture of contrition.”

In the immediate postwar period, however, the seeds of such a culture were hardly detectable.