Since the 1990s transitional justice scholars have taken the case of contemporary German history as a universal model for dealing with perpetrators and victims of state-sponsored violence. This chapter, in contrast, calls into question that there has been only one, definitive image of Germany. It adopts a historical perspective to show that transatlantic twentieth-century debates about transitional justice and human rights entailed a dualistic image of ‘two Germanies’: one peaceful and civilised, the other militaristic and expansionist. The chapter delineates these debates in a longue durée perspective and analyses their underlying political, ideological, and historical assumptions. Punitive international legalism is deeply coloured by a dichotomous view of twentieth-century German history, and this view influenced the human rights regime that was set up immediately after the end of the Cold War.