Photographers from the U.S. Army's Signal Corps were with the troops that drove back Hitler's troops and occupied Germany at the end of WWII. Soon photos of death camps and starving POWs shocked the home front, providing ample evidence of Nazi brutality. Yet did the faces of the defeated Germans show remorse? The victors saw only arrogance, servility, and the resentment of a population thoroughly brainwashed by the Nazis. In fact, argues Dagmar Barnouw, the photographs from this period tell a more complex story and hold many clues for a better understanding of the recent German past.

A photo essay on different perspectives of war-torn Germany in Allied and German photography and reportage

About the Author

Dagmar Barnouw was Professor of German and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, until her sudden death in May 2008. Her books include Weimar Intellectuals and the Threat of Modernity (IUP, 1988) and Naipaul's Strangers (IUP, 2003), among other books of cultural criticism.

Reviews

[Barnouw's] work shows that perspective plays a key role both in photography and in trying to master Germany's past. [F]ascinating.

* Library Journal *

Germany 1945 is best seen as a contribution to [the] debate . . . about the uniqueness or otherwise of Nazi crimes, and the related questions of collective responsibility for those crimes, and the need to go on remembering them.

* Times Literary Supplement *

Resist the impulse to 'historicize' the Holocaust . . . and you run the danger of sacralizing it. Barnouw's effort to grapple with these dilemmas is provocative, brilliant, and unsettling.

* Washington Times *

Germany 1945 contributes a vigorous voice to the expanding chorus of scholars who have called for increased examination of the immediate postwar years.

* H-NET Reviews Humanities & Social Sciences *

[Barnouw's] thoughtful analysis of a large assortment of photographs . . . allows Barnouw to look at how and not just what people saw, and to bring that perspective into conversation with the historical debates about the war's end in Germany.

* Journal of Contemporary History *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253220431
Author Dagmar Barnouw
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 494g