The burden of the Axis alliance and occupation. National cultures of remembrance and German-Italian relations from 1945 to the present day

PD Dr. Lutz Klinkhammer

The shadows of the Second World War extend into the present day: political and social conflicts over the wartime past – including trials of war criminals, debates over restitution, reparations agreements, media controversies, and the image of a "clean Wehrmacht" in West Germany, alongside the narratives of the "good Italian" and the "bad German" in Italy – have significantly shaped Italian-German relations since 1949. While the founding members of the EEC succeeded during the Cold War in mitigating the memory of the Axis war and the occupation period through joint negotiations, and in fostering rapprochement by sidestepping certain aspects of the past, old wounds reopened in the 1990s for a variety of reasons. These included a belated wave of war crimes trials – unusual in the European judicial area –, the blockade of compensation payments to Italian forced labourers from 1999 onwards, Germany's legal action against Italy at the International Court of Justice in The Hague for violating state immunity, frictions that escalated to the level of the two countries' presidents, caused by diverging assessments by German and Italian courts and prosecutors concerning Wehrmacht massacres in Italy, as well as the resurgence of negative stereotypes of Germans during the financial crisis and in the aftermath of Berlusconi's resignation and the harsh austerity policies pursued by post-Berlusconi governments. Based on archival research in Germany and Italy, the project aims to correlate the outcomes of reparation policies and the punishment for war crimes with the prevailing attitudes in both societies (as reflected primarily in the media, including feature films).

PD Dr. Lutz Klinkhammer
Deputy Director, Responsible for Contemporary History
Biography
Publications
+39 06 66049271
klinkhammer[at]dhi-roma.it

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