In the last week of the Jewish year 5711, West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, waxy-pale and dressed in funereal black coat and striped trousers, gravely strode to the rostrum in Bonn's Bundeshaus. Speaking for new Germany at its best, the 75-year-old Christian Democrat offered a measure of atonement for old Germany at its worst.
Hitler's Nazis, he said, had committed "terrible . . . unspeakable crimes . . . in the name of the German people, imposing on them the obligation to make moral and material amends." The Chancellor reminded the deputies that the West German Constitution rejects "any form of racial...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
