Why do teenagers find SchülerVZ, flickr or YouTube so fantastic? What are they finding in the communities on the internet that doesn't exist in real life, and what exactly are they doing with it? The JFF- Institut für Medienpädagogik (Institute for Media Education) looks into these questions and learns from a 15 year-old "I think the future will just be one big Second Life."...
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A large-scale and long-overdue project has begun. German historians are documenting the persecution and extermination of the Jews in 16 volumes of primary source texts where metal merchants and budgie lovers all have their say - with no recourse to hindsight. By Eckhard Fuhr
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"Fear" is the punchy title of book about Polish anti-Semitism whose recent publication in Poland has sparked an emotional debate. Very few people have come to the defence of its author, Jan Tomasz Gross, who has taken on the difficult task of making uncomfortable facts known to a wider audience and removing blind spots in Polish history. By Jakub Kloc-Konkolowicz
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Last week the 1945 Rechnitz massacre hit the headlines after British journalist David Litchfield maintained that Countess Margit von Batthyany, partial heir to the Thyssen industrial family, had taken part in the atrocity. But such speculations belong to the boulevard press. The real issue is the scandalous role of the German postwar criminal justice system in letting the perpetrators escape Germany unharmed. By Stefan Klemp
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Raul Hilberg, the father of Holocaust research, died on August 5th. The sobriety of tone and relentness precision with which he exposed the administrative machine behind what he termed "The Destruction of the European Jews" contributed to the book's failure to receive recognition for decades. His portrayal of facelessness spells out a chilling lesson for the future. By Gustav Seibt
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So Martin Walser, Siegfried Lenz and Dieter Hildebrandt are Nazis now. Oh please! Ever more intellectuals who have spent a lifetime fighting for left-liberal causes are being outed as party members. By Franziska Augstein
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Historian Norbert Frei invited specialists of the National Socialist era to Jena for a kind of family reunion. At debate was the history of the historians of National Socialism and the question of when, and if, the notion of objectivity begins to apply. By Stefan Reinecke
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Some people will think: "Not another book on the Holocaust!" But historian Saul Friedländer depicts the "Years of Extermination" with tremendous power and drama. His narrative style is much like that of a film director, elegantly combining individual stories with world events. By Dan Diner
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20 years after the "Historikerstreit" there is a new lesson to learn in contemporary history: the repugnant aspects of the twentieth century can not be reduced to the major totalitarian dictatorships and they can not be cleanly distinguished from all that we now view as progress and success. By Götz Aly
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The debate over a memorial for the expelled persons from World War Two continues to rage in Berlin. Meanwhile, an exhibition in Bonn takes a refreshingly balanced look at this difficult chapter in German history. By Jörg Lau
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Sixty years after the end of World War Two, Russia is seeing a dramatic re-Stalinisation under President Putin's leadership. As hopes for prosperity dwindle, "Uncle Joe's" star is on the rise again. By Sonja Margolina
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The Second World War ended in Germany on May 8, 1945, with the unconditional surrender of the German forces. We've gathered articles dealing with various aspects of the war. Sonja Margolina looks at the Russian perspective: victory celebrations and re-Stalinisation. Adam Krzeminski analyses the competing myths in Eastern Europe, while Jörg Friedrich sees the Allied bombings of German and Japanese cities as the first act of the Cold War. And two articles by Götz Aly look at "Hitlers Volksstaat" and the state of the memorials in Berlin.
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May the 8th is the anniversary of the end of WW II, but was it really a liberation? Each European country has a different memory of the war, and there is no real consensus on the Holocaust either. With the EU entry of the Eastern European countries the competing myths will no longer exist in isolation, but will have to be contested with the neighbours. By Adam Krzeminski
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The Americans and British practised the systematic annihilation of entire cities and their populations in the Second World War. Their main goal was to impress Stalin. The burning of Dresden was the first act of the Cold War. By Jörg Friedrich
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The monuments to the victims of the Nazi era are in a miserable state. Götz Aly has made himself very unpopular in making this very clear.
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In response to the furore caused by Oliver Hirschbiegel's film "The Downfall", historian Götz Aly describes how many Germans were seduced by National Socialism's heady mix of generous state handouts and high-speed history making.
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