In Collective Memory in International Relations, Kathrin Bachleitner presents an elegant and well-structured framework for studying the role of historical memory in global politics. Unlike most works on memory politics that focus on domestic politics, she argues that a state’s memory originates in the international environment. Societies within states experience traumas, and during the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event, memory is usually repressed. However, internationally, the leaders of these states have to interact with and respond to other states about what happened during this traumatic event. Thus, during interactions with other states, memory is formed. Bachleitner argues that later this memory travels to domestic politics and eventually becomes an integral part of collective identity. This is a relatively long and complicated process, because the version of memory that was formed internationally must become “ingrained in the mindset of agents to the extent that it, at a later stage, circumvents the available, imaginable, thinkable” (p. 66).
After memory becomes part of identity, it starts to affect a state’s behavior, including its foreign policies. To explain the transition from identity to behavior, Bachleitner develops the concept of “temporal security” or “security of being-in-time.” States engage in “self-reflective struggle over memory to be able to be in time” (p. 30) in an effort to establish temporal continuity. They experience an ontological need to achieve a high level of integrity between their narration of self in the past and their current behavior in relation to other states. In other words, states are engaging with their own historical “other” in search of ontological security, and this engagement affects how they behave internationally. Finally, the relationship between memory and identity also affects values. Memory becomes the source of domestic and international obligations, suggesting the choice for the “right” action in policy making.
This framework is tested against the cases of Germany and Austria. Undoubtedly, there is no shortage of studies of Germany’s engagement with its past; however, Bachleitner uses archival materials and engages in a very fruitful comparison of German and Austrian collective memories. She demonstrates how Germany and Austria, both former Nazi states, adopted very different strategies for dealing with the past. Germany embraced the identity of a perpetrator and engaged in generous restitution policies in its relations with Israel, thus hoping to become a respected member of the western community of states. It accepted its moral guilt during the Eichmann trial, and it sided with Israel during the Six Day War of 1967. Memory influenced Germany’s response to the refugee crisis in 2015, when initially the country felt a moral duty to open its doors to refugees. In contrast, in a manner consistent with the “temporal security approach,” Austria embraced the identity of a victim whose sovereignty was violated during the Anschluss in 1938. It entered into a “credit” agreement with Israel that enabled it to avoid reparations, pretended to be a victim during the Eichmann trial, sided with Israel during the 1967 crisis (showing compassion for another “victim”—Israel), but did not embrace refugees in 2015. Bachleitner argues that around 1991 Austria underwent a major memory and identity change, revising its national myth of victimhood during World War II and starting to accept its responsibility for its Nazi legacy.
Bachleitner’s explanation of this major change in Austria’s victimhood orientation is probably one of the weaknesses of the book. She mentions major international structural changes, such as the end of the Cold War, and seems to attribute the change in victimhood orientation to generational change: the “late birth” of the ruling politicians “naturally shaped their relationship to the Nazi legacy in different ways than those of their predecessors” (p. 125). This seems to be a detour from the major argument of the book, which traces the origins of memory to the international sphere. The author would probably have benefited from incorporating insights from Jennifer M. Dixon’s (2018) book Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan into her account. Dixon focuses on the ways in which states change their official narratives, arguing that although international pressures may make it likely that states will do so, domestic forces—including legitimacy and identity concerns, as well as domestic contestation—account for the content of changes in official narratives. It appears that domestic, not international, factors played a major role in Austria’s departure from its victimhood narrative.
Another weakness in the book is its simplistic depiction of the memory landscape in East Germany. In sharp contrast to West Germany, East Germany is portrayed as embracing a “narrative of victimhood concerning Nazi Germany similar to Austria’s” (p. 111). Bachleitner argues that East Germans did not embrace the West German narrative of accepting guilt for Nazism, which was one of the reasons why East Germans did not feel the obligation to help refugees during the crisis in 2015. Recent work on memory and history in East Germany (for example, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, 2019) paint a more complicated picture. As shown by Neiman, the number of trials of former Nazis in East Germany (12,890 were found guilty; 129 were sentenced to death) was greater than in West Germany (6,488 were found guilty; no death penalties were carried out; p. 108). This suggests that the concept of guilt was not alien to East Germans.
Additionally, Collective Memory in International Relations does not capture the complexities and changes associated with Holocaust memory and its importance in international relations. When discussing the formation of memory as a political strategy after World War II, the book only briefly mentions the significance of the Holocaust: “The war and its accompanying Holocaust, like no other historical event beforehand, brought about the shameful and non-heroic aspects of war” (p. 45). There are only three brief mentions of Holocaust memory in the book, and they definitely do not capture its complex dynamics; Holocaust memory was marginalized in the immediate aftermath of World War II and became prominent only after the Eichmann trial and after intense cultural work.
Despite these observations, the strengths of the book definitely outweigh its weaknesses. The concept of “temporal security” is an important contribution to the study of memory and identity in international relations and an important addition to the ontological security literature, which is still looking for ways to best integrate the importance of collective memory when theorizing the relationship between state identity and behavior. By outlining the shift in the construction of national metanarratives (from the victor and the defeated to perpetrators and victims), Bachleitner captures an important trend in world politics, highlighting the importance of justice and changing international norms. The case study of Germany links the issue of reparations to multilateralism and the desire of Germany to belong to the “western” community of nations, thus offering a new perspective on the beginning of the transatlantic security community.
Bachleitner’s book is an important contribution not only to the growing subfield of memory and trauma in international relations, but it will also be of interest to scholars of transatlantic relations, transitional justice, and multilateralism. It remains to be seen whether her theoretical framework will be applicable to states outside the “western” community, especially states with limited interest in adopting democratic values.
