The Path to Atonement
The Path to
Atonement
Kathrin Bachleitner
West Germany and Israel after
the Holocaust
Atonement is the state
practice through which political representatives issue ofªcial apologies and
reparation payments to the victims of mass atrocities, war crimes, and human
rights abuses. At ªrst, such a pathway seems to be an ethical choice: atone-
ment is considered the moral and right thing to do in the aftermath of wars
and conºicts. Yet, at a second look, atonement can also be viewed as a political
choice: politicians may give ofªcial apologies and pay reparations not be-
cause of goodwill or conviction, but because such practices promise tangible
political beneªts.
To describe atonement as a political strategy, this article considers a unique
step in the history of international relations.1 Seven years after the end of
World War II, on September 10, 1952, the representatives of West Germany
(Federal Republic of Germany, FRG) and Israel signed what became known as
the “Luxembourg Agreement,” the Reparations Agreement between Israel
and the Federal Republic of Germany. Before the signing, West German
Chancellor Konrad Adenauer gave an ofªcial apology for “unspeakable
crimes” that called for “moral and material indemnity.”2 This historical legacy
then committed West Germany to pay the State of Israel DM 3 billion3 over
Kathrin Bachleitner is the IKEA Foundation Research Fellow in International Relations at the University
of Oxford.
The author thanks the anonymous reviewers, Alexander Betts, Paul Betts, Lorena De Vita, Todd
Hall, Neil MacFarlane, Maria Mälksoo, Jeffrey K. Olick, Derek Penslar, and Yaacov Yadgar for their
constructive advice and valuable inputs on this article.
1. The expression that this was a unique step in the history of international relations goes back to
Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, who declared at the reparations agreement signing cere-
mony in Luxembourg that this was “a unique step in the history of international relations.” See
Sharett, “‘Einzigartig in der Geschichte.’ Der israelische Außenminister zum Abkommen mit
Bonn” [“Unique in history.” The Israeli foreign minister comments on the agreement with Bonn],
Die Presse, September 12, 1952.
2. Konrad Adenauer, speech at the German Bundestag, September 27, 1951, quoted in Rolf Vogel,
ed., Deutschlands Weg nach Israel: Eine Dokumentation [Germany’s road to Israel: A documentary]
(Stuttgart, Germany: Seewald, 1967), 36.
3. This amount only reºects the payments to the State of Israel, as laid out in article 1 of the agree-
ment, and does not include the sums paid to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against
Germany.
International Security, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Spring 2023), 79–106, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00460
© 2023 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
79
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International Security 47:4 80
fourteen years.4 Combining an ofªcial apology and material compensation be-
tween two states, the Luxembourg Agreement remains unique.5
While the Luxembourg Agreement is an important event in the wake of
another unique event, the Holocaust, reviewing West Germany’s pathway
toward atonement by way of Luxembourg is of wider relevance for the
ªeld of international relations and international security more broadly. First,
it illustrates how other perpetrator states may reach atonement with their
victims.6 Second, it helps explicate peace talks and their outcomes more gener-
ally.7 The ways in which traumatic collective experiences, such as wars and
genocides, are dealt with politically affects long-term reconciliation and politi-
cal stability.8 Scholars ªnd that a lack of contrition on the part of former perpe-
trators is a root cause of violence,9 while unrecognized victimhood breeds
4. Bundesgesetzblatt, part 2, no. 5, March 21, 1953, 37, https://www.bgbl.de/xaver/bgbl/start.xav
?startbk(cid:2)Bundesanzeiger_BGBl&jumpTo(cid:2)bgbl253005.pdf#__bgbl__%2F%2F*%5B%40attr_id%3
D%27bgbl253005.pdf%27%5D__1658751620875, accessed July 25, 2022.
5. See Lily G. Feldman, “The September 1952 Reparations Agreement between West Germany and
Israel: The Beginning of a Remarkable Friendship” (Baltimore: American Institute for Con-
temporary German Studies, Johns Hopkins University, 2019), https://www.aicgs.org/2019/11/
the-september-1952-reparations-agreement-between-west-germany-and-israel-the-beginning-of-
a-remarkable-friendship/; Marieke Zoodsma and Juliette Schaafsma, “Examining the ‘Age of
Apology’: Insights from the Political Apology Database,” Journal of Peace Research 59, no. 3 (2022):
436–488, https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433211024696.
6. See Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Mischa Gabowitsch, ed., Replicating Atonement: Foreign
Models in the Commemoration of Atrocities (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Mark
Gibney et al., eds., The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-
nia Press, 2008); Jelena Subotic, Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2009).
7. See, for instance: Kathrin Bachleitner, Collective Memory in International Relations (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 2021); Thomas U. Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Peter J. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National
Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Maria
Mälksoo, “‘Memory Must Be Defended’: Beyond the Politics of Mnemonical Security,” Security Di-
alogue 46, no. 3 (2015): 221–237, https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010614552549; Jennifer Mitzen, “On-
tological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma,” European Journal of
International Relations 12, no. 3 (2006): 341–370, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066106067346; Ayqe
Zarakol, “Ontological (In)security and State Denial of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan,” Inter-
national Relations 24, no. 1 (2010): 3–23, https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117809359040.
8. Kathrin Bachleitner, “Legacies of War: Syrian Narratives of Conºict and Visions of Peace,” Co-
operation and Conºict 57, no. 1 (2022): 43–64, https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367211032691; Duncan
Bell, ed., Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reºections of the Relationship between Past and Present
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003); Nigel Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2010); Emma Hutchison, Affective Communities in World Politics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
9. Duncan Bell, “Introduction: Violence and Memory,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies
38, no. 2 (2009): 345–360, https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829809347541; James W. Booth, Communities
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The Path to Atonement 81
further conºict.10 Signs of contrition and atonement, on the other hand, can
create trust among countries and facilitate bilateral and international coopera-
tion.11 In the wake of the reparations agreement between West Germany and
Israel, a sustainable and long-term reconciliation process resulted, and the two
countries established lasting “special relations.”12 Examining the origins of the
Luxembourg Agreement allows me to theorize a potential, alternative path-
way toward long-term international stability, cooperation, and peace between
countries. How, then, did the atonement process begin?
Historians13 and political scientists14 explain the West German decision to
pay reparations to Israel as a mix of strategy and moral choice. They particu-
larly emphasize the essential role of Chancellor Adenauer, who persistently
of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006); Charles
Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
10. Georgios Antoniou, Elias Dinas, and Spyros Kosmidis, “Collective Victimhood and Social Prej-
udice: A Post-Holocaust Theory of Anti-Semitism,” Political Psychology 41, no. 5 (2020): 861–886,
https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12654; Daniel Bar-Tal and Eran Halperin, “The Psychology of Intrac-
table Conºicts: Eruption, Escalation and Peacemaking,” in Leonie Huddy, David O. Sears, and
Jack S. Levy, eds., Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013),
923–956; Johanna R. Vollhardt and Rezarta Bilali, “The Role of Inclusive and Exclusive Victim Con-
sciousness in Predicting Intergroup Attitudes: Findings from Rwanda, Burundi, and DRC,” Politi-
cal Psychology 36, no. 5 (2015): 489–506, https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12174; Michael Rothberg,
Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stan-
ford University Press, 2009).
11. Yinan He, The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-Polish Relations since World War
II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Jennifer M. Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in Inter-
national Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).
12. Lily G. Feldman, Germany’s Foreign Policy of Reconciliation: From Enmity to Amity (Boston:
Rowman and Littleªeld, 2012).
13. Dennis L. Bark and David R. Gress, A History of West Germany (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell,
1993); Inge Deutschkron, Israel und die Deutschen: Das schwierige Verhältnis [Israel and the Germans:
A difªcult relationship] (Cologne, Germany: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1983); Niels Hansen,
“Moral als Staatsräson: Zur Politik Konrad Adenauers gegenüber Israel und den Juden” [Morality
as a reason of state: On Konrad Adenauer’s policy toward Israel and the Jews], Die Politische
Meinung 373, no. 45 (2000): 25–33; Kai Von Jena, “Versöhnung mit Israel? Die Deutsch-Israelischen
Verhandlungen bis zum Wiedergutmachungsabkommen von 1952” [Reconciliation with Israel?
The German-Israeli negotiations up to the Reparation Agreement of 1952], Vierteljahrshefte für
Zeitgeschichte 34, no. 4 (1986): 457–480; Michael Wolffsohn, “Das Deutsch-Israelische Wiedergut-
machungsabkommen von 1952 im internationalen Zusammenhang” [The German-Israeli Repara-
tion Agreement of 1952 in an international context], Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 36, no. 4
(1988): 691–731.
14. Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II; Lorena De Vita, Israelpolitik: German-
Israeli Relations, 1949–69 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2020); Feldman, Germany’s
Foreign Policy of Reconciliation; Kai Oppermann and Mischa Hansel, “The Ontological Security of
Special Relationships: The Case of Germany’s Relations with Israel,” European Journal of Interna-
tional Security 4, no. 1 (2019): 79–100, https://doi.org/10.1017/eis.2018.18; Markus A. Weingardt,
Deutsche Israel- und Nahostpolitik: Die Geschichte einer Gratwanderung seit 1949 [Germany’s policy to-
ward Israel and the Middle East: The history of a balancing act since 1949] (Frankfurt on the Main:
Campus, 2002).
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International Security 47:4 82
held out against a reluctant West German public and widespread political op-
position from within his party.15 Scholars also emphasize the role of the United
States in pushing West Germany into reparations.16 The conventional historical
wisdom, therefore, is that atonement grew out of domestic politics, backed up
by pressure from U.S. occupation forces. These are all valid contributions, and
I do not contest any of them. Yet, I argue that they are incomplete because they
overlook the wider international incentive structures and the agency of the
affected states: West Germany and Israel.
To offer new insights into this well-studied case, I look at archival docu-
ments that contain a series of secret diplomatic back-channel negotiations be-
tween West German and Israeli representatives in 1951 and 1952. Through
archives, secondary sources, and quotes from involved state representatives, I
reconstruct the incentive structures of the post–World War II era. I show that
atonement did not grow out of West German domestic politics and U.S. pres-
sure alone; rather, it stemmed from wider international incentives and a result-
ing dynamic between the former perpetrator and its victim. To highlight my
ªndings, I test them on two “non-atoning” perpetrators of World War II:
Austria and Japan. While Austria and Japan featured similar domestic politics
under U.S. occupation in the postwar decade, the international incentive struc-
ture and constellations with their former victims, Israel and the People’s
Republic of China (PRC),17 unfolded differently from the West German–Israeli
case in the early 1950s.
15. See Adenauer’s memoirs: Konrad Adenauer, Erinnerungen, 1876–1967 [Memories, 1876–1967]
(Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966); Konrad Adenauer, Erinnerungen, 1953–1955
[Memories, 1953–1955] (Frankfurt on the Main: Fischer Bücherei, 1968).
16. Lily G. Feldman, The Special Relationship between West Germany and Israel (Boston: Allen and
Unwin, 1984); Kurt R. Grossman, Die Ehrenschuld: Kurzgeschichte der Wiedergutmachung [The debt
of honor: A short story of redemption] (Frankfurt on the Main and Berlin: Ullstein, 1967); Walter
Schwartz, ed., Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts durch die Bundesrepublik
Deutschland [The Federal Republic of Germany and its restitution for National Socialism], 6 vols.
(Munich: C. H. Beck, 1974).
17. While my illustration concentrates on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its policies
toward Japan in the early 1950s, there were other victims of Japan’s imperialist policies during
World War II, including Korea. During the timeframe of this study (1950 to 1952), however, Korea
was immersed in the Korean War. South Korea’s bilateral policies with Japan thus began only in
1965, when President Park Chung-hee, despite widespread anti-Japanese sentiments, negotiated
the 1965 Basic Relations Treaty. This treaty normalized diplomatic relations with Tokyo to acceler-
ate economic development instead of implementing reparations or any form of atonement from
Japan. Since then, South Korean activists have sought to revise the language of the treaty to
address Japanese crimes against humanity, and they continue to demand a sincere apology and
compensation from Japan. See Joe Phillips, Wondong Lee, and Joseph Yi, “Future of South Korea–
Japan Relations: Decoupling or Liberal Discourse,” Political Quarterly 91, no. 2 (April–June 2020):
448–456, quote at 449, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12786.
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The Path to Atonement 83
The article proceeds as follows. In the ªrst section, I review the origins of
atonement and its related moral considerations and political incentives, and I
present my theory that atonement is an instrumental strategy that emerges in a
two-level game18 between domestic and international politics. The second
section features my qualitative analysis of the FRG’s initial decision to pay rep-
arations to Israel in 1952. To single out the international incentives and constel-
lations that pushed West Germany onto the path of atonement between 1950
and 1952, in the third section I contrast the ªndings with Austria and Japan,
two U.S.-occupied yet non-atoning former perpetrators of World War II in that
same period.19 In the conclusion, I derive insights beyond the speciªcities of
the post–World War II context and explicate the international aspects that may
lead countries toward atonement.
Atonement—A Moral or Political Choice?
Atonement is one of many possibilities that a perpetrator state may adopt re-
garding its historical legacy. As a state practice, atonement requires an ofªcial,
verbal acknowledgement of past wrongdoings with an accompanying public
expression of remorse through a political apology.20 Atonement, however, also
comprises the offer of restitutive actions to former victims in the form of
ªnancial reparations.21 Reparations are a tool to achieve both accountability
for and acknowledgment of the past.22 Atonement, deªned as “an apology plus
18. Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” Inter-
national Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427–460, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706785.
19. My argument concentrates on the early 1950s because of the period’s speciªc postwar interna-
tional context. At that time, Austria and Japan did not adopt atonement, but they each approached
atonement later by issuing ofªcial apologies to Israel in 1993 and to China in 1972, respectively, yet
without paying state-to-state reparations. For more on the Austrian-Israeli case, see Avi Beker,
“Building Up a Memory: Austria, Switzerland, and Europe Face the Holocaust,” in Eric Langen-
bacher and Yossi Shain, eds., Power and the Past: Collective Memory and International Relations
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010), 97–119; Heidemarie Uhl, “Recovering Aus-
trian Memory: Stratifying Restitution Debates,” in Dan Diner and Gotthard Wunberg, eds., Resti-
tution and Memory: Material Restoration in Europe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 233–254. For
more on the Japanese-Chinese case, see Karl Gustafsson and Todd H. Hall, “The Politics of Emo-
tions in International Relations: Who Gets to Feel What, Whose Emotions Matter, and the ‘History
Problem’ in Sino-Japanese Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 65, no. 4 (2021): 973–984,
https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqab071.
20. Melissa Nobles, The Politics of Ofªcial Apologies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008),
140–141.
21. John Torpey, Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2006), 43.
22. Feldman, Germany’s Foreign Policy of Reconciliation, 17.
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International Security 47:4 84
reparations [italics in original],”23 therefore requires politicians to address a
country’s shameful past, embrace guilt, and take responsibility for histori-
cal wrongs.24 Thus, the perpetrator state views atonement, ªrst and foremost,
as a morally necessary choice that is politically inconvenient, uncomfortable,
and costly.
Considering these disincentives, governments of former perpetrator states
usually choose other options to approach their historical legacy. These prac-
tices include silence or denial about past crimes, or mythmaking about the
past, usually by fabricating a story of victimhood or innocence.25 As opposites
to atonement, these practices embrace political convenience over ethical con-
cerns. Why do some perpetrator states select atonement over other, easier op-
tions? Two interdisciplinary bodies of work provide two possible answers. The
ªrst focuses on the moral demands of the past: politicians ought to choose
atonement because of ethical concerns.26 The second body of work suggests
that politicians select atonement because of political gains.27 I consider each of
them in turn.
Scholarship falling within the ªrst, moral realm posits that governments
have the “duty to remember” because “facing the past” brings “justice for vic-
tims.”28 A whole new practice and discipline called “transitional justice”
emerged around this credo and brought to the fore legal mechanisms for gov-
ernments to deal with past human rights abuses.29 Scholars and practitioners
of transitional justice try to convince the leaders of former perpetrator states to
23. Roy L. Brooks, Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 2004), 143.
24. Barkan, The Guilt of Nations.
25. Jennifer M. Dixon, Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2018), 14–17. Jay Winter, “Thinking about Silence,” in Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, Ruth
Ginio, and Jay Winter, eds., Shadows of War: A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3–31, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511676178.002.
26. See, for instance, Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2002); Jeffrey Blustein, The Moral Demands of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2008).
27. See, for instance, Kathrin Bachleitner, “Diplomacy with Memory: How the Past Is Employed
for Future Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy Analysis 15, no. 4 (2019): 492–508, https://doi.org/
10.1093/fpa/ory013; Berthold Molden, “Resistant Pasts versus Mnemonic Hegemony: On the
Power Relations of Collective Memory,” Memory Studies 9, no. 2 (2016): 125–142, https://doi.org/
10.1177/1750698015596014.
28. For a critical view, see Lea David, The Past Can’t Heal Us: The Dangers of Mandating Memory in
the Name of Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), quotes at 1.
29. See, for instance, Jon Elster, Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Gabowitsch, Replicating Atonement; Linda Radzik,
Making Amends: Atonement in Morality, Law and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009);
Subotic, Hijacked Justice.
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The Path to Atonement 85
adopt atonement by seeking their moral alignment with it as the just option for
their victims and the most sustainable pathway toward long-term peace and
stability.30 Atonement, following this credo, is simply the right thing to do. The
politicians who select atonement are ethically aligned with the moral demands
posed by their country’s past. Unfortunately, however, this congruence is rare.
The second body of work is concerned with the political opportunities stem-
ming from the past. A vast interdisciplinary scholarship on the “politics of
memory” describes the political struggle that involves the commemoration
of a historical legacy for political gain.31 The approach that wins out and is
adopted on the ofªcial level is the one that best serves political interests. In do-
mestic politics, these interests are closely entangled with electoral consider-
ations, national unity, and political legitimacy. According to the assumptions
put forward by the politics of memory literature, states adopt atonement when
political interests align with it.
Thus, the existing literature suggests that atonement is likely to emerge ei-
ther when politicians are morally aligned with the idea of atonement or when
it is in their political interests to pursue atonement. Political leaders either
want to atone, or they use atonement strategically for political gain. The ªrst of
these options is wishful thinking; the second seems more realistic. This litera-
ture posits that atonement always originates from domestic politics, and its
enactment depends on a country’s incumbent politicians and its political in-
centive structures and processes.
atonement as the result of domestic politics
According to the conventional wisdom, atonement is likely to be a political
strategy aiming toward realistic accomplishments in domestic politics. But the
speciªcities of atonement raise questions about its political expediency in do-
mestic contexts. With its combination of ofªcial apologies and the offer of
costly reparation payments, atonement is a hard sell to domestic constituents.
As a state practice, it comes with an implicit admission of guilt and shame on
behalf of the collective. Unsurprisingly, the unpatriotic notion of collective
30. Barkan, The Guilt of Nations; Feldman, Germany’s Foreign Policy of Reconciliation, 11–19; Gibney
et al., The Age of Apology.
31. See, for instance, Bachleitner, “Diplomacy with Memory”; John Bodnar, Remaking America:
Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1992); John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018); Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History
(London: Proªle, 2010); Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2000).
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International Security 47:4 86
guilt32 hinders national unity and a positive image of the country.33 As scholars
of nationalism point out, heroic victories or tragic defeats that lead to a shared
suffering can unite a nation,34 thus rendering victim narratives the politically
expedient option for policymakers. Highlighting a community’s guilt and
shame, on the other hand, may heighten division and exclusion rather than in-
tegration and inclusion.35 Consequently, politicians usually do not push for a
national attitude of atonement. Thus, atonement as a political strategy seems
unlikely to be generated solely by domestic political struggles.
For West Germany, atonement was not a winning political strategy for the
newly formed country. Historians describe the postwar West German memory
landscape as characterized by silence, avoidance, and the repression of the
memory of the Nazi crimes. Furthermore, the post–World War II society was
“psychologically numbed” or “muted,”36 with ordinary people aiming at
“functionality in the present” rather than at a “confrontation with the past.”37
The few embryonic memories that had begun to emerge did not consider the
Jewish Holocaust nor any notion of atonement for it. Instead, the memory
landscape hinged on German suffering. It included the worship of the fallen
soldier, memories of Allied bombings, the expulsion of millions of Germans
from the East, and the repression experienced in the Soviet Zone. If anything,
the part of the past not forgotten or silenced was one based on Germans’ own
32. Karl Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage: Von der politischen Haftung Deutschlands [The question of guilt:
Of Germany’s political liability] (Munich: Piper, 1965).
33. Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reºections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
(London: Verso, 1983); Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media,
Archives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Aleida Assmann, Shadows of Trauma.
Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016); Paul
Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Rogers M.
Smith, Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Membership (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
34. See, for instance, Ernest Renan’s famous lecture “What Is a Nation?” (1882), published in Er-
nest Renan, What Is a Nation? And Other Political Writings, ed. M. F. N. Giglioli (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 2018), 247–263.
35. In her work on “sorry states,” Jennifer Lind points to the unpopularity of ofªcial apologies.
Political apologies confronted the population with the unattractive notion of collective guilt and
were prone to public backlash and electoral defeat in democracies like Australia, Austria, Belgium,
France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States. See
Lind, Sorry States, 181–185.
36. Jan-Werner Müller, “Introduction: The Power of Memory, the Memory of Power and the
Power over Memory,” in Jan-Werner Müller, ed., Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in
the Presence of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 4.
37. Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage, 17.
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The Path to Atonement 87
victimization.38 There was certainly no public appetite for atonement in the
West German memory landscape of the late 1940s and early 1950s.39
The ªrst free elections held in 1949 conªrm this. The two main candidates
from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union
(CDU), Kurt Schumacher and Konrad Adenauer, stood for very different ap-
proaches toward West Germany’s atrocious legacy. Schumacher’s version of
democracy featured a commitment to memory and bringing former Nazi per-
petrators to justice, whereas Adenauer stood for a democracy that disregarded
justice and that promoted a concomitant forgetting of the recent past. Many
historians attribute Adenauer’s landslide electoral victory in 1949 to precisely
this strategy.40 That victory sheds immediate doubts on the idea that the West
German atonement approach may have originated in domestic politics. When
considering Adenauer’s electoral strategy, his cabinet that included ªfty-three
former National Socialist German Workers’ Party members,41 and the disin-
centives that Adenauer faced from a broadly silent West German public, none
of these factors indicate that this chancellor would soon put the country on the
road toward atonement.
Although the existing politics of memory literature suggests that atonement
should emerge where it is of political use, its concomitant and unpopular no-
tion of collective guilt is unlikely to be in politicians’ interest. The example of
the FRG further illustrates this point: atonement was an extremely unpopular
option in the 1950s, with zero domestic political incentives for it. It is therefore
important to look beyond domestic political interests in order to explain why
the FRG nevertheless selected the pathway of atonement.
atonement between domestic and international politics?
With no domestic incentives in place for politicians to adopt atonement, I sug-
gest expanding the research focus beyond a country’s national borders and
into the international sphere. To lay out the broader international context in
which atonement may originate, I ªrst theorize atonement as a purposive for-
eign policy option.42 Notably, according to my theory, atonement remains a
38. Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1997), 276; Jeffrey Herf, “The Emergence and Legacies of Divided Memory:
Germany and the Holocaust after 1945,” in Müller, Memory and Power in Post-War Europe, 184–187.
39. Feldman, Germany’s Foreign Policy of Reconciliation, 33–34.
40. Herf, Divided Memory, 6–11; Bark and Gress, A History of West Germany, 250–257.
41. Deutschkron, Israel und die Deutschen, 28.
42. Walter Carlsnaes, “The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis,” International
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International Security 47:4 88
strategic and political choice, not a moral one. Moreover, like all foreign policy
strategies, atonement is an example of what Robert Putnam calls a “two-level
game”:43 it involves a trade-off and delicate balancing act between foreign and
domestic political goals.44
Furthermore, while atonement by deªnition is a reparative strategy on the
part of the perpetrator state, it is not the sole responsibility of the perpetrator
to come forward with an appropriate apology and offer of material compensa-
tion.45 Instead, the receiving state must also engage in discussions about atone-
ment for it to materialize as a possibility between them.46 This reciprocity
makes atonement a bilateral strategy between a former perpetrator state and
its victim.
On the international level, two factors are likely to inºuence stepping onto
the path of atonement: international incentive structures and interests that
make atonement available and expedient, and the reciprocal strategic interac-
tion between a former perpetrator and its victim. For atonement to become a
viable pathway toward reconciliation, it must be in both of their interests. Yet,
while atonement emerges from international incentives and interactions, it re-
Studies Quarterly 36, no. 3 (1992): 245–270, https://doi.org/10.2307/2600772; Walter Carlsnaes,
“Foreign Policy,” in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, eds, Handbook of Inter-
national Relations, second edition (London: SAGE, 2013), 298–325, https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/
9781446247587.
43. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics.”
44. The idea that there is relationality between the domestic and international dimensions of how
countries approach their past is not new in international relations. I have previously argued that
diplomatic relations shape how states ofªcially approach their pasts, and Jennifer Dixon shows
that changes to these stances are the result of external pressure. See Bachleitner, “Diplomacy with
Memory”; Bachleitner, Collective Memory in International Relations; Dixon, Dark Pasts. Equally,
scholars working within the ªeld of ontological security highlight the processes through which
countries guard their historical legacies against outside contestation, usually by fending off pres-
sure for atonement following external requests. See Kathrin Bachleitner, “Ontological Security as
Temporal Security? The Role of ‘Signiªcant Historical Others’ in World Politics,” International Rela-
tions (digital version), 2021, https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211045624; Mälksoo, “‘Memory
Must Be Defended.’” But international relations scholarship has not theorized in detail about why
political representatives may be induced toward atonement in their international relations irre-
spective of external demands.
45. Brooks, Atonement and Forgiveness, 156; Dixon, Dark Pasts, 16; Feldman, Germany’s Foreign
Policy of Reconciliation, 11.
46. Notably, outside of Christian theology, where atonement as an idea originated, the victim’s en-
gagement does not imply forgiveness. See Donald W. Shriver Jr., An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness
in Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Radzik, Making Amends. For moral philoso-
phers, social psychologists, legal scholars of transitional justice, and political scientists alike,
atonement simply implies that the victim engages with the perpetrators. See Feldman, Germany’s
Foreign Policy of Reconciliation, 11. Forgiveness, if it occurs at all, can come only at the endpoint of
their interaction. But in the beginning, atonement by its nature arises in a situation where forgiv-
ing is impossible. The victim’s forgiveness thus is not a prerequisite for atonement.
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The Path to Atonement 89
mains a two-level game. Therefore, in a second step, it still must be imple-
mented domestically; politicians must sell this approach to a critical public.
But atonement’s international expediency can offset its lack of domestic sup-
port, thus rendering atonement in politicians’ best interest.
As my outline of atonement as an option that forms in a two-level game be-
tween international and domestic politics suggests, my arguments focus on
the constitution47 of atonement as a particular bilateral strategy rather than
on causation. Atonement emerges most visibly in the deliberative logics of pol-
iticians leading former perpetrator states. Atonement can thus be observed in
what key actors say and do regarding their country’s past, both domestically
and internationally, and particularly, how they communicate and behave to-
ward their former victims. Notably, I make no claims about the motives or per-
sonal convictions of politicians regarding atonement; instead, my argument
concerns the constitution of this speciªc type of political strategy.48 Thus, in-
stead of answering what drives actors to seek atonement, I identify which
international factors are at play when atonement becomes a politically expedi-
ent option for politicians, irrespective of their moral alignment with the idea of
atonement itself.
The Case Study: The Origins of West German Atonement with Israel
To evaluate these theoretical considerations, this section examines the gene-
sis of the West German atonement approach. I delve deeper into the political
decision-making process vis-à-vis reparations and illuminate how inter-
national structures and agency shaped this crucial step at the beginning
of the 1950s.
Empirically, I concentrate primarily on ofªcial, historical documents from
the published Foreign Ministry sources (Documents on the Foreign Policy
of the Federal Republic of Germany, or AAPD) in the Leibniz Institute for
Contemporary History archives in Munich.49 The selected classiªed docu-
ments contain the negotiations between West German and Israeli ofªcials and
47. Alexander Wendt, “On Constitution and Causation in International Relations,” Review of Inter-
national Studies 24, no. 5 (1998): 101–117, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20097563.
48. Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sci-
ences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
49. See Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Documents on the For-
eign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany, AAPD], https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/en/
news/topics/foreign-policy-documentation-aapd, accessed April 10, 2021.
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International Security 47:4 90
the Allied Powers (Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States),
which took place in diplomatic back channels from 1951 to the conclusion of
the reparations agreement in 1952. I concede that mine is by nature an inter-
pretive endeavor and open to contestation. I anchor my interpretations in ex-
plicit references to what central actors (political
foreign policy
ofªcials, diplomats, and negotiators) were saying and, when possible, engage
existing accounts and alternative readings. Furthermore, I employ process-
tracing of the original archival documents to examine how international fac-
tors inºuenced the choice of atonement in diplomatic correspondence, public
speeches, and private letters.50
leaders,
After determining the role of international structures and agency in the West
German–Israeli case, I also study the interplay of these factors in two other
perpetrator states of World War II: Austria and Japan. These two countries
were equally under U.S. occupation and inºuence, yet neither of them selected
a pathway of atonement. For the less-researched Austrian case, I rely on origi-
nal historical documents from the Austrian State Archives in Vienna, in addi-
tion to secondary literature. The Japanese case is based on existing works of
historians, political scientists, and international relations scholars who discuss
different theoretical aspects of Japan’s history problem. For each case, I conªne
my research to the early 1950s, thus leaving undiscussed the later changes re-
garding their respective historical legacies. Instead, the focus of this compari-
son is to detect whether my theorized international factors that led to West
Germany’s atonement were present or absent in these case studies. Finally, this
comparison also showcases the article’s contribution by deriving more gener-
alized conclusions about which international factors are likely to bring about
atonement in other scenarios and contexts.
ªnding the path to atonement after world war ii
While there were no domestic incentives for the FRG to adopt atonement, this
section reviews the international incentive structures and environment after
1945. Unsurprisingly, Germany was the pariah on the postwar international
stage at this time. In particular, Israel, the Jewish state that came into being in
1948 as a direct result of the Holocaust, worked against Germany’s restoration
in the international community. Naturally, in the immediate aftermath of
50. Derek Beach and Rasmus Pedersen, Analyzing Foreign Policy, second edition (London: Red
Globe Press, 2020).
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The Path to Atonement 91
World War II, Israeli diplomats ªercely opposed Germany participating in any
international organizations or meetings.51 Of course, there were no bilateral
contacts between Germany and Israel. Trade, travel, the German language,
and all cultural goods were forbidden, and once the FRG was formally estab-
lished as a separate and independent nation in 1949, all necessary diplomatic
exchanges between the FRG and Israel were conducted solely through the oc-
cupying powers.52 In the postwar years, the Israelis made it abundantly clear
that they wanted nothing to do with Germany.
At the same time, the Allied Powers began to reconstitute their relationship
to one another, which also entailed forming a new image for the FRG as the
successor state to the Third Reich. To that end, the Western allies (Britain,
France, and particularly the United States) prioritized developing West
Germany’s democratic character. In the words of John McCloy, the U.S. high
commissioner for Germany: “The way the Germans will behave toward the
Jews will constitute the crucial test for German democracy.”53 Importantly,
McCloy referred to neither Israel nor the option of atonement. Instead, he fo-
cused on the domestic divisions and their potential to test the nascent democ-
racy internally, following the logic of the politics of memory literature.
Suppose McCloy’s statement could be rephrased in international relations’
conceptual terms: the highest status actor in the Western international commu-
nity, the United States, had expressed that a place for the FRG in the Western
world depended on its democratic character, and that character was contin-
gent on its behavior toward the Jews, and therefore eventually also toward
Israel. But the United States neither mentioned such behavior nor stated that it
required atonement on the part of the FRG.
A look into the exchanges happening in diplomatic back channels solidiªes
this point. By 1951, the Allies had twice explicitly rejected Israeli appeals to
pressure the FRG into reparation payments on its behalf. While the Soviet
Union had yet to respond to the Israeli appeal for reparations, the United
States emphasized that neither the State of Israel nor the FRG existed when the
51. Vogel, Deutschlands Weg nach Israel, 19.
52. Tom Segev, Die Siebte Million: Der Holocaust und Israels Politik der Erinnerung [The seventh mil-
lion: The Israelis and the Holocaust] (Reinbeck, Germany: Rowohlt, 1995), 257–260; Yotam Hotam,
“Historische Erinnerung und ‘normale’ Zukunft: Israels Reaktion auf die österreichische De-facto-
Anerkennung” [Historical memory and a “normal” future: Israel’s reaction to Austria’s de facto
recognition], in Sabine Falch and Moshe Zimmermann, eds., Israel-Österreich [Israel-Austria]
(Innsbruck, Austria: Studienverlag, 2005), 155.
53. John McCloy, quoted in Deutschkron, Israel und die Deutschen, 27.
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International Security 47:4 92
crimes were committed, and therefore the international legal basis for such a
move was lacking.54 When pressed further by Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe
Sharett, his U.S. counterpart Dean Acheson revealed that the United States’ re-
fusal to pressure the FRG to make reparation payments to Israel was in part
motivated by ªnancial concerns. Given that the FRG was dependent on U.S.
aid, the United States feared that it would end up paying reparations
on Germany’s behalf.55 But as Acheson wrote to Sharett in November 1951,
the United States would not oppose any reparations that Germany would
pay itself.56 The British and French made similar provisions: the Israelis
might work directly with Germany to ªnd a solution, but only without
their involvement.57
With these stances, the Western allies were at best sympathetic to atonement
from a moral point of view, but uncooperative, if not opposed, based on real
political interests. For the United States, Cold War exigencies made the FRG’s
rearmament and its position in the Western community a priority. To that end,
the ªnancial and moral hardship of reparations was not regarded as helpful.
Following this logic, Acheson had already recommended in 1950 that Israeli
diplomats establish “normal diplomatic relations with the Bundesrepublik,”
with no preconditions attached.58 Therefore, the Allied Powers cannot be cred-
ited with instigating the German road toward atonement. Instead, the his-
torical documents reveal that early scholars of German Wiedergutmachtung
(restitution) overestimated the United States’ role in this matter.59 The conven-
tional wisdom until the 1980s was that the United States had pushed the FRG
toward atonement.60 But the Allies neither explicitly requested reparations nor
made the FRG’s reintegration into the Western community conditional upon
them. Thus, the international incentive structures of the postwar years were at
best fruitful for atonement, but neither the United States nor any other Allied
Power made atonement a necessity for the FRG.
54. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, vol. 7: The Near East and Africa (Washington, DC:
Government Printing Ofªce, 1982), 750, 948.
55. Wolffsohn, “Das Deutsch-Israelische Wiedergutmachungsabkommen,” 696–697.
56. Sharett to Horowitz and Shinnar, November 21, 1951, National Archives (NA), Washington,
DC.
57. Gifford (U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom) to Acheson, April 4, 1952, NA, Washington,
DC, DC/R, 662A.84A/4-452.
58. Acheson to McCloy, December 28, 1950, NA, Washington, DC, Diplomatic Division, State De-
partment Files, NND 832865, RG 84, box 2.
59. Feldman, The Special Relationship between West Germany and Israel; Grossman, Die Ehrenschuld;
Schwartz, Die Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts.
60. Wolffsohn, “Das Deutsch-Israelische Wiedergutmachungsabkommen,” 691.
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The Path to Atonement 93
evolving negotiations between the frg and israel
If the United States did not push the FRG toward reparations, who did?
Atonement is a reparative strategy on the part of the perpetrator state, yet the
state on the receiving end must also be ready to engage in this practice. In
the case of West Germany, the recipient state was Israel, formed in no small
part because of the Holocaust. To investigate the bilateral dynamic between
the FRG and Israel, this section examines the secret diplomatic negotia-
tions that started in Paris in April 1951 and concluded with the successful sign-
ing of the Luxembourg Agreement on September 10, 1952.
In the FRG, when the ªrst freely elected chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, took
ofªce on September 15, 1949, he faced a predicament. Domestically, he had
won the election by promoting democracy and westernization, at the expense
of silencing the Nazi past. But internationally, and particularly through the ac-
tions of Israeli diplomats, the FRG was ostracized as a pariah because of its
legacy. At the same time, within Israel, conºicting moral and pragmatic con-
siderations had begun to emerge regarding Germany. While the Israeli public
remained ªercely opposed to any contacts with the Germans,61 the Israeli
elites, ªrst and foremost President David Ben Gurion, felt that the economic
necessities of being a new state in a hostile environment required them to hint
that they were open to an eventual rapprochement through reparation pay-
ments.62 The president of the Jewish World Congress, Nahum Goldmann,
played a crucial role: In his view, pursuing reparations in addition to individ-
ual claims would constitute an essential contribution to resettling the large
numbers of displaced people in Israel.63 Following these pragmatic consider-
ations among the elites, the stance of totally rejecting Germany was weakened
by 1950, with Sharett ºoating the idea of establishing contact with West
Germany as being conditional on a form of restitution.64
By opening this possibility, Israeli political leaders signaled that their coun-
try was willing to take up its painful victim status internationally because it
promised to lead to strategic gains. But the tenor that remained throughout the
reparation negotiations was that no money in the world could ever wipe out
the German guilt. It was in this international context—and shortly before a trip
to New York—that Adenauer made his ªrst public statement that hinted at
atonement: “Insofar as it is possible in the aftermath of the annihilation of mil-
61. Hanna Yablonka, The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann (New York: Schocken, 2004).
62. Tom Segev, A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion (London: Apollo Library, 2019).
63. Von Jena, “Versöhnung mit Israel?,” 464–465.
64. Meeting notes concerning Israel and its relations to the FRG, January 8, 1951, AAPD, online.
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International Security 47:4 94
lions of people beyond retrieval, the German people are willing to make good
the injustice committed against the Jews in the German name by a criminal re-
gime. We consider restitution [Wiedergutmachung] as our duty. The Federal
Government is committed to initiating appropriate action.”65 Adenauer sig-
nalled that the FRG was willing to participate in the political project that is
atonement, and his country would take on the role of a guilty—yet atoning—
perpetrator, at least internationally. “Germany could not become a respected
and equal member of the family of nations until it had recognized and proven
the will to make amends,” conªrmed Adenauer in his memoirs.66 The chancel-
lor had grasped that atonement was a requirement for seeking international
status and rehabilitation within the Western community, despite his awareness
that the Nazi crimes could never be redeemed in a moral sense.
Once both sides had conceived of atonement as a pragmatic political solu-
tion in a situation where absolution was impossible, this thinking was trans-
lated into concrete steps. In 1951, the FRG offered DM 10 million in reparations
to Israel. While this initial amount was negligible, the voluntary nature of
this offer was essential: it began to frame the FRG’s step toward atonement by
underlining its will to acknowledge itself as a guilty perpetrator. The interna-
tional community sympathized with this German move. But the Israeli re-
sponse would be crucial. Whereas Israeli ofªcials initially reacted reluctantly
to the German offer, most of the Israeli public was outraged and opposed tak-
ing “blood money” from the Germans.67 In addition, they believed that the of-
fer came at the price of rehabilitating Germany’s international status. Despite
persistent major reservations, the more pragmatic Israeli diplomats went
ahead and began to negotiate with the West Germans.
With the Israelis reciprocating Adenauer’s offer, the ªrst step toward atone-
ment became a possibility for the FRG. On April 19, 1951, Israeli ofªcials
David Horowitz and Maurice Fischer met with Adenauer in Paris. From the
very start, they made clear that their cooperation would be contingent on a
public condemnation of the Nazi crimes by the German chancellor.68 They re-
quested an ofªcial apology from Adenauer that would portray his country
as a “guilty perpetrator” and his decision for reparations as “atonement,”
65. Interview with Konrad Adenauer, Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland, Novem-
ber 11, 1949.
66. Adenauer, Erinnerungen, 1953–1955, 145.
67. Segev, Die Siebte Million, 264–277; Deutschkron, Israel und die Deutschen, 42–44.
68. Deutschkron, Israel und die Deutschen, 21.
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The Path to Atonement 95
that is, as “guilt payments.”69 Adenauer conceded with the simple words: “It
will happen.”70
The roles and the relationship between them were now clear and settled.
Without the Israeli insistence that reparations were guilt payments rather
than a mere business transaction, this path would not have opened at all.
While the negotiators framed this encounter in moral terms between perpetra-
tor and victim, each side was strategically motivated to pave this shared path
toward atonement.
sealing the deal of atonement: a two-level game, after all
While atonement as a useful strategy began to take shape internationally, it
nevertheless had to be implemented through domestic political processes. The
difªculties posed by rendering atonement politically expedient within the FRG
once more reºect the importance of the international environment in sparking
the political interest in atonement in the ªrst place. While Adenauer had un-
derstood in his meetings with the Israelis that a public condemnation of the
Nazi crimes was necessary, such a statement ran counter to his domestic strat-
egy regarding the Nazi past. The crucial test for the German democracy that
McCloy had hinted at thus came when Adenauer brought the issue of repara-
tions before the German Bundestag on September 27, 1951. During his speech,
Adenauer publicly offered the remorse and penitence that Israel had long
desired when he professed “the overwhelming suffering that the time of
National Socialism has inºicted upon the Jews in Germany and the occupied
countries.”71 But to make his view acceptable to the broader German public,
Adenauer used the passive voice when referring to the sufferings of the Jewish
people. He cautiously underlined that even if many Germans did not person-
ally participate in the crimes against the Jews, “unspeakable atrocities were
nevertheless committed in the German name.” That alone, Adenauer contin-
ued, entitled Jews to moral and material compensation.
Adenauer’s 1951 speech represents a tightrope walk between two different
audiences. To the international community, he delivered a remarkable, early
apology that acknowledged German wrongdoings and expressed guilt, re-
morse, shame, and the will for restitution (Wiedergutmachung) based on the
69. Todd H. Hall, Emotional Diplomacy: Ofªcial Emotion on the International Stage (Ithaca, NY: Cor-
nell University Press, 2015), 126–127.
70. Adenauer, quoted in Segev, Die Siebte Million, 271.
71. Adenauer, speech in German Bundestag, September 27, 1951.
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International Security 47:4 96
country’s “spirit of true humanity.”72 With this latter phrasing, he signalled not
only a clear-cut break with the inhuman crimes of the past but also implicitly
acknowledged the nascent human rights discourse. Adenauer’s public con-
demnation of the Nazi crimes spoke to all the FRG’s strategic interests in an
early Cold War context: westernization, democratization, and rehabilitation of
its international status. Yet, inside the FRG, there was no incentive structure
for atonement. Domestically, atonement stood the test of democracy only be-
cause Adenauer’s troubling circumlocutions exculpated most Germans from
the Nazi crimes.
The West German chancellor played the two-level game well by making two
other moves. First, he surrounded himself with the few allies in his party who
supported the moral idea of atonement and sent them to the international
stage to credibly represent atonement to the outside world. Second, for every-
one else, particularly his domestic opponents, Adenauer secured broader
support for his policy domestically by packaging reparations in non-moral,
strategic terms.
To ªnd moral allies for the international means of atonement, Adenauer
handpicked people who were also sympathetic to atonement. One such sym-
pathizer was Franz Böhm, who became his chief negotiator with the Israelis.73
Böhm was one of the few members of the CDU who ªrmly believed that the
country had inherited a historical debt.74 In handpicking Böhm, Adenauer
thus sent a German representative to the world stage who held an attitude
compatible with international, not German, expectations. This move credibly
portrayed to other international actors the FRG’s sincerity in pursuing the
means of atonement; however, it was not sufªcient.
While ªnding moral allies helped the FRG signal its commitment to atone-
ment to the outside world, Adenauer’s deliberate co-optation of moral non-
allies within his party into strategic allies is what sealed the deal with the
Israelis. For instance, Adenauer urged Finance Minister Fritz Schäffer to put
“aside concerns that in any other case would apply,” and instead view repara-
tions only “in the moral and political weight that these unique obligations
carry for us.”75 To turn his opponents into strategic allies, Adenauer interwove
72. Ibid.
73. Deutschkron, Israel und die Deutschen, 48.
74. Hans Günter Hockerts, “Wiedergutmachung in Germany: Balancing Historical Accounts
1945–2000,” in Diner and Wunberg, Restitution and Memory, 323–382.
75. Letter exchange between Adenauer and Schäffer, Bonn, February 29, 1952, quoted in Vogel,
Deutschlands Weg nach Israel, 41.
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The Path to Atonement 97
the ethical atonement approach with the strategic goals of the FRG.76 In per-
suading his cabinet not to turn against reparations, Adenauer began to frame
the highly moral issue of reparations in political terms: reparation payments
were nothing less than the price to pay for reentry into the Western alliance. At
the same time, they would create a strategic distance from the Eastern bloc.
Furthermore, they were portrayed as simple economic transactions that would
enable Germany to receive foreign credits.77
With this instrumental framing in place, Adenauer managed to link repara-
tions to the Federal Republic’s raison d’état—that is, its goal of multilateralism
within the Western alliance (Westbindung).78 Once he had merged the moral
and political signiªcance of reparations, he gained support from the opposi-
tion party SPD as well as within his own party to secure passage through
the Bundestag.79 Only by walking this tightrope at home did Adenauer
achieve the green light to sign the Luxembourg Agreement with the Israelis on
September 10, 1952.
The Path away from Atonement: The Cases of Austria and Japan
I describe atonement as a two-level game, whose origins are the result of two
factors: the international incentive structures and power constellations, and
the bilateral dynamics between former perpetrators and their victims. In the
West German case study, both worked in tandem to shape the pathway toward
atonement. But I ªnd that the international incentive structures, and particu-
larly the inºuence of the occupying U.S. forces, provided at most an indirect
push. Instead, the evolving negotiation between the West Germans and the
Israelis and their mutual yet strategic acknowledgment of each other in their
respective perpetrator and victim roles were the crucial elements in this pro-
cess. To examine the validity of this claim, I look beyond the West German–
Israeli case to two other perpetrators of World War II: Austria and Japan. Like
the FRG, both these countries were occupied by the United States after World
War II, yet they did not follow the West German atonement approach. While the
United States seems to have pressured neither of these countries into atonement,
the international push for atonement that did exist for the FRG seems not to
have been in place for Austria and Japan. I consider each case in turn.
76. See letter between Schäffer and Adenauer, June 18, 1952, AAPD, online.
77. Weingardt, Deutsche Israel- und Nahostpolitik, 82–89.
78. Bark and Gress, A History of West Germany, 257; Herf, Divided Memory, 284–286.
79. Feldman, “The September 1952 Reparations Agreement between West Germany and Israel.”
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International Security 47:4 98
austria
In the Austrian case, the mutual acknowledgment of Austria and Israel as
the perpetrator and its victim did not happen. Postwar Israeli efforts to ostra-
cize Germany globally were never extended to Austria.80 Bilateral relations be-
tween Austria and Israel thus started as early as 1950 and, despite a heated
Knesset debate, accompanied by domestic protests, Israel never called Austria
an “enemy state.”81 Israeli diplomats instead opted for “normalisation” with
Austria: “I have become convinced that we have to make a decision . . . either,
we continue with the current contacts, i.e., a bit of recognition, a bit of anger,
and then we exploit our particular position to—as we did with Germany—
claim reparation payments etc., from Austria. Or, . . . we promote a full nor-
malisation of the relationship in our own interest.”82
This Israeli advice reveals the agency and choice of the victim to press for
atonement—or not. While the ofªcial Israeli strategy in 1951 rested somewhere
between restitution and normalization, the decision soon tilted toward nor-
malization. Consequently, Israel negotiated a bilateral credit agreement with
Austria at the same time that it negotiated reparations with the FRG. While
such a credit was per se a business agreement, Israeli diplomats nevertheless
initially wanted to use it to pressure Austria into an accompanying friendship
declaration. The agreement should acknowledge the Nazi crimes against
the Austrian Jews, that is, it should include an ofªcial apology. Yet, in the
Austrian case, Israeli diplomats recommended rather than insisted on such a
statement. Moreover, once the Austrians failed to cooperate with taking up
the role of a “guilty perpetrator,” insisting that “they had nothing to do
with the crimes of Nazi Germany,” the statement completely disappeared from
the ªnal draft of the agreement.83 Instead, the credit agreement contained a
neutral formulation customary in normal business agreements between two
friendly countries.
Notably, by accepting the credit agreement as a “normal business agree-
80. Helga Embacher and Margit Reiter, Gratwanderungen: Die Beziehungen zwischen Österreich und
Israel im Schatten der Vergangenheit [Walking a tightrope: Relations between Austria and Israel in
the shadow of the past] (Vienna: Picus, 1998), 65. Ronald W. Zweig, “Jewish Issues in Israeli For-
eign Policy: Israeli-Austrian Relations in the 1950s,” Israel Studies 15, no. 3 (2010): 47–60, https://
doi.org/10.2979/isr.2010.15.3.47.
81. Knesset protocols of Sarach Wahrhaftig’s and Zwi Pinkas’s speeches, July 26, 1950, Austrian
State Archives, Vienna, ÖStA/AdR, BKA/AA, Israel 49, Gz. 126 722_pol 1950.
82. Arie Eshel, quoted in Hotam, “Historische Erinnerung und ‘normale’ Zukunft,” 160.
83. Response from the Foreign Ministry to Hartl, June 17, 1952, Austrian State Archives, Vienna,
ÖStA/AdR, BKA/AA, Israel 2, Gz. 146 350_pol 1952.
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The Path to Atonement 99
ment,” Israel acknowledged Austria as a victim rather than as a perpetrator,
and the two countries began mutually beneªcial economic relations while
Israel sought guilt payments from the FRG. On his way to signing the
Luxembourg Agreement with Germany, Sharett once more explicitly under-
lined the difference between Germany and Austria and announced: “Israel
will not demand reparations from Austria. . . . Israel accepts the supposition
that Germany is responsible for acts committed against Austrian Jews since
they took place only after the Anschluss [annexation].”84 With this, however,
Israel also closed the pathway to atonement for Austria, at least in the immedi-
ate postwar period.
Retrospectively, the question naturally arises as to why Israel did so, and
historians still try to understand Sharett’s decisiveness in this matter.85 As was
the case for the FRG, the international environment’s power constellations and
available strategic options played an indirect role in this alternative pathway.
As early as 1943, in the Moscow Declaration, the Allied Powers had desig-
nated Austria as “the ªrst victim of Nazi Germany”—a wartime calculation
that in the postwar context was picked up by Austria’s anti-Nazi elites who
began to form the Second Republic. At the time, a story of victimhood under
Nazi Germany had immense political expediency for Austria, not least be-
cause it opened the possibility for a swift departure of the occupying powers
and the country’s independence. The national victim narrative was also very
popular internally because it bore the potential to absorb Austrians’ diverse
war experiences: everyone felt victimized by World War II, be it by the losses
suffered through war and displacement, by the Nazi regime’s atrocities, by the
Allied bombings, by the expulsions from Eastern and Central European coun-
tries, or by the occupation and Soviet repression. Most importantly, such a na-
tional story helped to distract from the shameful and guilty aspects of the past
and to highlight Austria’s differentiation from Germany, thus boosting patri-
otic attachment while smoothing the country’s way toward a functioning wel-
fare state.86
84. Sharett quoted in Rolf Steininger, Österreichs Diplomaten in Palästina und Israel 1927–1976 [Aus-
tria’s diplomats in Palestine and Israel 1927–1976] (Innsbruck, Austria: Innsbruck University
Press, 2012), 62.
85. Zweig, “Jewish Issues in Israeli Foreign Policy,” 56.
86. Anton Pelinka, “Von der Funktionalität von Tabus: Zu den ‘Lebenslügen’ der Zweiten
Republik” [The functionality of taboos: On the “life lies” of the Second Republic], in Wolfgang Kos
and Georg Rigele, eds., Inventur 45/55: Österreich im ersten Jahrzehnt der Zweiten Republik [Inventory
45/55: Austria in the ªrst decade of the Second Republic] (Vienna: Sonderzahl Verlagsgesellschaft,
1996), 23–31; Ruth Wodak at al., The Discursive Construction of National Identity, second ed. (Edin-
burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 52–55.
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International Security 47:4 100
Conveniently for Austria, against the backdrop of the initial stages of the
Cold War competition, the Allies had a vested interest in absolving Austria
from its past. Their aim was to place the country as a neutral buffer between
East and West rather than dividing Austria as they did with guilty Germany.
To secure Austria from the looming Soviet claims, the United States was
more than willing to play along with the country’s fabricated innocence.87
International status recognition for Austria and its independence in 1955 hence
became a possibility through its victimhood rather than by admitting its guilt.
The international community, particularly the United States and Israel, al-
lowed Austria to build its national image of innocence and victimhood, and
thus let Austria evade the road of atonement.
japan
Japan is still scrutinized for not having followed the German atonement
model. Yet, when international incentives and constellations induced the pa-
riah FRG to adopt atonement, this same path was not an option for Japan.
From the late 1940s to the early 1950s, the United States and China—both of
which could have pushed for Japan’s atonement—sought their own status and
recognition in the Asia-Paciªc region. As a result, neither the United States,
which at the time occupied Japan, nor China, the main victim of Japanese
aggression in the infamous Nanjing massacre in 1937, nudged Japan to-
ward atonement.
Regarding the victim’s reciprocity, China—like Israel with Austria—did not
deliberately take up its victim status vis-à-vis Japan. In the aftermath of World
War II, the newly proclaimed PRC was focused on its own realpolitik. To that
end, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) never reciprocated early unofªcial
Japanese attempts to negotiate eventual reparation payments and instead pre-
ferred to forgo war reparations from Japan in return for its political recogni-
tion. At the time, the PRC was internationally and regionally isolated, and its
main enemies were the Chinese Nationalists, and by extension, the United
States, rather than Japan. Detaching Japan from the United States’ embrace
by achieving Japanese recognition, therefore, was regarded as a major prize by
China’s leadership.88 From the Chinese perspective, achieving normalization
87. R. G. Knight, “Contours of Memory in Post-Nazi Austria,” Patterns of Prejudice 34, no. 4 (2000):
5–11, https://doi.org/10.1080/003132200128810955; Oliver Rathkolb, Die paradoxe Republik: Öster-
reich 1945–2005 [The paradoxical republic: Austria 1945–2005] (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay, 2005).
88. Rana Mitter, “Old Ghosts, New Memories: China’s Changing War History in the Era of Post-
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The Path to Atonement 101
and the beginning of economic relations with Japan was strategically bene-
ªcial. On the one hand, these would help industrialization; on the other hand,
they would challenge a U.S.-led regional and economic order in East Asia.89
To achieve the desired cooperation from Japan, it was simply not in the
PRC’s strategic interest
to press Japan to acknowledge its war crimes.
The communists instead added the Japanese militarists to a long list of op-
ponents. First and foremost on this list was China’s class-enemy number
one—personiªed in Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and the so-called new
imperialists—the Americans. Additionally, in the aftermath of the U.S. bomb-
ing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the CCP began to portray the Japanese people
as fellow victims of U.S. imperialism.90 Japan, after all, was a defeated enemy,
whereas the Chinese Nationalists and the United States posed an ongoing
threat. At the beginning of the Cold War, class struggle and national liberation
shaped the PRC’s new image as a revolutionary state. The idea of China as a
victim was not politically expedient in that period.91 Over the subsequent
postwar decades, moreover, China began trade relations with Japan, which
also paid China large amounts of development assistance. Scholars retrospec-
tively attributed Japan’s development assistance to China to Japan’s legacy of
World War II and imperialism.92 Yet, on both sides this motivation remained
tacitly implied, and what could have been framed as reparation payments took
the form of foreign aid or normal business relations.
While the PRC did not take up its victim role in the early 1950s, Japan’s
ofªcial narrative of World War II in the postwar decade was characterized by
silencing, mythmaking, relativizing, and focusing on its own victimhood.93
According to the Ministry of Education in its textbook screening during the
1950s: “Do not write bad things about Japan in [describing] the Paciªc War.
Even though they are facts, represent them in romantic [language].”94 As a re-
sult, Japan’s role as a perpetrator was obscured, its victims across East Asia
were marginalized, and responsibility for Japanese crimes was attributed to
Mao Politics,” Journal of Contemporary History 38, no. 1 (2003): 117–131, https://www.jstor.org/
stable/3180700.
89. He, The Search for Reconciliation, 47–49; Rana Mitter, China’s Good War: How World War II Is
Shaping a New Nationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020).
90. Amy King, China-Japan Relations after World War II: Empire, Industry and War, 1949–1971 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 75–85.
91. Mitter, “Old Ghosts, New Memories,” 119–121.
92. Hall, Emotional Diplomacy, 178.
93. Dixon, Dark Pasts, 107.
94. Ibid.
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International Security 47:4 102
faceless militarists. The Japanese people, according to the emerging ofªcial
and popular tenor, had also suffered under these militarists, the war, and, of
course, the atomic bombs, which became the single most powerful symbol
of Japan’s defeat and victimhood. Their imagery, like nothing else, under-
scored the innocence of Japanese civilians and further entrenched the victim
narrative in popular postwar culture and a political landscape dominated by
conservatism and paciªsm.95 The ofªcial internal tenor in the postwar decades
was that Japan was a victim of World War II.
The United States had also supported this popular domestic story of
victimhood in the immediate postwar context. The U.S. occupation aimed to
nurture a stable Cold War ally, with the side effect of discouraging Japan’s
path away from confronting its historical legacy.96 Against the looming Cold
War exigencies, with the perceived threats posed by the Soviet Union, China,
the Korean War, and the issue of Taiwan, the United States sought to restore
Japan’s place and status in East Asia rather than ostracize Japan as the East
Asian pariah by highlighting its war crimes.97 Equally, the United States’ own
historiography further deemphasized Japan’s wartime activities in China and
Korea: in the U.S. narrative, World War II in Asia was a “Paciªc War” centering
around Pearl Harbor, with the United States as its victim, not a “Greater East
Asian War.”98 The U.S. occupation of Japan also did not link Japan’s independ-
ence or regional integration to atonement. As with West Germany and Austria,
the U.S. occupation authorities encouraged the themes of democracy and pa-
triotism primarily in support of Cold War interests. Consequently, the recon-
struction of these countries under the new banner of liberal democracy relied
heavily on turning a blind eye to integrating former high-ranking ofªcers and
ofªcials into society.99 For the United States, the emergent Cold War left little
choice but to focus on the present threats posed by the Soviet Union and
the PRC. Thus, the popular internal narrative of Japan as a victim—like the
Austrian case—became internationally accepted in the postwar years.
To sum up, the dominating actor within the postwar international order,
95. Naoko Shimazu, “Popular Representations of the Past: The Case of Postwar Japan,” Journal of
Contemporary History 38, no. 1 (2003): 101–116, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3180699.
96. James J. Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Hono-
lulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001).
97. Stephanie Lawson and Seiko Tannaka, “War Memories and Japan’s ‘Normalisation’ as an In-
ternational Actor: A Critical Analysis,” European Journal of International Relations 17, no. 3 (2010):
405–428, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066110365972.
98. Ibid., 413–414.
99. Shimazu, “Popular Representations of the Past,” 105–106.
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The Path to Atonement 103
the United States, did not create the option for Austria or Japan to reat-
tain their international status through atonement. Instead, the United States
sought to preserve a strategic place for the two countries as allies because of
pragmatic interests sparked by Cold War exigencies rather than by moral con-
cerns over their historical legacies. The United States, therefore, as with West
Germany, did not insist on reparation payments by Austria or Japan to their
former victims. Yet, in the West German case, this U.S. reluctance pushed both
Israelis and West Germans to interact directly with each other. These interac-
tions sparked a reciprocal strategic interest in taking up the roles of per-
petrator and victim in the relationship. Notably, this dynamic was absent
between the Austrians and the Israelis and between the Japanese and the
Chinese in the postwar decade.
Israel and the PRC, each for its own reason, did not take up their agency as
victims vis-à-vis Austria and Japan (respectively) in the late 1940s and early
1950s. Instead, Israel and the PRC sought to normalize their relationships with
the perpetrators by establishing a credit agreement or receiving developmental
aid rather than framing these payments as reparations. These relationships re-
sembled normal business relations rather than special partnerships based on a
shared historical legacy. Despite later attempts by the victims to change these
dynamics, the fact that the victims did not pursue atonement early thus closed
the road of atonement in the postwar decade. This historical legacy continually
resurfaces and still burdens the bilateral relations between Austria and
Israel100 and between Japan and China.101
Conclusion
In the aftermath of war crimes, human rights abuses, atrocities, and genocide,
atonement is widely regarded as the morally right choice for a former perpe-
trator state to make. Yet as of 2023, this ofªcial mix of “apology plus repara-
tions” has manifested only once between two states: in the 1952 Luxembourg
Agreement between the FRG and Israel. This article has shown how countries
can choose atonement, regardless of politicians’ moral acceptance of the idea
itself. The historical documents in my analysis include classiªed documents
that contain the negotiations between West German and Israeli ofªcials and
100. See, for instance, Embacher and Reiter, Gratwanderungen.
101. For the “history problem” in Sino-Japanese relations, see, for instance, Gustafsson and Hall,
“The Politics of Emotions in International Relations.”
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International Security 47:4 104
the Allied Powers that took place in diplomatic back channels between 1951
and the conclusion of the reparations agreement in 1952. Looking back to these
historical documents, I demonstrated that the ethical atonement pathway
became a realistic strategy that distinctively unfolded within international
relations. Yet, the option of atonement is only available within a socially con-
structed world that recognizes historical loss.102
To describe the origins of atonement as a political strategy within inter-
national relations, I have theorized atonement as a politically expedient option
that the perpetrator state selects. I have argued that two factors affect this
choice—international incentive structures, and the perpetrator’s relationship
with the victim—and have shown that these factors inºuenced the West
German decision to pay reparations to Israel in 1952. West Germany’s atone-
ment approach toward its atrocious Nazi legacy originated in international
rather than domestic incentives. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that
atonement grew out of West German politics, backed up by pressure from U.S.
occupation forces, I have found that the international environment, including
its powerful actors, provided at most an indirect push toward atonement. The
Allies, especially the United States, did not deliberately pressure the FRG
into reparations; in fact, they twice refused Israel’s requests for reparations.
Yet, these refusals forced the Israeli and West German representatives to di-
rectly negotiate with each other, a step that essentially paved the way toward
atonement. Notably, whether the FRG and Israel were moral allies regarding
the idea of atonement—their domestic struggles with it suggest that they were
not—had little weight in the discussion about reparations. What mattered was
that both sides accepted the unpopular roles of perpetrator and victim because
these roles led toward strategic international ends. Atonement is a political
project, albeit one that is couched in moral language. Hence, even when atone-
ment does not appear morally right to a country’s politicians and public, it can
internationally still be the best strategic option.
It follows that atonement must not be limited to the West German case.
Within a persuasive international environment and through the agency of per-
petrators and victims, atonement can become a reality in other cases: sexual
slavery during World War II (Japan and South Korea);103 the Armenian geno-
102. I thank Neil MacFarlane for this phrasing and his advice.
103. Japan continues to use the 1965 Basic Relations Treaty to support its argument that “comfort
women” have no claim under international law, especially since Japan provided developmental
aid and settled property issues at the state-to-state level. While this bilateral debate is ongoing, as
noted previously, the 1965 treaty prioritized “normal business relations” rather than paying com-
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The Path to Atonement 105
cide during World War I (Turkey and Armenia); and the Srebrenica massacre
during the Bosnian War (Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina). Moreover, atone-
ment can be a strategy to approach the legacies of colonialism and slavery.
The case studies of the two other perpetrators of World War II and their
lack of atonement further conªrm the roles played by international incen-
tives and the evolving relations between victims and perpetrators. While
Austria and Japan inhabited the same postwar international environment as
West Germany, the incentives for them to adopt atonement were different. The
United States’ Cold War interests supported each case’s national story of
victimhood, and the victim states—Israel and the PRC—did not engage in dis-
cussions about atonement. As a result, atonement did not materialize as a pos-
sibility between the victim and the perpetrator. Notably, my analysis does not
rule out the possibility of subsequent opportunities for a country to adopt
atonement. In fact, Austria and Japan issued ofªcial apologies several decades
later.104 But my ªndings suggest that the initial spark for atonement stems
from a mutual strategic pact between a former perpetrator and its victim
within a conducive global environment.
While the German example may teach other countries how to atone, this ar-
ticle’s contribution is to explain why West Germany did so in 1952 (and
Austria and Japan did not). Future international relations scholarship should
explore how the international incentives have changed since World War II,
and with what effects. In the transformed international environment of the
twenty-ªrst century, atonement has become a desirable international norm
and requirement.105 Today’s global incentive structures are likely to provide a
pensation for war crimes or crimes against humanity. Therefore, it left the issue of “comfort
women” untouched. See Marie Seong-Hak Kim, “History Is Not Destiny: Colonial Compensation
Litigation and South Korea–Japan Relations,” Journal of Asian Studies 81, no. 3 (2022): 475–491,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911821002333.
104. In 1991, Austria admitted co-responsibility for the Holocaust, and its chancellor, Franz
Vranitzky, ofªcially apologized to Israel in 1993. See Vranitzky’s speech before the Austrian Parlia-
ment, July 8, 1991, in Nationalrat, 24.GP, Stenographisches Protokoll, 40., Sitzung, 91, http://www
.parlament.gv.at/PAKT/VHG/XXIV/NRSITZ/NRSITZ_00040/SEITE_0091.html. For the full text
of the ofªcial apology, see Vranitzky’s speech in Jerusalem, printed in Der Standard, June 11, 1993.
Japan and the PRC, in a joint statement following their normalization agreement of 1972, declared:
“The Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan
caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself.” Cited in
Gustafsson and Hall, “The Politics of Emotions in International Relations,” 979.
105. Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, “Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of
Cosmopolitan Memory,” European Journal of Social Theory 5, no. 1 (2002): 87–106, https://doi.org/
10.1177/1368431002005001002; Jelena Subotic, Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after
Communism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019).
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International Security 47:4 106
much stronger push toward atonement than they did in the postwar era.106
Equally, foreign policy is no longer the sole responsibility of elites, and diplo-
macy has become increasingly public, making room for wider participation in
the atonement process.107 Moreover, because of the transformed zeitgeist, soci-
etal memories nowadays are likely to be more sympathetic to atonement, alter-
ing the equations on both sides of the two-level game. Many more states may
pursue atonement pathways, including using different and novel strategies to
do so.108
With future scholarship well advised to consider these international and do-
mestic transformations, this article has emphasized that the international
should not be dismissed as marginal to the construction of atonement.
Scholars and practitioners of transitional justice should focus on encouraging
the international community to promote the strategy of atonement to the states
involved. This insight is helpful for international relations because the path-
way of atonement shifts relations between two states into speciªc perpetrator
and victim roles, which leads to new forms of reconciliation and special rela-
tionships. To security studies, this article offers a longer-term view on inter-
national stability that goes beyond the formal settlement of a conºict and
points to a potential avenue toward durable peace. To the toolkit of post-
conºict reconciliation practices revolving around trials and truth commissions,
this article adds state atonement as a third way to bring together a former per-
petrator with its victim to create a fruitful and lasting connection between
them. Finally, to all those who view atonement as merely an ethical policy
choice, this article serves as a reminder to bring a realist perspective back into
the equation: atonement between two states, after all, is a political strategy. Im-
portantly, atonement can emerge regardless of whether it is morally desired.
106. Barkan, The Guilt of Nations; Gibney et al., The Age of Apology.
107. Tom Fletcher, The Naked Diplomat: Understanding Power and Politics in the Digital Age (London:
William Collins, 2017); Jan Melissen, The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations
(Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
108. Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch, “Ideational Change and the Emergence of the International Norm of
Truth and Reconciliation Commissions,” European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 3 (2014):
810–833, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066113484344.
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