Caroline Sharples
The Booklist
These publications represent my longstanding interests into memories of National Socialism and representations of the Holocaust.
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (2016)
Postwar Germany and the Holocaust (2016)
Focussing on German responses to the Holocaust since 1945, Postwar Germany and the Holocaust traces the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung ('overcoming the past'), the persistence of silences, evasions and popular mythologies with regards to the Nazi era, and cultural representations of the Holocaust up to the present day. It explores the complexities of German memory cultures, the construction of war and Holocaust memorials and the various political debates and scandals surrounding the darkest chapter in German history.
Critical Acclaim
"An important timely work examining the saga of Holocaust memory in all historical eras of post WWII Germany. Sharples effectively balances her exposition of the history of Holocaust memory throughout Germany's divisive decades with her analysis of its impact on Jewish survivors and other perceived victims of Germany's collective crimes, all the time maintaining the importance of Germany's role in keeping Holocaust memory alive as a paradigm of self-rumination for the rest of the world to emulate" - Bonnie M. Harris
Britain and the Holocaust: Remembering and Representing War and Genocide (2013)
co-edited with Olaf Jensen
How has Britain understood the Holocaust? This interdisciplinary volume explores popular narratives of the Second World War and cultural representations of the Holocaust from the Nuremberg trials of 1945-6, to the establishment of a national memorial day by the start of the twenty-first century.
Critical Acclaim
“The historiography of Britain’s relationship with the Holocaust is now an area of significant scholarly interest. Caroline Sharples and Olaf Jensen’s edited collection provides an up-to-date review of some of the central debates regarding Holocaust remembrance and representation. … the collection provides an important interdisciplinary study of how Britain has understood, represented and memorialized the Holocaust in both the past and present” — Jennifer Reeve, European History Quarterly, Vol. 46 (2), 2016).
West Germans and the Nazi Legacy (2012)
This book constitutes a new history of the complex memory cultures that persisted within post-war West Germany, examining the attitudes of ordinary people to the second wave of Nazi war crimes trials ushered in during the 1960s. It explores responses to the prospect of continuing investigations, the reception afforded to the defendants, and the sheer resonance that such proceedings could generate within a local community. Drawing upon case studies from across the Federal Republic, it bridges a gap between the current historiography and localised memory studies, and analyses of war crimes trials.