Politics and Guilt sheds new light on our understanding of the pervasive psychological and cultural effects of Nazism by examining the power of guilt in modern Germany. Usually seen as a psychological and intensely personal phenomenon, the effect of guilt on the collective arena of politics has been downplayed or misunderstood by many political scientists. Taking issue with Hannah Arendt, Daniel Goldhagen, and Hermann Lubbe, Gesine Schwan argues that Germans must confront their Nazi past because the repression or lack of acknowledgment of guilt damages modern democracies. The Nazi perpetrators were not above the norms of good and evil, she asserts, but were conscious of their