He Fled the Nazis Before the War. He Came Back to Put His Country on Trial.

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He Fled the Nazis Before the War. He Came Back to Put His Country on Trial.

On a gray wintry day in December 1970, Willy Brandt, the first postwar Social Democratic chancellor of West Germany, fell to his knees at a Warsaw monument to the Jews who had fought there against the Nazis. His gesture has come to exemplify what the Germans resonantly call Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the striving to cope with the past. For all the shortcomings in this nationwide effort, most Germans today set an example of remorse that shames Tu…