Good German

{{short description|Term for being passive in the face of atrocity}}

__NOTOC__

Good Germans is an ironic term — usually placed between single quotes such as 'Good Germans' — referring to German citizens during and after World War II who claimed not to have supported the Nazi regime, but remained silent and did not resist in a meaningful way.{{cite news |last=Rich |first=Frank |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14rich2.html |title=The 'Good Germans' Among Us |newspaper=The New York Times |date=October 14, 2007 |access-date=}}{{cite book |last=Goldhagen |first=Daniel Jonah |title=Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust |year=1996 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York |isbn=978-0-679-44695-8 |page=17}} The term is further used to describe those who claimed ignorance of the Holocaust and German war crimes.

Pól Ó Dochartaigh and Christiane Schönfeld edited a volume on different cultural representations of the 'Good German' and state in their introduction: "After the division of Germany in 1949, finding 'good Germans' whose record helped legitimize each of the new German states became a core aspect of building a new nation in Germany and of the propaganda battle in this respect between the two German states."{{cite book |title=Representing the Good German in Literature and Culture After 1945: Altruism and Moral Ambiguity |first1=Pól |last1=Ó Dochartaigh |first2=Christiane |last2=Schönfeld |publisher=Camden House |year=2013 |isbn=9781571134981 |chapter=Introduction: Finding the 'Good German'}}