Memory in German public opinion and political discourse: The debate over humanitarian intervention in Kosovo

Collective memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust dominates the debates surrounding the deployment of Germany's military since 1945. While there has been extensive study into the German government's use of memory to argue for or against humanitarian intervention, there is a gap in the literature concerning how the German population used memory arguments in support of or opposition to intervention. This paper examines how the public used memory in contradictory ways during the debate surrounding the NATO-led militarized intervention in Kosovo in 1999. The analysis of public polling data and unsolicited media sources such as letters to the editor demonstrates how the public reacted to the political elite's debate over German involvement in Kosovo and how they reinterpreted memory in their own arguments over what policy options were or were not viable for the Federal Republic. This study concludes that memory's most significant impact is felt when debating about the lives of individual people, rather than in questions regarding the overall appropriateness of militarized intervention.