Restitution and Democracy in Germany after Two World Wars

As Central and East Europeans (including Germans) strive to build new democracies on the ruins of old dictatorships, they seek to establish democratic values as well as democratic institutions. They know that democratic institutions alone were not able to save democracy in Germany's Weimar Republic, which had also risen out of the collapse of an authoritarian regime. West Germans, though, later built a viable democracy, the Federal Republic, from even more devastated and authoritarian remnants. To help explain such differing outcomes, historians have posited changes in political values, arguing that West Germans developed a democratic political culture to replace the authoritarian values many Germans had held earlier. As illuminating as such arguments could be, historians have had great difficulty finding evidence on just what political values Germans, especially common citizens, have in fact held at various times.