“To the crematorium”: postwar U.S. tourism to West German concentration camps and beyond

Abstract

For a long time since the end of the Second World War, the memory of concentration camps influenced U.S. public views on Germany. When in the late 1940s Americans could travel to West Germany again, a new tourist industry brought West Germany, and with-it Germany’s recent past, closer to the U.S. American public. This article investigates the renewed travel interest of Americans in West Germany with a special focus on former concentration camp sites. It demonstrates the importance of tourism in creating new cultural ties, the ways in which U.S. tourism to the camps established a memory of the Second World War, and how these narratives influenced German-American relations. In newspaper articles, visitors to West Germany shared their experiences, attitudes, and challenges upon visiting the former concentration camp sites and through those interactions made sense of the war and their own position in the postwar world order.