War is often conceptualized and legitimated in relation to memory, and it is consequently important to engage the issue of memory in analyses of international politics.¹ This chapter explores aspects of the struggle in Germany over remembering and forgetting the period of 1933 to 1945, and particularly the Second World War, and relates this to the invocation of such memory in debates over the use of force today. Although remembering and forgetting are clearly opposed to each other in debates over memory, and the former valued over the latter, they are inextricably linked: remembering always already entails forgetting and forgetting is possible only where there is remembering in the first place. It is precisely this problematic status of memory that is crucial to the ethico-political question of war.