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Stalingrad exhibit in Dresden puts Germany's maturity about past on display

DRESDEN, Germany — Seventy years ago this winter, Soviet forces surrounded and crushed Hitler’s Sixth Army at Stalingrad. The Germans’ defeat shattered the myth of an unstoppable Nazi war machine and marked a reversal of fortunes in World War II.

Now a special exhibition in Dresden returns to that wintry hell on the Volga. It’s being shown in the Military History Museum, once a museum for the Nazi and East German armies. Now run by the German armed forces, the site reopened in October 2011 after a redesign by the Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind.

Prepared in cooperation with the Stalingrad Battle Museum in present-day Volgograd, the exhibit reveals Germany’s new self-confidence and acceptance of its historical responsibility. The show displays neither the ritual self-flagellation of the German left nor the twisted relativizations of the right....

Read entire article at NYT