The declared goal of the post-war SPD was to build a democratic and socially just society from the ruins of the Third Reich. For this, its many officials who returned from imprisonment and exile relied on the support of millions of former fellow citizens. Kristina Meyer traces the German Social Democracy's handling of the Nazi dictatorship from the re-establishment of the SPD to 1990. She examines the significance of resistance and persecution experiences for the party's self-understanding and external perception, its contribution to the political, legal, and societal reappraisal of the Nazi mass crimes, as well as its engagement with right-wing extremism, neo-Nazism, and anti-Semitism. The SPD's approach to dealing with the past in the old Federal Republic proves to be a complex one.