Post-war West Germany provided the context for Habermas's theories. During the historian's dispute of the late 1980s, Habermas fought against the normalization of "exceptional historical events" (the rise of Nazism and the events of the Holocaust). Constitutional patriotism was Habermas's suggestion as a way to unify West Germans. As he was concerned by the shaping of German identity through attempts to return to traditional national pride, he argued for Germans to "move away from the notion of ethnically homogeneous nation-states." Thus it became an "inner counterpart to the bond of the Federal Republic to the West; it was not only an advance in respect to traditional German nationalism, but also a step toward overcoming it." To Habermas, post-national German identity was dependent on understanding and overcoming its past, subjecting traditions to criticism. This historical memory was essential to constitutional patriotism.