"May 8 was a day of liberation." It's a statement that seems so obvious today, espousing a view shared by more than 80 percent of all Germans. But coming from the president of West Germany 30 years ago, it was nothing short of a sensation. Not only was Richard von Weizsäcker a member of the conservative party, he was also a soldier during World War II, ultimately earning the rank of captain. He was sent to one of the places where the war was fought with great brutality: the eastern front, following Germany's attack on the Soviet Union.This was one step in the ever-developing German process of doing historical memory. Given the destructive and catastrophic experience of German National Socialism with the Holocaust and the massive war it originated, developing sensible narratives for a democratic country to understand that experience in a realistic and serious way is a particularly challenging undertaking.
Until he uttered this sentence, May 8, 1945 was known as the day of "capitulation," the end of the war that Germany had "lost." (1)
With his speech… von Weizsäcker was able to establish a new collective norm of historical remembrance. Not with the kind of distance we have now [2015] of 70 years, but at a time when millions of those involved in the events – whether as oppressor or victim – were still alive. And, in the face of much resistance from his own party, he gave Germans the task of never forgetting what happened in the years leading up to and during the war.Remembering the past is something that nations do collectively, which is a process related to academic history but is by no means the same thing. Every country looks for historical and cultural markers to understand its own outlooks and approaches to problems. And, as times change, people ask new questions of the national past. To use a phrase popularized by New Left historians of the 1960s and 1970s, people look for a “usable past,” i.e., past experiences that provide meaningful perspectives on current challenges.
The fact that German reunification in 1990 provoked little fear or concern from the neighboring countries who suffered under the Nazis is a testament to the new historical identity of the Germans that Richard von Weizsäcker helped bring about 30 years ago. [my emphasis]
The nightmare of the Third Reich and its huge impact on Europe and the world has made German approaches to its own national history of special interest to other countries, as well. The Holocaust, the German-directed Nazi genocide against Jews, as well as against other targets groups like the Romany and Sente peoples (“gypsies”), has given Germany’s approach to its history even greater significance to other countries, as well.
And various issues since V-E Day have provided the occasion for public engagement with issues over interpreting the German past. This is a non-exhaustive list of some of the highlights:
Postwar Allied Occupation and Western “de-nazification” (the latter was 1945-1951).
Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946). These were the Allied trials of major German war criminals from the Second World War. (2)
Berlin Blockade and Airlift (1948-1949): This was one of many consequences of the war. But that experience was not specifically focused on the Nazis or the Holocaust, or even on the Second World War itself. (3)
Establishment of two separate German states, the Federal Republic of Germany in the West and the German Democratic Republic in the East (both in 1949).
West German recognition of Israel and payment of reparations related to the Holocaust. Formal diplomatic relation between Israel and the Federal Republic took place in 1965.
Trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961), famously recounted by Hannah Arendt in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963).
Auschwitz trials (1963-1968) (4)
Broadcast of the US-made mini-series The Holocaust in Germany (1979): This somewhat kitschy mini-series attracted a lot of attention when it was shown on German TV and generated a lot of interest and discussion on the Shoah. “A third of West Germany's population, some 20 million people, watched at least some of the four-part series in 1979.” (5) It was rebroadcast in German in 2019.
US President Ronald Reagan’s goes to Bitburg Cemetery (1985). This was a spectacularly ill-advised joint ceremony by US President Ronald Reagan and German Chancellor to Helmut Kohl at a German cemetery meant to be a celebration of German-US reconciliation on the 40th anniversary of V-E Day that turned into a big diplomatic embarrassment that generated new discussions about the role in the Second World War of the regular army (Wehrmacht) and the Nazi Party military units of the Waffen-SS. (6)
Historikerstreit [historians’ dispute] (1986-87): The Historikerstreit was an academic discussion that wound up being widely discussed in opinion columns and established some lasting themes in general discussion of the Holocaust. Included among them were the concepts of the “uniqueness” of the German Holocaust against the Jews and whether it can be or should be compared to any other genocides or mass killings. The impetus was an argument by a previously respectable German historian, Ernst Nolte, that the Russians were to blame for the mass killings of Jews at Auschwitz. Jürgen Habermas took the lead in publicly challenging this absurd claim, which was really a thinly-disguised version of Holocaust denial.
Goldhagen controversy: A book by American historian Daniel Goldhagen called Hitler’s Willing Executioners (1996) dealing with the motivation of ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers who participated in the Holocaust generated a great deal of discussion in Germany and the US over the nature and intensity of anti-Semitism in Germany. Despite the discussion it generated, Holocaust and German-history scholars like Omer Bartov, Christopher Browning, Norbert Frei and Volker Ullrich were underwhelmed by his arguments, which described German anti-Semitism as almost an inherited, ontological condition of Germans rather than a historical and ethnonationalist phenomenon. (7)
Wehrmacht Exposition (1995-1999, 2001-2004): The Institute for Social Research in Hamburg put together a museum exposition titled, Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944 (War of Extermination: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-1944). It focused on war crimes committed by the Wehrmacht, the regular army. Popular understanding and even scholarly work in Germany had tended to focus on crimes committed by the Waffen-SS, a Nazi Party military unit, while the Wehrmacht was seen as an army engaged in regular military actions and not particularly involved in the Holocaust or civilian massacres. This exhibition and the discussion around it made more people aware that, yes, the Wehrmacht itself had committed massacres and other war crimes on a large scale. This was not news to historians of the war, but it surprised many people who had believed the popular version of the honorable Wehrmacht as compared to the evil Waffen-SS. Some of the photos turned out to be incorrectly labeled, so the exhibition was closed for several months and updated, then resumed in 2004. (8)
Postcolonialism, genocide and the Holocaust disputes (2020ff): The “postcolonial” perspective in history has grown more and important. It seeks to take a wider account of the role of colonialism in European history and its effects on both the formally colonized countries and also in the former “mother countries,” also called “metropoles” in relation to the “periphery” (colonized areas). The postcolonial perspective has also led to new scholarly considerations of how the behavior of colonial powers in the “periphery” made events like the Holocaust more possible. And public dispute took place in Germany around a invitation to the African scholar Achille Mbembe, a prominent advocate of the “postcolonial” perspective in history, to speak at a major conference in 2020. The dispute focused on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement aimed at pressuring Israel to pursue most just policies toward Palestinians. (9)
The Israel-Gaza War (2023ff): The dispute over whether Israel is currently conducting a genocide in Gaza and now in the West Bank has once again highlighted the role that the Holocaust plays as a political symbol for the State of Israel. It has led to some rather bizarre consequences, with some European countries including Germany and now the United States under Trump 2.0 sanctioning or forbidding criticism of Israeli actions as “genocide” on the grounds that it is on its face anti-Semitic to do so. This trend reduces the Holocaust to something like a brand identity for the State of Israel rather than a historical event of genocide. (10)
Notes:
(1) Steiner, Felix (2015): Historical speech. Deutsche Welle 02/11/2015. <https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-the-speech-about-history-that-made-history/a-18250339> (Accessed: 2025-24-04).
(2) Justice at Nuremberg. Truman Library, n/d. <https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/justice-nuremberg> (Accessed: 2025-02-05).
(3) Editors (2025). Berlin blockade. Encyclopedia Britannica 03/24/2025. <https://www.britannica.com/event/Berlin-blockade> (Accessed: 2025-02-05).
(4) Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial. UNESCO n/d. <https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/frankfurt-auschwitz-trial> (Accessed: 2025-29-04).
(5) McGuinness, Damien (2019): Holocaust: How a US TV series changed Germany BBC News 01/30/2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47042244 (Accessed: 2025-02-05).
(6) Reagan visits German war cemetery, May 5, 1985. Politico 05/058/2018. <https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/05/this-day-in-politics-may-5-1985-565776> (Accessed: 2025-02-05).
(7) Schulkin, Carl (1996): Review of Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. H-Net Reviews Dec. 1996. <https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=746> Accessed: 2025-01-05).
(8) Wirbel um die Wehrmacht. Deutsche Welle 28.01.2004. <https://www.dw.com/de/wirbel-um-die-wehrmacht/a-1098134> (Accessed : 2025-02-05).
(9) Michaels, Ralf (2020): On the Mbembe Anti-Semitism Debate in Germany: A Decolonial Critique of German Universalism. Max Plank Law Perspectives 08/04/2020. <https://law.mpg.de/perspectives/mbembe-anti-semitism-debate-in-germany/> DOI: 10.17176/20220530-124418-0> (Accessed : 2025-02-05).
Kolonialismus mit Holocaust vergleichbar? ORF.at 02/06/2022. <https://orf.at/stories/3245944/> (Accessed : 2025-02-05).
(10) PBS News/AP (2024): Netanyahu frequently makes claims of antisemitism. Critics say he’s deflecting blame. PBS Newshour 05/29/2024. <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/netanyahu-frequently-makes-claims-of-antisemitism-critics-say-hes-deflecting-blame> (Accessed : 2025-02-05).
No comments:
Post a Comment