Defending the Germans
It is no coincidence - and a testament to the political importance of history in Germany- that both former West German chancellor Helmut Kohl and former East German boss Walter Ulbricht were self-appointed historians by profession.
Time Out Berlin Guide 2009 Edition
I’ve lived in Germany for almost a year now and this is only the second post in which I use the N-word, or Nazis as they call them round here. Germans have absolutely no qualms about mentioning the war - pick up any newspaper and chances are that you will come across a reference to WW2. Confronting history is a national pastime and the phenomenon has, true to Teutonic tradition, one of those unwieldy gobstoppers that I like to call übercompounds - Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Although I don’t know if I’m going to let that one into the übercompounds’ hall of headache, as it only consists, believe it or not, of two nouns - “Vergangenheit” (past) and “Bewältigung (translated here as “coming to terms with”). Anyway, there’s been much soul searching and handwringing - the harshest critics of Germany are the Germans themselves. Nobody is going to assuage their guilt, for the sole reason that they do not want to be forgiven. Although they would appreciate it if you occasionally refrained from bringing Hitler up, even if it is just in internet debates. They get it, you know. Many of them had to visit a former concentration camp as part of their curriculum. And yet Americans continue to be hung up on the war, maybe because this was the last conflict in which their involvement was, well, conflict free. Ditto for the UK, perhaps because this was the last time it was regarded as a world power, in the waning days of its Empire, before reluctantly handing over the baton to America.
Speaking of empires, no country that has ever had colonial ambitions (and they all have) comes clean out of this mudslinging contest. Nobody. Descending from the people of two former colonial powers, Spain and Denmark, I should have a pretty heavy cross to bear. Spain for culling or raping their way through a whole subcontinent (when not giving them smallpox or illnesses the native population had never been exposed to), Denmark for raping and pillaging their way through Europe, and later for colonising Greenland and turning the population into alcoholics. And making them learn Danish. At least we didn’t make them take up cricket! That’s just cruel.
Perhaps something similar will happen to WW2, and in a couple of centuries it will be just one more item in the extensive catalogue of human atrocities like the Great Leap Forward, the Scramble for Africa or the Dirty War. Fretting about Auschwitz didn’t stop the Killing Fields. Or Darfur.
So now that I’ve immersed us in a grand collective Mea Culpa, should Germany be exonerated? Of course not, nobody should. And that’s the point, we’re all in the same boat. Of course it’s essential to be reminded of the atrocities of which humanity is capable (and yes, these are still people - there are no mass murders, no monsters, just people committing the unspeakable). We do not want history to repeat itself despite doing so with more frequency than we’d wish. And yet we must be doing something right - there are less people dying in armed conflict since records began, despite the often misleading impression, thanks to technological developments, that remind us daily of conflicts we otherwise wouldn’t be aware of.
Again, my little rant is not going to stop the History Channel from being the Hitler Channel. I’ve yet to watch a documentary about the Weimar Republic; or German Romanticism (the German variety is known for valuing wit and humour as opposed to its more serious English counterpart); or Martin Luther and the rise of Protestantism, which would eventually funnily enough lead to secularism; or Karl Marx and the rise of social conscience; or that German scientist were great innovators and often recipients of the Nobel prize until the 30s. No, why expand our viewers’ horizons and dismantle prejudices when we can show a documentary about the role of donkeys under the Third Reich (I can’t find a source, but you’ll have to trust me on this one, was sober) Never mind that I’m about as personally responsible for ransacking the Aztec empire as Germans nowadays are for putting Jews on trains to Poland. For example, I was recently in Amsterdam where I found out that some locals still direct German tourists to the Anne Frank House when asked for directions to the nearest coffeeshop. Apparently they haven’t forgiven them yet for taking away their bikes under the WW2 occupation, as commemorated in the Dutch expression ‘okay, first return the bike’, which means ‘first things first’. Well, I’ve NEVER thought that I would agree with ANY National Socialist policy but I’m totally behind this one. In a similar vein, I suspect that this is the same reason Mussolini wanted the Italian trains to run on time after having, presumably, experienced first-hand Romans’ automotive skills. Amsterdammers should not been given back their bikes until they learn to distinguish between red and green (perhaps there’s a high Daltonism incidence amongst its inhabitants). So there you go, Nazis might have been responsible for genocide, kickstarting WW2 and causing the death of millions and the destruction of cities, asphyxiating the rich Weimar cultural scene, banning good taste (i.e. Bauhaus) and being the sole reason of existence for the History Channel. But they stood up to the Dutch cyclists!
No seriously, test your general knowledge…what do you know about Germany? How much do you know about its history that doesn’t involve swastikas? Or walls?
