W. Germany Rising From Its Nazi Past : New Perceptions of Nation’s History Add to Its Self-Confidence

The recent West German parliamentary election campaign has brought to the surface a new, and sometimes controversial, mood of self-confidence about the country.

The mood was mostly expressed by the conservative party candidates, but they echoed sentiments held by many Germans of all political persuasions.

The new attitude goes something like this:

More than 40 years after World War II, West Germany has maintained democratic and economic stability for longer than any other period in its modern history. Therefore, it is time to throw off the angst and guilt about the Nazi period, the years from Adolf Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933 to his downfall in 1945. This period was a historical aberration rather than a reflection of the true German character.

During the national election campaign that returned Kohl and his allies to power, the new feeling was often couched in references to a reawakening spirit of patriotism and in the use of words that had been in disfavor: Vaterland (fatherland) and Heimat (homeland), both of which convey a deep feeling for ancestral terrain, physical and psychological.

‘Individual’s Place in the World’

In one speech, Christian Democrat Chancellor Helmut Kohl told an audience, “Terms such as ‘patriotism’ and ‘fatherland’ and national symbols are once again being used as a means of identifying an individual’s place in the world.”

In another speech, Kohl exhorted young voters: “Don’t let yourselves be convinced by some jackass that (patriotism) has something to do with Nazism or National Socialism. Love of fatherland is a virtue that becomes every people, the Germans as well.”

But Kohl was outdone by Franz Josef Strauss, the right-wing leader of the Bavarian branch of the party, the Christian Social Union, who repeatedly declared:

“Without denying the lessons of history, we must finally step out of the shadows of the Third Reich. We need a normal, self-confident national identity.”

Strauss insisted that German history consists of more than the period of two world wars and that the German people today should not be “criminalized.”

Strauss added that “while I was a passionate opponent of Nazism, the Germany people should not be forced to go through life wearing sackcloth and ashes.”

In the campaign, Strauss also brought up an issue that has stirred a debate among German historians, declaring that “it is wrong to say that history shows Nazi crimes were too horrible to compare with other crimes in history.”

Strauss suggested that Soviet leaders’ crimes against their own people and atrocities committed by Russians against the Germans in 1945 were equally reprehensible.

The vocalization of the new German self-confidence and need to break with the past has been traced by some observers to Kohl’s insistence that President Reagan visit a military cemetery in Bitburg with him two years ago, despite presence of the graves of some soldiers of the Nazi SS elite combat arm.

More recently, a debate erupted among German historians when Juergen Habermas, a sociologist at the University of Frankfurt, accused two academics of engaging in historical revisionism in articles about the Nazi period.

Compared to Stalin’s Purges

He charged that historian Ernst Nolte had compared the Nazi extermination of the Jews with Stalin’s purges of his enemies, the implication being that the Germans were no more guilty of atrocities against mankind than the Soviets.

Habermas also accused West German historian Andreas Hillgruber of papering over the extent and depravity of the Holocaust, Hitler’s systematic extermination of 6 million Jews, as well as of members of other groups, such as Gypsies and the mentally ill, that he considered socially undesirable.

Habermas’ charges launched a long, convoluted debate in West German intellectual circles.

Despite the learned figures that came to the defense of Nolte and Hillgruber, Habermas believes that some conservatives are trying to revise the darkest outrages of the Nazi period in an aufrechnung , or balancing of accounts, equating them with other atrocities in history, and that such a balancing may eventually come to be accepted by readers.

Certainly, most researchers agree, younger Germans who were not even alive during the war would like to be relieved of any moral burdens from a past that they had no part in. And there is a feeling among the young, the researchers say, that there is no point in continually raking over the coals from that horrible period of German history.

Some commentators, particularly opposition Social Democrats, profess concern over what they considered a dangerous tendency for the new self-confidence to wipe out the past.

For instance, Peter Glotz, the Social Democratic Party campaign manager, declared in the Bundestag (Parliament) that Kohl had deliberately “lowered the taboo threshold” in praising patriotism to secure the far-right vote.

And Holger Boerner, Social Democratic premier of the state of Hesse, declared that it was wrong to compare the German Holocaust of the Jews with some of history’s other atrocities.

Former Chancellor Willy Brandt, currently chairman of the Social Democrats, argued in regard to modern German history, “You cannot throw off the shadows of the past.”

Toward the end of the election campaign, Kohl seemed to take note of the criticism, declaring, “We Germans must never forget, repress or trivialize the crimes of Nazism because only by remembering them will we be capable of reconciliation.”

Strauss the Big Loser

And Thomas Kielinger, editor of the weekly Rheinischer Merkur, points out that Strauss, who was most outspoken on behalf of a new patriotism, was the chief loser in the election because his rhetoric frightened many Germans.

Nevertheless, whether it is labeled patriotism, nationalism or self-assurance, there is a mood in the air that Germans no longer have to apologize for being Germans, to have to carry guilt, to have to atone for the past.

The new feeling is evident in different ways, some unappealingly cocky.

For instance, in the recent flap over the relationship between the French franc and the German mark, the newspaper Bild published an open letter to France, headlined:

“Dear Francois: The simple truth of the matter is that, of late, we’ve simply been a tiny bit better than you.”

More importantly, the new mood means that West Germany must live up to its own view of itself, particularly among its partners in the European Communities and the Atlantic Alliance.

“Not the least because of the megalomania of Hitler’s Reich and the fate it suffered, Germans harbor a deep uneasiness about being powerful,” Christoph Bertram, diplomatic correspondent for the weekly Die Zeit, declared. “West Germany’s postwar experience has been that of an applicant who wishes to be accepted, not that of a leader who seeks to impress others.

“Yet power has caught up with Germans whether they like it or not.”

Many Germans think this is a healthy development.

As Joachim Fest, co-publisher of the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine put it, “The outside world cannot believe what it is seeing because the Germans have been responsible for so much unrest in the past 100 years. Now the Germans appear to be a relatively contented nation going through a nonintellectual period. We have made peace with reality.”

A Sense of the Past

Further, some leading German scholars such as Prof. Michael Stuermer, a historian at the University of Erlangen, believe that it is good for Germans to have a sense of the past as well as the present, for continuity will provide stability. And the young can learn how to avoid the evils of Nazism by studying them, they say.

Stuermer fears that, otherwise, the upheavals and permissiveness of the 1960s, particularly in education, can engender a rootless Germany.

Some Western Europeans fear that the new German self-confidence may lead to moves toward reunification of West and East Germany, and claims on territories lost to Poland and the Soviet Union after the war.

But Angelika Volle, a researcher with the German Society for Foreign Affairs in Bonn, disagrees.

“For many years, we were treated differently abroad,” she said. “Now we just want to be treated normally by other countries. In the past, we always had to say yes to them. Now we can say no, as well.

“Reunification is not really an issue with us, and we know it. Others must not mistake our emphasis on inter-German relations with reunification.

“So I’d say, is there a new nationalism? No. A new self-confidence? Yes, especially in the younger generation. We want to be aware of the past, but there comes a time when we look to the future.”