Creating a New Germany--With a Little Help From Kosovo

When Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic decided to make an offer last week to withdraw forces from Kosovo and accept a United Nations “presence” in return for an immediate end to NATO’s bombing campaign, he didn’t send a letter to the United States. He didn’t send one to Russia. He sent one to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Milosevic’s decision to appeal to Germany is further confirmation of that country’s growing power in the center of Central Europe. But it was also a recognition that Germany seemed the most likely member of the anti-Serb coalition to crack under the weight of domestic pressures for an end to the war. No other member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been as inhibited--some would say crippled--by the sheer weight of historical memory as Germany.

The German divisions over involvement in Kosovo are nothing less than a fundamental battle over how the country’s Nazi past defines its identity today. That battle, in turn, is bitterly dividing the idealistic, left-wing 1968 generation that has just come to power after two decades of conservative rule. If the pro-intervention forces in the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party win out, as they seem likely to, then the Kosovo crisis will have accelerated one of the most controversial and startling developments in a unified Germany: the normalization of the country and the shedding of the burden of its Nazi past.

To be sure, the Social Democrats and Greens are fractured political parties. Schroeder, leader of the Social Democrats, and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, head of the Greens, favor the war. Schroeder put it plainly, “Milosevic must not win this war.” Fischer has been in full agreement: He sees the lesson of Auschwitz as meaning that Germans cannot stand by while massacres are carried out in Europe. Fischer, whose eardrum was shattered by a bag of red paint hurled at him during a tense Green convention on Kosovo in May, declared, “Peace means that men aren’t murdered, women aren’t raped and people aren’t driven from their homes!”

But the fundamentalists in the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party have never seen it that way. Green Party leaders, such as Environmental Minister Juergen Trittin, take a skeptical view of the use of force. They argue that Germany’s Nazi past means the country should never deploy military power outside its own borders, and maybe not even inside them.

These fundamentalists were products of the 1968 student rebellions, when German society was shaken up by demands to confront its Nazi past rather than continue to suppress it. The student movement became radicalized and anti-American, as many on the left came to see West, not East, Germany as the successor fascist state. The United States, not the Soviet Union, was seen as the cause of the Cold War. At a minimum, many ‘68ers learned the lessons of World War II all too well. The pacifists dominated.

Until now. In recent years, a number of events--the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War and, most recently, the Serbian war of aggression--have upended the mental world of the German left. This trend was first noticeable among the intellectuals. Peter Schneider, a formerly staunch leftist and now a well-known novelist, began declaring that Germany needed to focus less on its Nazi past and more on its future as a united nation.

These were new tones in Germany. Before 1989, it was verboten to talk about Germany as a nation. Instead, the talk was of Germans as Europeans. Now, with the war in Kosovo, other influential members of the left, such as Juergen Habermas and Gunter Grass, also have defected from old dogmas. Both Habermas and Grass have supported the bombing campaign, though Grass is now calling for a halt.

In a recent issue of the prominent weekly Die Zeit, Habermas wrote a long and compelling essay, “Bestiality and Humanity,” explaining why the old pacifist arguments are wanting. He argued that the war in Kosovo represents a change from the old wars of power politics to an attempt to create a tolerant, cosmopolitan society that accepts ethnic differences. A war that is not based on national interests but on the interests of humanity is now seen as necessary and inevitable by some Germans on the left.

This intellectual shift has been mirrored by a political one. A new left had emerged from the ranks of the old to capture the leadership of the Social Democrats and Greens. What torments the die-hard members of the ’68 generation is that their doctrine of pacifism has been repudiated by erstwhile comrades Schroeder and Fischer. Schroeder, in his inaugural address, called for a more assertive Germany. Fischer has basically done the same, even if his rhetoric about German power has been more subdued than Schroeder’s.

But Fischer’s popularity in his own party is sinking. In fact, the splits in the Green Party are growing more acute. At a recent state conference in Schleswig-Holstein, a delegate reported that, after he had supported Fischer’s line, he received mail addressed to “you swinish warmonger.” Another delegate declared that NATO’s claim to be protecting human rights in Yugoslavia was “a big lie. . . . The legitimization of this aggressive war as a humanistic action is the gravest abdication of Green politics that I have ever experienced.” Other Green local organizations are simply disbanding.

Fischer’s greatest triumph could end up destroying his party. In Kosovo, the German left has experienced its last hurrah. Condemned to impotence, it may only be able to snipe from the sidelines in the future.

So the real winner is Schroeder. If Yugoslav forces pull out of Kosovo, as Milosevic has now agreed to, then Schroeder’s support for intervention will have triumphed. The consequences of this triumph cannot be exaggerated. Before the Kosovo crisis erupted, Schroeder made a big political move by casting doubt on the construction of a Holocaust memorial in the middle of Berlin. The chancellor said he wants a nation that looks to the future, not one hamstrung by its past. A former leftist who has reinvented himself, Schroeder wants Germany to do the same. As the Green Party self-destructs and the left wing of the Social Democratic Party grows increasingly isolated, Schroeder will be in the driver’s seat. The question facing a newly powerful Germany, focused more on the future and less on its Nazi past, is the direction its newly emboldened chancellor will steer it in.

What paths will Schroeder attempt to follow? On the domestic front, he will surely continue to strive to erode the significance of the Holocaust for Germans. In speeches and ceremonies, he will emphasize the need to modernize Germany economically. Just as Germans busied themselves with becoming prosperous in the 1950s, in part as a way of avoiding the past, so today’s generation is increasingly preoccupied with wealth and material comforts. Abroad, Schroeder will most likely seek to return to Germany’s traditional role as an independent power jockeying between the United States and Russia. Already, the Balkans debacle has allowed the Germans to link up with the Kremlin in dealing with Milosevic.

It used to be that Germany was the supplicant, seeking advice and assistance from abroad. No longer. It will now be giving advice and assistance. In short, Germany is back.*