This equating all of Germany with the Nazis is ubiquitous; the notion of collective guilt is one that was prevalent in the Allied camp after the atrocities of the Hitlerite regime became fully known. Every German citizen who has lived and died since 1945 has born the weight of guilt on their shoulders and felt, constantly sitting in the back of their mind, the acknowledgement that it was their country, their soldiers, their fellow Germans who pursued such abominable paths that led to the destruction of countless lives and the almost-annihilation of Europe's Jewish population.
These atrocities - Your fault!This is something vitally important for Germans growing up today to be aware of; though they may only be 15, or 20, or 30, and have had nothing at all to do with the crimes of the past, they are told in explicit detail and are never allowed to forget for one moment the horrific atrocities the racists who led their country committed. And they should be aware of these facts.
But the Germany of today, and the Germany that was around before the fascist dictatorship, is not the National Socialist Worker's Party. The fact that this stain upon the nation will never be gone is the enduring and terrible legacy of the darkest chapter in human history.
The Nazis have forever defiled Germany.
The National Socialist regime were composed of extremists, right-wing fanatics, racists, fascists, authoritarians, gangsters, criminals, and terrorists. These people ruled the country, waged war, oppressed entire civilizations, and committed the heinous act of genocide in the name of Germany. But they were not Germany.
A majority of German voters in 1933 voted for parties other than the NSDAP, which is often overlooked. They illegally and undemocratically seized power after they were unable to obtain the necessary parliamentary majority. A democratic country became a dictatorship that would ruin the essence of everything it touched.
The dictatorship outlawed other parties. Opposition delegates to the Reichstag were murdered shortly after the election. Non-members of the party were forced from their jobs, their homes, their country. Opponents to the regime were oppressed and murdered. The press was censored. There were no elections. The Gestapo turned the nation into a police state. A brutal war was waged against millions of people that resulted in countless innocent lives destroyed, and everywhere experienced death, misery, and destruction.
The Jews became the target of a racist, authoritarian, purposeful, cold-blooded, state-led campaign of terror, persecution, and extermination. Millions of people, from Germany, Poland, Russia, France, and elsewhere across the continent, were singled-out for annihilation.
Six million human beings were taken by other alleged human beings from their homes, their families, their countries. Six million human beings were forced to live in disgusting, disease-ridden, walled-in ghettos. Six million Jews were rounded up, stuffed into trains, and brought to isolated hell-holes so that they could be systematically degraded, debased, abused, oppressed, and exterminated. The very depths of evil were culled forth by the fascist dictatorship's leaders to bring about such a nefarious and unimaginable horror that was the Holocaust genocide.
Another six million human beings were likewise murdered for belonging to the wrong political party, having a non-fascist opinion, for being homosexual, homeless, mentally-retarded, disabled, or having the wrong skin color, name, or background.
This totalitarian regime was not made up of Germans, or humans. When Berlin was being ravaged and torn down, with millions dead already, the leadership of the NSDAP kept fighting. Though it meant that children and teenagers were sent to die in a battle they could not win, and that millions of civilians would be killed, the leaders of the dictatorship did not care. They did not care about the German people. They were ruthless, bloodthirsty, tyrannical gangsters, thugs, criminals, and despots. Their terrible legacy lives on, as it should, as a reminder of the evils of fascism and the depths to which humanity once sank.
But the stain of the Nazis should not smear the true Germany: the Germany of the millions who voted against the fascists; the millions of the German Resistance who fought against them and tried to stop their takeover, their crimes, their oppression; the too-few Christians who protected persecuted Jews.
The true Germany is that of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Hoffmann, and Hegel;
of Immanuel Kant, Heinrich von Kleist, Johann Gottlieb Fichte;
of Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Bertolt Brecht, and Theodor Fontane;
of Albert Einstein, Max Weber, Alexander von Humboldt, Max Planck;
of Manfred von Ardenne, Karl Benz, Christian Doppler, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit;
of Friedrich Nietzsche, Caspar David Friedrich, Arthur Schopenhauer;
of Franz Stuck, Otto Dix, and Max Beckmann.
This is the true Germany. The Germany of literature, art, philosophy, and science. The attempted genocide of Europe's Jews, and the denigration of the contributions that Germany's Jews had made to their country, irrevocably turned German-Jews away from their former homeland, as it should have. As Peter Gay, a historian who fled Germany when he was still young, has explained - he cannot consider himself German, or feel comfortable ever stepping foot in the country of his birth again due to the crimes committed by the fascists and the acceptance of these crimes by much of the population.
This is Germany's shame. This is the result of the Nazi dictatorship. The Nazis destroyed their own culture, ruined their own cities, and murdered their own citizens. National Socialism defiled Germany, its culture, its history, and its future. The crimes of the past should never be forgotten, or pushed aside. But they should not define the nation.
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