Staring History in the Face

The crimes committed by National Socialism in World War II were undeniably horrific; the atrocities that occurred in Europe by German soldiers were so terrible, that for many years after 1945 it was very difficult for Germany to fully accept and admit to what had been done by their countrymen. It has only been relatively recently that the entirety of the barbarity of the Nazi regime has become unquestioned in German society; it was understandably difficult for ordinary Germans to accept the fact that the Nazi Party had had mass support and that millions of Germans from all backgrounds did terrible things with the military or could not possibly have been unaware of what was happening to the Jews of Europe. This aversion with the past is gone now. Germany has stared its history in the face and no longer blinks at what it sees.

The German term for this is Vergangenheitsbewältigung - coming to terms with the past. While it has taken many years for Germany to truly come to terms with its Nazi past, the same cannot be said for other countries.

The crimes of the Nazis were so terrible that other countries were able to place the blame for the bad things that happened in the war entirely upon them. So it was that Austria was able to, up through the 1990s, claim that it was the first victim of Hitler - this despite the fact that Nazi membership was disproportionately high among Austrians, Austrians were overrepresented in the SS, and one out of every two concentration camp guards was Austrian. Calling themselves the victim when they were in fact not allowed Austria to escape the kind of post-war punishment that Germany received, as well as the general taint of the Nazis in general.

The French for decades after World War II liked to claim that their Resistance was of mythological proportions, fighting against both the Germans and the hated Vichy regime, which was little more than a puppet government. Yet, the Germans had relatively few administrators in France during the war, meaning that the government was autonomous and legitimate, and regarded as such by the vast majority of French citizens. This inconvenient fact means that all of the Jews that France willingly transported to the concentration camps of the East was not actually at the behest of Germany but rather a willing collaboration on the part of a legitimate, racist French government. What the French still are having difficulty coming to terms with is the way they treated their non-white colonial African soldiers - and this while they were fighting a regime that itself was extremely racist.

This myth of resistance and scant collaboration was prevalent all over Europe until very, very recently. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans willingly participated in the systematic murder of innocent civilians - Jews, gypsies, ethnic minorities - but for most of the post-war years were able to blame this on the Nazis. Most of the resistance movements were not nearly as large as they were made out to be after the war, as well. Having a significant part of your countrymen participate in genocide and mass murder doesn't feel or sound too good for most people, as it should not. But ignoring or misconstruing these facts does humanity and each individual country a disservice. More importantly, it is a continuing slap in the face of the millions of innocent people who were killed in the war.

One of the many tragic aspects of the Holocaust was how little anyone did to stop it. In the 1930s and 1940s, Americans consistently showed concern for the fate of the Jews in Europe, yet supermajorities of the population at the same time refused to allow them to emigrate to the United States. Britain certainly knew about what was happening in Eastern Europe, yet did very little to do much about it. Before and after the war, Poles engaged in pogroms that killed Jews - and this in a country that saw millions of its citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish, systematically murdered while being treated as sub-humans by Nazi occupiers.

The United States, generally speaking, likes to look back on the Second World War as one of its finest hours. America was a beacon of liberty, fighting a barbaric racist regime so that Europe and the world could be free. While this noble war was being waged, President Roosevelt rounded up hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese-American citizens, took them from their homes, and imprisoned them in camps - all because of who they were, not for what they had done. In the midst of fighting a country that had legalized discrimination, segregation, and racism, the United States itself had an entrenched system of legalized discrimination, segregation, and racism. The army was segregated until 1948; there was a legal, Constitutionally-upheld system that separated blacks from white society. Many of the American soldiers who fought to free Europe came back to a society that purposefully excluded an entire group of people for arbitrary reasons and did nothing to change it - Civil Rights legislation would only come some 20 years later.

While these uncomfortable truths are talked about in classrooms throughout the United States, they are almost never put into the context which they should be: that one country that practiced discriminatory and racist policies against a minority group was fighting against another country that practice discriminatory and racist policies against a minority group. And while the United States agreed that what was happening to Europe's Jews was unacceptable, they did nothing to stop it for years, while also continuing to oppress millions of their own citizens.

The Nazis are an easy scapegoat because they did indeed usher in humanity's darkest hour - they showed what we as humans are capable of, and it was terrible. But the Nazis' crimes should not excuse the crimes of others. It is right and just that Germany accepts the entirety of the actions of the Nazis, just as countries like France, Austria, and the United States needs to accept the uncomfortable truths buried in their pasts.

Anti-Semitism and racism was not unique to Germany or Europe - far from it. Recognizing and accepting this is one large step in making sure that the darker side of humanity never again resurfaces. We must all stare history in the face and not blink.

Excoriating National Socialism's Defilement of Germany

For too many people, when they think about Germany the first thing they think of are Nazis, the Holocaust, fascism, and World War II. This is understandable, considering the monumental destruction the National Socialist regime execrated on humanity that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people. But for many of these people, the modern, industrialized, economic heavyweight, European country of Germany is equated only with the fascist criminals who carried out crimes against humanity in the name of Germandom.

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.