By KURT PÄTZOLD

Come What May

May 8, 1945The Germans were liberated from the greatest shame in their history

battle of reminiscences and, less militantly, a memory marathon is what University of Jena historian Norbert Frei recently called the campaigns that will deal with the historical events that occurred in this country sixty years ago. One manner of speaking brings to mind victors and vanquished while the other recalls an image of a group of people who, after extraordinary efforts, reach a goal. Both pictures stimulate reflection about what a minority of Germans, who appear to some to be history-obsessed, undertake when they write and read books, make and watch movies, debate, question, argue, and even demonstrate in the streets.

In the course of a discussion about the Nazi Wehrmacht in Strausberg, near Berlin, a young man from a group that considers itself German nationalist asked what was the point of a German visiting a cemetery in which Allied soldiers killed in a battle in the Second World War were buried. For a 70-year old, this wouldn't have been a hard question to answer. Had these soldiers, at the time hardly older than himself, not destroyed fascism, then his turn would also have come. He would have had to obey a Wehrmacht induction order and would possibly, sometime, have been buried in some cemetery. That may make sense, but for those born later, who didn't barely miss a war, it is hardly grounds for thanksgiving. Then what can this May 8th mean to the majority of Germans? What is its proper place in our history?

That determination was and is beset with many difficulties and the naming of the event itself has revealed the continuing controversy. Hardly had it occurred, when contemporaries, aptly and ambiguously, spoke of a "collapse." Not just houses and cities collapsed, but also, perhaps less visible and still less admitted, concepts and illusions gained in the Nazi Reich also collapsed. In everyday speech, the term "after the collapse" established a point in time that was understood by everyone for years, just as today the less picturesque term "after the turning point" does [used to signify the collapse of Communist East Germany: transl.]. Later, terms such as "war's end," "defeat," "capitulation," "downfall," and "zero hour" came into use - like searchlights set up at various locations, they all illuminated the same historical place, each made some things visible while they left others in the shadows.

But how has the concept of "liberation" fared, a term stemming from the time of German dual statehood and which is freighted with a contrary history? In contrast to the East German state where the term was used since its very founding, and not only in official usage, in the West German state almost four decades passed before Richard von Weizsäcker [President of the Federal Republic of Germany 1984-94] used the term in an official speech and attempted to explain to West German citizens - contemporaries and those born later - that they had gained something from that already distant event. But what, thinking beyond those liberated from the concentration camps and from the power of those in control and their police, was gained?

It is beyond contention that hundreds of thousands of German civilians were freed from their fear of aerial bombardment, of nights in damp cellars, of agonizing death under collapsed buildings sixty years ago. Millions of Wehrmacht soldiers no longer had to fear being ordered into battle and death. That is occasionally forgotten or is dismissed by saying that most Germans did not feel liberated. And in what sense should a Silesian farmwoman who, through forced emigration, ended up in Bavaria with her children feel liberated? Or those threatened with uncertain prison terms? Like millions of small and not so small Nazis who had to expect that their roles would come under scrutiny, with its possible consequences for them? But fear of death versus fear of the future was by far not a bad exchange. And then the certainty of survival and the continuation of life grew. But that isn't the end of it.

Anyone who wants to get beyond the limited interpretation conveyed by the only partially illustrative personal experiences of contemporaries, a process that is currently employed in all the media, to a truly historical perspective of the concept of liberation, has to do something these very media continually distract him from doing. He should review the cause, character, and objectives of that war and he might then conclude that the great majority of Germans, on that distant May, were liberated from a shameful role that no generation of its forebears had ever played. They were, either voluntarily or coerced, enthusiastically or reluctantly, participants in a substantially realized plan to forcibly subordinate Europe to the swastika. They had covered almost the entire continent with murderous camps. Because of them, the futures of untold millions of people were destroyed. And with few exceptions, they had done nothing to free themselves from this role, and in many cases themselves prolonged it into that Spring of 1945. For them and those who came after them, the liberation gave them a chance for a future in which they were no longer a threat to other nations.

This interpretation of liberation has, to a large extent, not penetrated the public consciousness in this country. It remains an indicator of the extent to which the Germans have grasped and integrated their history. Not for the purpose of juridical indictments of persons, but, most of all, to not let the achievement of their liberators fade from memory. What should be retained, therefore, is a warning which, even in our own time, is far from having reached its expiration date. To understand this means to probe the reasons for the Germans becoming a people that Europe had to be liberated from and for taking on a role from which even they themselves had to be liberated.

[Translated by Otto Hinckelmann, June 2, 2005.]