Does Germany have memorials to their own fallen World War 2 soldiers, even though this would mean they were honoring Nazis?
From what I understand, the soldiers themselves weren’t “Nazis” any more than the United States military are “Republicans,” or whatever the dominant political party of the moment happens to be at the time. Honoring fallen soldiers is much different than erecting a big memorial to Hitler, although I can understand why the perception wouyld be different.
Here is a web page for a memorial in the Ukrainian village of Krupske to German soldiers who died during World War II.
Here is a web page for the German U-boat memorial at Möltenort in northern Germany. It memorializes those who served in German submarines in both World Wars.
As some of the abstracts in this bibliography note, German war memorials have caused controversy. (See the item titled “The War Memorial: to Embrace the Guilty, Too?”)
There was also the controversy over Ronald Reagan’s visit to the military cemetary in Bitburg; IIRC the main problem there was that the cemetary included the bodies not just of German soldiers but of SS men.
Remember that most German soldiers did not participate in atrocities, most Germans didn’t run the camps, and most Germans were just following orders. Which is why Nazisim is so scary even now: The average German was not an evil madman, they were just controlled so utterly by a completely corrupt and insane government. The propaganda machine run by the government was an all-invasive force before and during the war, but it told them what they wanted to hear. All of that insanity about the ‘Master Race’ fed right into the belief that the Germans had been royally screwed by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI. And they had been stuck with massive war debts and their armed forces had been crippled, not to mention the loss of land and international presitge. All it took was one charismatic madman to preach to the masses, convert a few percent of the electorate, and form a coalition with the winning group headed by the sadly ineffective WWI hero Paul von Hindenburg. Hindenburg, who hated Hitler, had to appoint the tiny-moustached freak Chancellor. And when the Reichstag (the equivalent of our House and Senate) burned to the ground, and Hitler began to blame the Communists (prewar Germany was a hotbed of political extremisim, so such a lie didn’t sound half-bad), of course they would expand Herr Hitler’s powers to preserve Law and Order. And when Hitler began those huge public works projects, like that neato Autobahn, employing thousands of Germans with good, respectable manual labor, well, maybe we should free all those Germans stuck in the Sudatenland. And so it went, straight down to the Hell of WWII. So plausible, so rational, so completely normal, until it was too late to stop him.
Nothing can absolve those responsible for the atrocious acts committed during the war, and nothing should detract from the experiences of the victims. But not all victims were in camps, and not all of them were shot by SS guards. The citizens of Dresden when the firebombs hit knew the flames of every hell invented by the mind of man. The starving people of Berlin, trying to survive in a burned-out rubble of a city on little food and under a government they knew was completely insane, were victims as well. And the Eastern Front soldiers, fighting fanatical Soviet troops in the dead of winter in summer fatigues and lacking antifreeze for the tanks, were going though a Hell best not imagined for too long. All victims of a completely demented government fighting wars it could not win.
…who, of course, were fighting fanatical Nazi troops.
German law forbade enlisted men from being a member of a political party…even the NAZI party.
MEBuckner, you are exactly correct. Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Germany were extremely close, both governmentally and in leadership. Both Hitler and Stalin were violent, paranoid megalomaniacs obsessed with their own visions of a perfect future. Hitler was a better speechmaker, but they both had huge personality cults and fanatical followings in their own nations. Paranoid delusions of the leaders lead to massive purges in both nations, with the Nazis having the Night of the Long Knives and the Soviets having decades of gulags and massive bloodlettings in any field that attracted Stalin’s insane attentions. And, of course, they both encouraged armies with more fanatic loyalty than brains by killing intelligent (and therefore threatining) leaders and promoting those who parroted the Party’s dogma. They each recognized the other as their main enemy, the enemy to be killed at all costs. It was a race war: Neither side recognized the humanity of the other side, leading to horrible, bloody battles and the massacre of prisoners taken by each side. The USSR had allies, resources, and wave after wave of cannon fodder, however, and so it won. It cost the USSR an entire generation of young men and women, acres and acres of graves, but it won.
I think it proves one thing, though: ‘The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend.’ We were allied with the USSR, but we did not agree with it beyond the basic ‘Stop the Nazis’ plan. I think the Cold War attests to that.
In order to answer the OP, I’ll have to ask another question first - namely, what’s a memorial ?
If you’re looking for patriotic images and statues praising heroism, you’ll look in vain. But in the graveyards, there are memorials to the fallen, most of them kinda nondescript and a few focusing on the loss, the waste and the sorrow of war.
In German soldier graveyards from WWII, you’d undoubtedly find the graves of hard-core Nazists. Then again, I think you’d find more of your standard-issue 20-something scared-to-death guy with a rifle, wondering how the hell he and his country got in this mess and just desperately hoping he’d get out alive. How to tell the difference, as both are dead ?
In short: No one is “honouring” the fallen Germans from WWII specifically. Their graves are there, and the stupid, wasteful and - for Germany - shameful way they lost their lives is remembered. No honour in the equation.
S. Norman
I’ll have to modify that last sentence. No one officially honours the German WWII fallen.
There are a few extremists who have figured out that it is a sure attention-getter, but these people wouldn’t know of the concept of honour anyway.
S. Norman
This may be so - although I couldn’t find a cite for it. But all members of the military did have to swear an oath of allegence to Hitler himself.
And Derleth:
**Remember that most German soldiers did not participate in atrocities, most Germans didn’t run the camps, and most Germans were just following orders. **
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I guess it depends on the definition of “atrocities”. I think it’s safe to say that most German soldiers - by definition - did participate in the attempted conquest of Europe, during the course of which a whole lot of people died.
But we’re probably heading into a GD.
Reagan went to Bitburg in 1985. That visit upset a lot of people at the time. I recall one of my teachers went to Germany to protest Reagan’s visit and was arrested.
The conquest of Europe was a horrible act. Nobody who lead it should be pardoned, neither should anyone responsible for atrocities. However, the average grunt in the field was no more responsible for the worst of it than were the farmers growing the food that fed the SS guards in the camps. By any objective measure, Germany’s war with the rest of the universe was unjustified and unjustifiable, but the average soldier was just following orders, trying to survive, and maybe seeking a way up the ranks and out of the combat zone. Just like every other solider in every other war ever waged. There are no good wars, only necessary ones. Germany’s war against the world was not necessary, and was therefore reprehensible. The USSR’s war against Germany was necessary, in fact a battle for survival, but it was prosecuted in a reprehensible way. But the average soldier was fighting for the side he was on by a pure accident of birth. Think about it: If nobody resists the extremists in this country, our descendents could have the misfortune of being born at the wrong place in the wrong time and have to fight an unjust, unwinnable war. That is why Nazism still must be remembered. It’s the ultimate object lesson in what not to do.
Yes, there is :
In the little town of Lommel, Belgium, there is a military
cemetary of fallen German soldiers. 40,000 soldiers are buried there.
They have a monument to Cold War flyers in Berlin, honoring the airlift.