Now that D-Day is upon us once again, I find my thoughts drifting to our friends in Germany.
Here in the United States, as in much of the world, we are taught that the Third Reich was a bad thing. In fact, it is generally held to be a Very Bad Thing. The victories of the Allies during World War II are exalted and celebrated around the world. It is much ballyhood that “The Greatest Generation” saved the world from certain tyranny.
Now, if I were German, that sort of thing might tug at my national self-esteem. How do Germans perceive themselves? How are their adventures in the two World Wars portrayed in their school history classes. How does the average German think of things such as the famous concentration camps?
Please don’t misunderstand. I am not interested in German-bashing. We all know that Americans have plenty of sins of our own. After all, our very nation itself is a theft from the Native Americans. Still, we do teach of those transgressions, even if somewhat begrudgingly.
What are German children taught? I cannot imagine that it does much good to teach “Germans nationalism is bad. It leads to global conflict.” But what do they teach?
Okay, I’ve rambled long enough. Thanks for indulging me. Don’t forget to pause on this day to remember all of those who sacrificed before us.
I was never schooled in Germany, but my understanding is that they are pretty forthcoming about the evils of the Third Reich…and see it as history for the most part. I don’t think most modern Germans feel it reflects on the current state of Germany,…there may be some exceptions of course…such as some misgivings when Germany reunified.
As far as WWI…keep in mind, in THAT war, Germany was not particularly the “bad guys” any more than was anyone else. The war was started by a bunch of hubris on all sides (France and Russia wanted the war as much as Germany)and attrocities were committed on all sides (The British and French for example refused to allow food to be shipped into blockaded Germany for a year after the Armistic was signed…resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths…AFTER the war was over.)
Coping with the Third Reich past is an enormous issue in Germany. There are incredibly strict laws on holocaust denial and self-imposed restrictions on the use of the military, for example. There was also a political storm (called, I think, “historikerstreit”) in the mid 1980s when historians debated how guilty second and third generation Germans should feel about the war. I would guess this fear of repeating the past extends to the schoolroom.
I once studied this at university, but it was a few years back (around the time of re-unification), and I was amazed at just how deeply ingrained the fear of making the same mistakes is ingrained into every political or social issue.
Mattk is right. WWII and the atrocities of the Third Reich are still very vivid in German life. Even young people, my age (27), feel somewhat guilty or at least embarrased about their nationality as a whole because of it. It;s almost like they are looking for ways to excuse their ancestors behaviour sometimes.
There is no need, however.
Modern day Germans are the most polite and courteous citizens of Europe. There is NOTHING they need to be ashamed about. As a citizen of a country that was seriously occupied by the Nazis in WWII, I can state with pride that we do NOT hold the Germans accountable for WWII anymore. Sure, we must remember. But we must also forgive those who are without blame.
National pride? Frictions between the Netherlands and Germany? Do you think that’s REALLY all about the war?
Think again. It’s football, for the most part. We lost the 1974 World Cup Finals against an inferior German team. All involved now admit the Dutch team was better, and should have won. THIS is the major influence in Dutch-German relationships these days. Not the war.
Euro 2000 begins next Saturday. Vengeance, once more (1988, remember?).
In the years after WWII, (West) German school children had drummed into them the fact the Germans are guilty, guilty, guilty and must hang their heads in shame when in the company of non-Germans. Most Germans today remain embarrased by anything militaristic or any display of nationalism. They find Americans, with their embrace of their military and their fanaticism about the Flag, to be highly nationalistic if not jingoistic.
Another interesting question might be “What are Japanese children taught about WWII, Pearl Harbor, the Bataan death march, the rape of Nanjing, etc.?”
Now, really, do you think YOU could have resisted bombing Pearl Harbor. I mean, they had all of those battleships just sitting there. They WANTED to be bombed.
Bataan Death March? Bah, that was just a stroll through the Philippine countryside. It wasn’t Japan’s fault that the Americans were too soft from Betty Grable movies and swing music.
Nanking wasn’t raped. It was wearing provocative clothing and made eye contact with Japan.
I hope that my OP wasn’t misunderstood. I do not think that modern Germans should hang their heads in shame. I do not advocate being rude or disrespectful toward anyone.
I simply was curious about modern Germany’s approach to unfortunate aspects of their history. Here in the United States, embarrassing moments in history are largely ignored in school. People forget that the American Southwest was simply stolen from Mexico in a blatant land-grab. Lets not forget that the continent as a whole was taken from the Native Americans already here. I could go on, but that would be pointless.
The Germans I have known personally have been fine, upstanding people. Of course, my wife’s ex-husband, a German citizen, is another story…
From what I have been taught in History class, many Japanese are oblivious to the happennings of WWII.
A lot of their history books were re-written and omitted everything that the Japanese did from the 1930’s to the 1940’s. One of my friends took a Japanese exchange student last year, and when quizzed about what they knew about the war, the response was “Japan was just going about their daily business and for some reason America dropped nuclear bombs on us”. The student was totally unaware the war had even occurred.
I find it interesting that this sordid history is “drummed into” modern Germans, while my grandparents tried hide their German heritage and lost much history and tradition in the process.
All four of my grandparents emigrated from Germany between the WWs, settling as dairy farmers in Wisconsin, a heavily German area. When I was young they still sung hymns in German at the little country Lutheran church, and older people had accents and spoke some German in the home. However, there was never any talk of the place. Ever ever ever. When I was older my grandmother told me that several friends and relatives changed their names during WWII to sound more English. They changed inherently German terms into English and were careful to never speak a German word in public. They did away with national dishes, songs, stories, Christmas traditions, pictures of “home,” books, etc. She said I could never imagine the anti-German sentiment during that time.
Anyway, I kinda feel like I was robbed of my heritage. When my brother minored in German in college, they were aghast.
I am a half German and a quarter Irish. The earliest language I remember hearing was German, in lullabies. But I pretty much try to pass for Irish. Despite St Patrick’s Day and The Troubles in the North, it’s still more embarassing to be German, thanks to the Nazis.
I live in Germany right now, and Coldfire’s absolutely right.
There’s definitely a sort of embarassment and a very determined “It-won’t-happen-HERE-again!”-attitude.
Although the country is as liberal and democratic as can be imagined, you can’t print and/or distribute Nazi literature in Germany (giving my country, Denmark, the dubious honour of being Europe’s leading provider of neo-Nazi literature in German - I’m not proud about that, but what to do ?). There’s a special police authority to handle threats against the constitution (“Verfassungsschutz”), and they take it seriously.
D-day and other military turning points are simply not mentioned. There is German participation in armistice and surrender day remembrances abroad, solemnly and dignified - and there’s a special remembrance day for the victims of national socialism. (Does anyone else recall the photo of Kohl and Chirac holding hands on the 50-year anniversary of VE-day ?)
Every ablebodied male serves in the military to prevent it from becoming separated from the rest of society, although this is becoming too expensive and will probably be phased out.
But behind this, there’s also a silent pride: “We know what we were, now look at what we’ve become”. And I can only second Coldfire’s opinion: “polite and courteous”, no doubt about it.
Unfortunately, from what I’ve read, Japan has yet to pass through this process.
Well in WW2 we locked the Japanese Americans in camps, so I suspect they had good reason to be worried. Also the american government had 100% control over the media during WW2. Some of the racist “kill all the dirty germans and dirty japanese” propaganda films are quite shocking.
I had the impression that anti-German sentiment was much more vehement in the First World War–renaming saurkraut “Liberty Cabbage” and the dachsund the “Liberty Pup” and all that. I don’t know how it was in Wisconson, but I believe Central Texas retained much of its German culture during and after the war–and indeed, many of the (Texas-born) war leaders like Nimitz and Eisenhower were of unabashedly German extraction.
BTW, Friedrichsberg (Texas) is so big on its German heritage it’s almost embarassing. “Willkommen” everywhere you look.
Doghouse is right about Central Texas retaining its German heritage. My wife is from New Braunfels. The German community is very active there. The town where we currently live is also heavy in its German and Czech heritage. Many of the local families speak German at home, though the children seem to ignore it. English and Spanish are by far the languages of choice for daily conversation.
Not to confuse issues here, but it wasn’t unusual for any group of immigrants to turn their back on their native culture and become “Americanized” back in the early and mid 20th century. Both Mrs. Kunilou and my grandparents, for example, gave their children first names that would have worked very well in their former homes. By the time our generation came along, we were all given thoroughly “American” (i.e., Anglo-Saxon) first names. Only in the third generation are the families blending some sort of heritage.
That said, obviously there was more of an impetus for German, Italian and especially Japanese people to show their Americanism than, for example, Norwegians.
Much the same thing happened in the 1950s, when the Cincinnatti Reds became the Redlegs and Russian dressing became Thousand Island.
IIRC, the Adenauer government choose the image of a woman (a war widow perhaps) planting an oak tree as the image on new West German coins. To me, the image symbolized the new German deication to peace, reconstruction, and with an oak seedling, the recognition that it will take a long time to bury the past. With luck the Germans might pull it off. No one associates the Italians with Roman atrocities any more and most people have forgotten about Napoleon’s ravages throughout Europe.
This might really belong on a new thread, but it is related to the OP… Should there be a ‘statute of limitations’ on atricities and/or genocides? In other words, when the perps have all died of old age, should their nation still be shunned?
I say that it depends on whether that nation has fully ‘owned up’ to the events in question. In this case, Germans have fully aired out their grandparent’s actions, and should in my opinion be left alone about WWII. On the other hand, the Japanese have not admitted that their nation was guilty of great atrocities, and in fact are going backwards. Japan should not be left to spin their self-justifying fantasies about that time without some kind of dose of reality.
But what about earlier genocides? I think that it is safe to say that NO group, with the exception of certain remote tribesmen, obtained their land without a great deal of bloodshed, and in many or most cases, extermination of the former occupants. This applies not only to modern western people, but most of the rest of humanity as well. Some examples: Bantu agricuturalists were originally confined to NW Africa, but swept over almost all of sub-Saharan Africa, eliminating the former Bushmanoid people. Eastern China was originally populated by people related to the SE Asian populations (Polynesian, Ainu, etc.) who were replaced by the ancestors of the Han Chinese. Even the Amerinds, descended from NE Asians, seem to have replaced an earlier population of SE Asians, according to anthropological and genetic evidence.
The Germans make it well known to their schoolchildren what they did in WW2. Not out of a sense of pride, but of shame. They wish to educate their generations about what not to do, and what unresticted power can do to corrupt a country. In stark contrast is the Japanese. I have a friend who is teaching school there, and he remarked that little, if anything, was taught about WW2. They did not mention the horrible treatment they subjected on the POWs, and view the kamikaze pilots as somewhat of heroes. They have millenia-old traditions of honor, and to admit that they did this is too hard for them at this time.
Groundskeeper Willie, how do you propose “forcing” Japan to acknowledge it’s historical mistakes? Who decides when a country is “ready” to forget? Another country? (I doubt there are any without their own skeletons in closets, and why would Japan bow to such a gesture?)
BTW, I wouldn’t say Germany is being shunned today. It’s a self-imposed situation. The US isn’t, for example, forcing the issue to appear on the German curriculum - the Germans are.