A recent Facebook meme points out that Poland has created a memorial out of the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. This is used to bolster the idea that we should keep monuments to Confederate figures here in the United States.
During the course of this conversation, someone brought up that Germany and Poland have many monuments to World War Two figures. I find this to be a dubious claim, but I have never been to Europe, so I cannot draw on personal knowledge.
Would someone more knowledgeable than I point me to monuments to German World War Two (or even WWI) figures? Is there a Hitler High School or Goebbels Middle School? Is there a statue of a heroic figure making the well-known Nazi salute in a town square somewhere? Are these monuments controversial?
The closest thing are WWII graveyards where SS and over Nazis were buried before Germany’s defeat. Reagan took some heat for visiting one (or maybe just planning to, I don’t remember).
Of course there is no such obvious thing in Germany. For one thing, the Nazi salute is illegal in Germany and can get you in real trouble. So no, none of the nazi big wigs has a statue in Germany. It would be unthinkable and unlawful. But, of course there are/were cases more subtle like military bases or ships named after officers that served in WW II, as well as streets named to artists or authors that were nazi leaning or even full blown nazis during the time, but most of those names got erased and replaced after ongoing public discussion.
Not Germany but Japan famously still has monuments and memorials to legit war criminals from World War 2, Justin Bieber a few years ago got a lot of flack for visiting one but claiming it was a generic war memorial.
And this. There are memorial sites all around Germany commemorating the fallen soldiers from WW I and WW II. Though I’m conflicted about them, I concur that they are first and foremost a memorial for dead soldiers, like any other country has, and not for the criminal regimes these soldiers fought for.
The Memorial to the German Resistance in Berlin is on the spot where Claus von Stauffenberg and co-conspirators were executed following the failed plot to assassinate Hitler. They were definitely “World War Two figures” (von Stauffenberg served on the eastern front and in a Panzer division in North Africa, for example), but that’s not at all the same thing as monuments to Hitler or Himmler.
Similarly, Professor-Huber-Platz in Munich commemorates a man executed for involvement in a Catholic resistance movement; there are multiple statues, schools, and other memorials to his fellow resistant Sophie Scholl. The East German government in particular liked commemorating anti-Nazi World War Two figures, in an effort to separate themselves from the Nazis.
Did anybody in the Facebook group point out that the Auschwitz memorial is NOT a memorial to the Nazis who ran the place, but instead to those who suffered and died at their hands?
“Did anybody in the Facebook group point out that the Auschwitz memorial is NOT a memorial to the Nazis who ran the place, but instead to those who suffered and died at their hands?”
The Andersonville National Historic Site in Georgia is dedicated to all American prisoners of war, not just the 45,000 Union troops held prisoner there by the South (or the 15,000 that died), and certainly not as a memorial to the Confederacy.
Some (particularly in the East) could be read two ways: as a reminder of the destruction visited upon the German nation by choosing war and destruction, and, as a reminder of the destruction visited upon the German nation by the Western Allies, (Britain and America)
The Bitburg controversy: Chancellor Helmut Kohl wanted Reagan to symbolize the post-war reconciliation with an appearance at a German military cemetery in connection with the 40th anniversary of VE Day, and the Kolmeshöhe Cemetery near Bitburg was chosen (mostly because it was close to an American/NATO air base where Air Force One could land). The American advance team, scouting the location in a snowy winter, failed to notice that 49 Waffen-SS were among the nearly 2000 German soldiers buried there. The visit caused a huge controversy–the Ramones recorded a song called Bonzo goes to Bitburg–and Reagan added a visit to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to his schedule.
The Laboe Naval Memorial was originally to memorialize the German war dead from WWI. The Sailors from WWII were added after the war. It was rededicated to sailors lost at sea of any nationality. A WWII U-boat is there as a museum.
I don’t know how to quote things yet, but Asuka said
“Not Germany but Japan famously still has monuments and memorials to legit war criminals from World War 2, Justin Bieber a few years ago got a lot of flack for visiting one but claiming it was a generic war memorial.”
I’m familiar with the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, which is the problematic one where various Japanese politicians will visit. It’s decidedly pro Japanese war efforts and one can easily be confused about which side lost.
There are a few other monuments to the war dead, including one for kamikaze pilots, but I don’t know of other shines or monuments to war criminals.
Wikipedia used to have a list, I’ll have to look it up but you’d often see something listed that said “Small monument/memorial to a famous Japanese soldier that was born in so-and-so town” and the soldier in question was somebody who 100% murdered POWs in WW2.
Quite a number of streets in Germany are named after anti-Nazi figures, there are quite a few examples of Sophie-Scholl-Strasse, for example, and I seem to recall a Carl-Goerdeler-Strasse.
The bases, squadrons or ships named after WW2 military officers who were good at their job and not politically controversial.
WW1 war memorials and cemeteries in Germany, Austria and Poland were essentially untouched, and for WW2 you still see the Russian war cemeteries, which were intended to be memorials as well. Often the entrance is flanked by pair of guns or T34 tanks.
While hiking in the Duesseldorf area some years ago with a German group we passed a war cemetery with a sculpture that looked very Nazi in style to me, but no, it was from about 1925. I commented that it did not seem to match what I would have expected of cemetery art, too brutalistic, but a German friend said that the intention was to depict war as hard and death in battle as merely a matter of doing your duty.
The central police station in Duesseldorf had been built in the 1930s and had a flattish Nazi eagle carved into the wall over the entrance. And it still does, but covered by a large panel saying something to the effect that all are equal before the law.
Absolutely nothing to with the OP, but this post just gave me the worst case of Bader Meinhof syndrome.
I had no idea this single existed (or the Ramones did any overtly political songs) until like 30 minutes ago when the radio station I listen to (BBC 6 Music) played it. Now I read this post.
Hitler’s bunker, and the site of his death, are just outside the Brandenburg Gate. The scene itself is a patch of dirt with no memorial and no place anyone could even put a memorial. It is also just a few hundred feet from the very excellent Holocaust Museum.
I thought they did an excellent job.
Looking at Google Maps, it looks like there is a marker of sorts at the Fuhrenbunker. I thought that the site was largely ignored, fearing that it could become a shrine to neo-Nazi types.
The display at the site seems to give some information, but my German is pretty much nonexistent. Do people use this as any sort of rallying point or display suggesting that Hitler was on the right track?
By the time I first visited Berlin, I’d read enough Bernie Gunther books to have a really good idea of its WWII geography. We jumped on one of those double decker tourist busses that lets you plug into a prerecorded guided tour. For no reason at all the bus pulled over and stopped next to where Hitler’s Chancellory building (and its bunker) used to be and parked for about 5 minutes with no commentary. As best I could tell, it was just a fenced in jungle of bushes and weeds.