Angelus Novus <fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
The truth is, any sort of widespread feeling of guilt over the Holocaust never really existed in either of the two German states (as opposed to State atonement rituals in vogue for the past decade or so).
What has changed in the past 15 years since the fall of the wall has been a new tendency for national self-pity and ressentiment. Like I said, Germans have settled into their new role as the "real" victims of the second World War.
People like your mother are the exception, not the rule. What do you think one of the main motivations behind the 1968 movement was? The National Socialist past became an issue precisely *because* the generation that lived through it refused to make it an issue.
East Germany wasn't any better, by the way. The form of national self-denial there took the form of conveniently claiming the heritage of Communist resistance fighters. Thus conveniently whitewashing the personal history of every individual German in the Soviet occupation zone by automatically declaring them all anti-fascists. The fruits of this are evident in the high level of fascist sympathies in the contemporary east of Germany.
Starry-eyed Anglo-American fans of films like "Good Bye, Lenin" tend to ignore the populist, ressentiment-driven character of contemporary "anti-capitalism" in the East.
A popular slogan of the Antifa movement in the 1990s was "Bomber Harris, do it again!"
First of all, I just want to ask, are you a German citizen, who's lived their your whole life?
Secondly, I really feel the need to challenge you on some of this. I was in Germany in April 2005 visiting some German friends that I met in college. My visit happened to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the German surrender. There was a lot of stuff on TV at the time about the rising neo-fascist movement, and my friends - even the ones who aren't that political - all scorned the neo-nazis. When I was talking to them about Allied atrocities like Dresden, they became rather indignant and said that only the neo-fascists care about Dresden. So I think more Germans than you think acknowledge their county's sins during the war.
Furthermore, the United States and the CIA were the main obstacle to the de-Nazification of the West German government after the war, precisely because pro-socialist sentiment was high in Germany and all over Europe at that time. Therefore, it's no surprise that the FRG remained far less penitent than the GDR. Moreover, the Soviets were far more thorough in prosecuting and executing East German Nazi officials and collaboraters.
Lastly, Communists and socialists (not just in Germany, but all over Europe) were heavily persecuted by the Nazis before and during the war, and did play a significant role in the resistance. See William Blum's Killing Hope and Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds for the details on all of that.
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