" I believe once this taboo is broken, the Holocaust story as we know it now, will not survive in Germany much longer than four weeks".
This is my firm believe as well. If the history of the Third Reich is to be reworked, i.e., ’revised’, it has to start in Germany.
Just a few observations on this subject, and I ask for the Moderators indulgence.
According to a thesis by Winfried Körzer in his “Stufen der Dämonisierung in der deutschen Vergangenheitsbewältigung” (Strides taken in the demonising of the German past), and I agree with most of it, there were three different phases of dealing with the Third Reich.
I. Right after ’45 and until the mid ’60ths. there was talk of a virus that befell the Germans in 1933, which made Hitler and all that goes with it possible. Because of the many survivors, and Körzer means those who witnessed Versailles, the Weimar Republic and the positive sides of National Socialism, it was impossible to bedevil the whole of Germany and the Germans at that time.
II. With the ‘revolution’ in ’68 (the Hippy movement in North America) the picture changed. Now, Capitalism and National Socialism became equals and only by tearing down the existing order, that is the capitalistic Government, can the Germans be cleansed of Nazism, because all sorts of ’Nazis’ were still employed in government, school’s, university's, the justice system etc. Still, the Germans as a whole were not blamed for what happened. Instead a clear dichotomy shaped the picture of the Third Reich: On the one side were the Nazis and on the other the heroic resistance of the working class under the leadership of the KPD, the German Communist Party. By blaming the governing class and the capitalists for Nazism, reality was ignored, (most of the workers did very well), along with the memory of the witnesses and a picture of an abstract, unreal, National Socialism was presented. Totalitarianism as a whole could no longer be denounced, Communism was not like National Socialism, the Nazis became the epitome of evil.
III. In the middle ’80th the picture changed again. The virus thing was buried. The witness generation started to die off, for only those borne before WWII knew why National Socialism was successful: because of Versailles, the turbulences of the Weimar Republic, fear of a Communist Dictatorship, unemployment and social misery. As well, the brainwashing in the schools was finally effective (the old teachers, who knew better, were gone). More, Marxism's was loosing its charm, the workers were doing well, and many of the protesters from ’68 were members of the Bourgeoisie, some even in Government, J. Fischer et al. The Left needed a new ideology, a reason to exist. And that’s when the demonizing of National Socialism started. The witness generation knew what it was like before 1933 and how much changed to the better in the following years, before the war. Today, the interpretation of the NS time starts in 1945, the heaps of corpses overshadow everything, the history of 12 years shrinks to one image: Auschwitz. The demonizing is so intense, it becomes mythical. And one better accepts this mystification as real. All of German history happened in those 12 years, the youth are taught to hate their own country. Further, the BRD doesn’t stand ‘for’ something, it was formed to stand against Nazism. It has no positive, identifiable mythology . The myth of the occidental culture and the fight of the working class are gone. What remains is the negative myth of National Socialism. Without the ’Nazis’ the BRD would loose its legitimacy. The NS discourse is like a religion that knows no God, only the devil.
So much for Mr. Körzer.(a concise version of his work) As he states, the first phase, the virus, is gone. Now there seems to be a little scepticism about the motive of the ’68 revolution (participants claim this was the first time Germans were confronted with the NS regime). Klaus von Dohnanyi writes in an article in “Die Welt”, May 8. 2003, that the revolution was an exercise in self-deception (Selbstbetrug). He writes the most important question, “How would I have acted” was never asked. So. phase # 2 seems to crumble, can # 3 be far behind? Time will tell.
Wilf
