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May 8th 1945 – 2005
A Canadian interviewed by CBC about his role in the Second World War and what he did when he learned that the war had ended, said: “we did not celebrate, but got quietly drunk.” He had been on a frigate and witnessed that despite giving the command to cease fire since a German submarine had been hit and its entire crew in the water, a young soldier of 18 years of age kept shooting with his rifle at those heads bobbing up and down in the waves. The Canadian officer recalled that he had to put his own gun at the head of this young man to make him stop. Later this young man wept and was ashamed of himself. He did not understand what had overpowered him. It was something like bestiality or even something worse. Hannah Arendt in her reflections about Eichmann when standing trial in Israel could also not make out completely that figure of man. She called it finally ‘the banality of evil’ capable of masking itself with all signs of ‘normality’.
About masking real intentions and doings, May 8th as the day when war should have ended, there needs to be reminded what Klaus Heinrich concluded after five years of studies about Fascism, namely that ‘Fascism was not defeated in 1945, it has only learned to mask itself much better.’ The recent controversies in Germany’s foreign ministry about whether or not obituary should be given to former diplomats if they have been members of the Hitler Youth and even worse of the SS is but a reminder that there was a much greater continuity at the top of society while real historical deeds were obscured to the point that Willy Brandt was branded as traitor for having spend the war years in exile while Richard von Weizsaecker could become President of West Germany despite the fact that he had defended his father at the Nuernberg trial for having served as highest civil servant in the foreign office under Hitler. There are many other cases of continuity, student fraternities as part of the education of the elite but one phenomenon existing now as much as then.
Indeed all facets of Fascism shall never be fully comprehended since the obscuring of facts goes hand in hand with a shock everyone felt worldwide once the concentration camps were opened and the world had to confront what else Hitler’s Germany was capable of doing despite of having been the land of Goethe and Martin Luther. George Steiner, in ‘Language and Silence’, says it shall remain a paradox that here a man could play Schubert songs on the piano and then go the next day into the concentration camp to kill children. What is this ‘ennui’? Why cannot culture help man to remain civilized? Why such extremes? The failure of culture to prevent such crimes against humanity has shattered all confidence in culture, something yet to be realized in this fast living world giving only scant attention to the implications of that lack of confidence in culture.
When the concentration camps opened up the gates and victims or prisoners met the soldiers who had come to liberate them, the return to normality was important. As formulated by a famous Jewish violinist in the form of advise: ‘you have to go out into the world and become again that what you were before: carpenters, shoemakers, accountants etc.’ Still, we know that many have lived ever since then in silence. It means that things could never be really normal again.
Jean Amery, who survived Auschwitz where he was kept for three years and during which he often seemed crazy since he traded his bread ration for cigarettes, wrote in his amazing book called ‘Beyond Crime and Punishment’ the beginning of the redemption needed if especially Jewish and German people were ever again to have trust to one another. He said there was really no difference between Jewish people and German soldiers since both were subject to the same command, namely the command to survive in an extreme situation. The only difference was that the Jewish person had to survive ‘passively’ by not touching the electric fence, while the soldier had to survive ‘actively’ by shooting faster than his enemy.
Faced by such a command, what resistance or what sober action could have made possible an alternative to going to war in the first place? It is interesting that Adorno connects command to how a society wishes to have obedient citizens and what they can do to overcome paradoxes of choices by doing the right thing. Following a command or not underlines already that the degree of subservient behavior is a measure of democracy; if freedom does not exist in the minds of people, they will follow blindly commands and never realize that they put themselves and others into endless dangers. Consequently Adorno cautioned especially the younger generation after 1945 not to forget one main thing, for “the only way to break the command to love is to love people”. To love freely is also not to forget what happens to people if they never feel such love and hence affinity to mankind.
It may be the real tragic dimension of German history that things have always been imposed from above and never anything coming from below has been successful. The writer of the ‘torpedo bug’ said one can condemn someone to death by delegating him upstairs. For those at the top are without contact to reality created by common people. At the same time, those at the top know about the risk of falling, hence any development is accompanied by the fear of bourgeoisie society to loose its privileges. That fear underlines the fact that German society had been insecure already well before Hitler’s ascend to power. Over and again the fateful ending of First World War and then the stock market crash in 1929, combined with lack of employment chances and devaluation of the currency, were motives as to why Germans were eager to follow someone promising to do something about all these problems.
Joining or even supporting passively the National Socialist forces was meant to make the German state be strong again. In fact, it represents German society fleeing into hierarchical structures out of fear when it comes to existence and survival. Often called the failure of the Enlightenment, it is in reality the failure of people to give to each other recognition rather than depending upon authority and higher ranked officials to do something about these problems.
All this is connected with a social pain since lack of recognition explains many odd biographies, including that of Hitler who is said to have grown mad at having to paint rich people’s houses to earn a living. Lack of recognition is also a sign of a strictly hierarchical orientated society whereby the elite considers itself to be above such low class feelings and inhibitions. This is why many of the Aristocrats while serving in the ‘Wehrmacht’ thought of themselves as being above the uneducated Hitler, a tragic mistake as it turned out to be and not yet really comprehended even nowadays as shown by all the controversies surrounding the Wehrmacht-Exhibition.
To remind, many Germans and in particular the Elite entered the war with a professional pride as being strong and effective soldiers. The early victories of Hitler underline such effectiveness but it may have accelerated also the tragic flaw of seeing in war the only means to survive. Once people are caught in such hierarchical structures with no one daring to voice a true opinion, it is possible to understand why no political consequences were drawn by the entire German society despite it being quite clear that Hitler would not only entangle them in an endless war, but also cause such a Holocaust that is not comprehensible by any human standard even sixty years later. Jean Amery knew already 1933 that he was no longer a German citizen, but a Jew, an alien and Jean Pierre Faye in his analysis of Totalitarian languages shows what this negative status meant: a suitable object to unload against all hatred build up inside people that had become over malleable out of their own fear to question power and especially abuse of power, so that they ended up hating themselves first before seeing in the Jew a suitable scapegoat for all this self hatred.
The 8th of May has to be looked at in such terms as it is the case that this day ended the war only in certain terms. As the split of Germany into East and West demonstrated, the Cold War started immediately thereafter and with it the schisms of a world looking at Communism and Capitalism as two alternative power systems. In Greece, that split provoked a civil war which was to last until 1948, while in Czechoslovakia it took the same three years to establish Communist rule in Prague and elsewhere in the country. Furthermore, while American, British and French troops stayed in West Germany, it became clear to all people throughout Eastern Europe that the troops of the Soviet Union would also not leave for they dug themselves, so to speak, into the ground, in order to pave the way for a new kind of empire that was only questioned from inside once Gorbatshov came to power and what President Putin of Russia has recently named in his address to the nation as the single greatest tragedy. So the distortions of what liberation from war meant on May 8th shall continue if certain things are not remembered especially if looking back is not related to the need to look ahead.
However, there is still another meaning of the 8th of May, one all too easily forgotten. After German troops capitulated, it meant in many parts of Germany a more or less three month rule of anarchy with Hitler’s forces gone and the Four Pact troops from Russia, United States, Great Britain and France not yet in control. Some claim these were the three best months in the twentieth century as far as ‘freedom’ in Germany is concerned.
Also whatever the surrender of the German army means still today, it should not be forgotten that after 1945 the end of war meant to the people of Germany one main promise, namely: ‘never again war’. Translated into a more specific form, the promise is to be understood as wish to be passed on from generation to generation that ‘there should never be started war again from German soil’.
Unfortunately that promise was broken for the first time when Adenauer agreed that West Germany would join NATO and thereby join the Western forces by having again a German army and putting Germans not only in uniform but pressing them once more into a hierarchical order not to be questioned. It was unbelievable that this could happen despite the realization and insights into history that brought forth this promise. Michael D. Higgins, the former Minister of Culture in Ireland, said in a speech he gave in Leipzig, June 1999 that not only Germany, but the whole of Europe had broken that promise by starting to bomb Kosovo.
The tragic side of that is only beginning to unravel. Europe’s involvement in war since 1999 has meant simultaneously the defeat of the kind of diplomacy conceived to be only possible after the end of World War II, namely as a way to reach consensus without resorting to military means. If diplomacy is an understanding of how to avoid war, then the impact of that broken promise can be seen in what happened after 9/11 with first Afghanistan, then Iraq being attacked to bring about ‘regime change’.
Consequently 8th of May 2005 reflects a sad state of affairs which can be linked directly to a massive failure when it comes to learning out of history. By not having stepped out of war back then when German troops capitulated 8th of May 1945, the world continues to be dominated by affirmers like Rumsfeld of the ‘permanent war’ rather than ascribing to Kant’s philosophical search for ‘permanent peace’.
Currently Afghanistan and Iraq but also elsewhere it is demonstrated abuse of power leaving the poor poorer and the rich richer. It goes hand in hand with the kind of rule by which military forces are entangled with police matters due to having become an occupying force. Alone when looking back as to what took place in both West and East Germany after 1945, it allows one to anticipate what will happen in Afghanistan and Iraq. The wrong people will come into power while those of the old regime will be spared due to the need of the new set-up to squash any opposition. It will be a far cry from any kind of democracy based on true opinions of people since results produced by tanks and guided missiles is not any more convincing now as it was not then.
To put it differently: the Germans failed to topple Hitler and his totalitarian regime by themselves, so how can they be convinced that they are able to uphold democracy when challenged again by forces contrary to the spirit of freedom? They failed furthermore to safeguard the millions of lives of countless innocent victims. As to Iraq, the regime change brought about by the coalition forces of American and British troops deprived in reality the Iraqis to emancipate themselves from the dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein. Also, if Tony Blair could audaciously say, “I decided to remove him”, without so much uttering a word that such a removal would mean killing countless innocent people, including children, it says something about the quality of debate that such presumptions have not been really challenged as depriving others of such political experiences the United States acquired over a period of 200 years and Great Britain even longer before they really knew about the strength and weaknesses of their democracies.
If anything, the 8th of May should not be a glorious celebration, but be a matter of trust in political analysis in order to anticipate things to come so that people can and do act before it is too late and freedom once more threatened due to the governance of fear and lack of hearing public opinion. If freedom is to be upheld, then by thoughts being articulated in a truly open, that is honest manner. As Simone Weil would say not every German who voted for the National Socialist Party in 1933 was automatically a Fascist, but it is still crucial whether or not people do root themselves not in soil or in any ideology thereof, but in honesty. Without honesty, something the philosopher Husserl called the most difficult thing, there is no new beginning: a second chance to redeem oneself vis a vis such a cruel and gruesome history.
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Last updated: 31. December 2005