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Debating Patriotism

Germany's New Normality

By Steve Crawshaw

The recent statement by President Horst Koehler that "I love this country" shows how much Germany has transformed itself since World War II. There are still taboos, but Germany is rapidly changing. There may soon be a German production of the Hitler-spoofing Broadway smash The Producers. And that, argues British author Steve Crawshaw, is normality.

Sometimes, abnormality can best be measured by the insistence with which "normality" is proclaimed. A young German explained to me recently that the problems once associated with national identity are now solved. His close friends, after all, are from different European countries. "I don't feel German, I feel European." His statement proved the opposite. Even the most pro-European Italian, Pole or Swede sees him or herself not just as a European, but wears national identity with pride. Only the German continues frantically to insist: "National identity? Old hat!"

And yet, in many respects, Germany is changing -- at a startling speed. When I return to Germany now, it is almost unrecognizable, in terms of abandoned taboos, from the country where I lived as a newspaper correspondent only a decade ago.

Many debates from that period are a mere historical curiosity. At that time, the German opponents of a move to Berlin continued to insist that a Berlin Republic would be a dangerous monster, and would send a damaging message worldwide. Bonn was presented not as a symbol of democracy but as a condition of German democracy -- without Bonn, there could be no stable future. It is a welcome sign of normality, if that peculiar discussion is finally over.

The subject of German soldiers was even more sensitive. In 1995, proposed German involvement in a no-fly zone over Bosnia caused national uproar -- "because of the German past". Terrible German crimes in the 1940s were deemed (follow the logic, if you can; I always had difficulty in doing so) to make it inappropriate for Germans to prevent civilian massacres half a century later. Only four years later, when German ground troops arrived in Kosovo, they were greeted with flowers; if German troops in Kosovo or Afghanistan are criticized today, it is not because they do too much but because they do too little. When Germany says "no" to military involvement in Iraq, it is no longer the old complacent cry ("We're Germans, we couldn't possibly"), but because Germany feels able to defy the wishes of Washington -- another welcome sign of normality.

Above all when it comes to historical memory, today's Germany is different. In previous decades, Germans who emphasised the country's suffering in 1945 were often reluctant to address German crimes. Those Germans who talked about German historical crimes, by contrast, ignored German suffering. Gunter Grass's Crabwalk and Joerg Friedrich's Der Brand (The Fire), and a slew of television programs, have destroyed that unnatural symmetry.

The remaining taboos

Some taboos remain strong, even now -- so strong that many Germans insist they are not taboos, but self-evident necessity. Mein Kampf can be found in good bookshops in London, Paris and New York. The English translation is by Ralph Manheim, renowned for his translations of Bertolt Brecht and Grass. The cover blurb notes that the book is "necessary reading material for those who seek to understand the Holocaust, for students of totalitarian psychology, and for those who care to safeguard democracy." But if one were to ask for a copy in a German bookshop.... Unthinkable, of course. A few decades ago, it was still argued that "the bacillus [is] too lively, the danger of infection too acute". Germans rightly become indignant if foreign commentaries imply that the Third Reich is in danger of being re-established. But how else can one explain the Mein Kampf ban? The achievement of normality is connected with the new honesty. A society which seeks to bury its past remains unstable, as was the case with the Federal Republic in the 1950s and 1960s. President Gustav Heinemann said in 1969: "There are some difficult fatherlands, and Germany is one of them." One reason was that confrontation with history had scarcely begun.

The prescribed schoolbooks of the 1950s were crammed with so many half-truths that, reading them today -- they are gathered in the remarkable collection of the Institute for Schoolbook Research in Braunschweig -- one shakes one's head in astonishment. After the publication of Crabwalk, German commentators suggested that the theme of the expellees' suffering had been taboo since 1945. In reality, history books throughout the 1950s spoke at great length of the "indescribable misery" of the expellees. "Overcrowded refugee steamships sank in the Baltic Sea, and fleeing people went on endless treks where they often starved or froze to death." In these books, the mass murder which the Germans themselves so painstakingly organized is barely mentioned. (Still less were the brutal mass deportations which the Germans organized in the first months after invading Poland mentioned even in passing.) A typical sentence reads: "Appalling suffering befell millions of Germans in ways we didn't think would be possible again in the 20th century." But names like Auschwitz and Sobibor are invisible.

Later, the pattern was reversed. The schoolbooks were silent on German suffering; German crimes, by contrast, were endlessly discussed. Only now, in the new century -- and this is the real definition of normality -- is Germany a country of both-and. The scale of German crimes was (even) greater than the crimes against Germans which followed. But neither set of crimes can be buried. That new understanding is an important step forward; there can be no going back.

Confronting history through film

There has been much excitement, in Germany and abroad, about the taboo-breaking film The Downfall, with its humanization of Hitler. Some critics note that the film contains few direct references to the Holocaust. But that misses the point. The film is framed by the knowledge that all the events of those days, including the suffering of ordinary Berliners, take place in the context of unthinkable German crimes. Crucially, it is framed by the interview with an elderly Traudl Junge, who notes that Sophie Scholl was executed in the same year that she herself went to work for Hitler. "It was at that moment that I finally realized that being young was not an excuse. We could have figured out what was happening."

Such confrontations with the past are a crucial element of Germany's emerging new normality. The quality of not-forgetting is an important reason why the fatherland is no longer so difficult. When today's leaders declare: "I love this country", few Germans are shocked.

Many of my English compatriots still have problems with this emerging normality. At one level, this British retrospection is understandable. Every country likes to have reasons to feel proud, and Britain is no exception. Victory against Hitler's Germany remains a treasured memory. During the Battle of Britain and the years that followed, most of Europe was occupied by the Nazis and the Nazis' friends. For older Londoners especially, there are nostalgic memories of the "Blitz spirit" -- solidarity in the face of Hitler's bombs.

The obsession with modern Germany is, it must be said, less comprehensible -- as if today's Germany had hardly changed. A British columnist, writing about the success of Der Brand, and its savage descriptions of the aerial war against Germany, asked: "With four million unemployed in Germany, is this the fertile ground in which a new National Socialism might take root?" The obvious answer is: "Not really, no." In Britain, however, rhetorical questions like this remain provocatively unanswered.

The British attitude is illogical. But the Germans should react with less stress -- almost as if they were the ordinary Europeans which they would like to be. When the French are criticized, they barely respond. Comfortable with their own identity, they do not react to the midge-bites. Still in search of normality, the Germans have not yet reached that state of calm.