In These Times: an 8/9 May Column

A big sigh accompanies an in-depth view of German and Russian voices on the occasion of the 80th anniversery of WW2

On the anniversary of the end of WW2 in Europe, I often write a few lines about the oddities and anomalies of memory and agit-prop. In previous years, I’ve penned more essay-like pieces, which you may find here:

In These Times: A 8-9 May 2022 Column

In These Times: An 8-9 May 2023 Column

Today, due to lack of time to do some research, I’m offering you two media pieces to consider. The former is originally in German (hence it’s my translation), and the latter was penned in English.

In both cases, the emphases and [snark] are mine, as are the bottom lines.

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Ground Zero of Our History

Thoughts on the 75th anniversary of the end of the war

By René Nehring, Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung, 8 May 2025 [source]

When the guns fell silent (almost everywhere) in Germany and Europe after 8 May 1945, the war may have ended militarily—but it was far from over. The long nights of bombing, the weeks and months of fleeing from the approaching front, the sight of dead soldiers and civilians on the streets and roads, the loss of loved ones, and the years spent in camps and prisons echoed in the memories of those who had experienced all this for decades to come [never let the opportunity to conflate fascism and communism go to waste]. Many never let go of them. In view of the dimensions—there was hardly a family in Europe that had not been affected in some way—the Second World War became an unforgettable landmark in the collective memory of nations.

This is especially true for Germany, the country from which the war started and to which it returned in devastating fashion. While 8/9 May symbolised one of the greatest triumphs in the history of the victorious nations, for the Germans it marked the absolute zero point in their history [this is totally odd as Mr. Nehring comes out as a Jacobin who wishes to re-set history, much like the original Jacobins of the 1790s, the Bolsheviks in 1917/18, and Mao in China in 1949 (all of these implemented calendrical reforms]: millions of fellow-countrymen were dead, countless major cities lay in ruins, industry and infrastructure were destroyed across the board—and in the East, regions that had shaped German culture for centuries were lost in East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania and other provinces. Last but not least, the Germans also lost their statehood [that’s blatantly wrong: Germany lost its sovereignty, never to regain it since; every legal scholar will tell you that there’s an unbroken continuity from 1867 onwards]. The ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ dissolved into occupation zones in which the Russians [sic; should be Soviets], Americans, British and French were in charge.

The moral catastrophe weighed just as heavily as the human and material losses: after the Germans had cheered on their ‘Führer’ in the 1930s and bravely followed him into war for years, they now had to realise that they had not only been following a deceiver, but also a criminal [I’m kinda torn: war is hell, everyone commits ‘crimes’, which is why there is the legal (largely) fiction of ‘laws of war’, which are kinda the codification of ‘stuff otherwise illegal is now permissible’, hence the notion that ‘war’ is a legal stance]. Footage from the liberated concentration camps, which was shown in numerous cinemas, had an impact, as did the reports of the trials against the former leadership, and the historical reappraisals in the years that followed. ‘Writing a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric’, was a contemporary thesis of Theodor Adorno. This opinion may seem insane today; at the time it was shared by quite a few [well, time elapsed helps, in all contexts, but here in particular: the German people today is not the German people of the 1930s and 1940s, hence questions linger around about the esp. moral aspects of WW2].

The [German] people of Goethe and Schiller, of Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach, of Luther and Copernicus, of Kant and Schopenhauer, of Dürer and Holbein, of Riemenschneider and Schlüter, of Schinkel and Balthasar Neumann, of Daimler and Diesel, of Caspar David Friedrich and Lovis Corinth, of Otto von Bismarck and Frederick the Great, and many others had to live with a heavy guilt and burden from then on, which was not lessened by the fact that the Allies had also committed war crimes and thus millions of Germans became victims of the war [now, that only works if one departs from a ‘rules for thee but not for me’ stance, which the victors of WW2 did—and they never stopped].

Difficult Reappraisal

The question of how to deal with the legacy of the ‘Third Reich’ became an explosive guideline for Germans after 1945. How much remembrance was appropriate? And how much repression was necessary in order to be able to carry on with everyday life? How much reparation had to be made? When was the time to draw a line? Was it even possible? The answers to these questions were very different: while some tried to settle into the new circumstances as quickly as possible and only look to the future, for others the events around 1945 became a caesura that they never got over.

The degree of remembrance always depended on the respective point of view. Not least because the burdens of defeat were distributed very differently within the German nation. While all parts of the country mourned the loss of front-line soldiers in equal measure, the damage caused by the air war was distributed very differently between urban and rural areas. The property situation was completely different: while West Germans were able to keep their possessions almost without exception, countless businesses were soon nationalised in the Soviet Occupation Zone. But at least the West Germans were able to stay in their own homes in most cases. The East Germans lost everything.

The two German post-war states (the Austrians had decided to flee their own history and establish a new identity [that’s largely a fair assessment: as detailed below, this was done because, by mid-1943, leading socialist politicos™ recognised that the war was going to end in defeat and decided to leave the losing side]) also dealt with the past in very different ways: the GDR staged itself as a response to the German catastrophe and celebrated the ‘victory over Hitler fascism’ as a constitutional myth. The memory of the suffering of the German civilian population was rigorously suppressed. On the other hand, in the Federal Republic passionate debates about the consequences of the war were held in the early years. Over time, however, the attitude of letting the past rest prevailed. Those who remembered the unresolved German question increasingly came under pressure to justify themselves and were suspected of revanchism.

The Memory of the Neighbours [apparently, excl. Austria]

In the collective memories of the other nations involved in the war, the years between 1939 and 1945 (and to some extent before) also remained a fixed, determining factor. And here, too, the assessment depended on the individual point of view. While the victorious powers USSR (later Russia), USA, Great Britain, and France proudly celebrated their victory over Hitler’s Germany, the situation was often very different in other countries. The peoples of East Central Europe, for example, did not experience the Red Army as liberators, but as new occupiers.

But even the victorious powers—with the exception of the Americans, whose star as a global political power was just beginning to rise—soon began to ponder; and not only because the triumph over the Axis powers was followed by a ‘cold war’ between the former Allies. For the British and French, uprisings in the colonies immediately after the war in Europe heralded the end of their colonial rule—and with it their decline as world powers. And for the Russians, the celebrated memory of victory in the ‘Great Patriotic War’ had to overshadow the increasingly miserable everyday life in the real ‘paradise of the labourers’. The British, French, and Russians may have won the war against Germany, but they lost the peace [a quite fair point; it’s now the Americans’ time to experience this].

Together, victors and vanquished had to recognise that the ‘European civil war’ between 1914 and 1945 had led to the great self-destruction of the old continent [I disagree: it’s a strange ‘civil’ war among Europeans that involves not one but two partial non-European forces, namely the USSR/Russia the United States].

Material for Countless Stories

The epochal significance of the Second World War is reflected not least in a literature that is almost impossible to survey. Works published immediately after the war, such as Eugen Kogon’s The SS State (1946) or Hugh Trevor Roper’s The Last Days of Hitler (1947), are still considered standard works today [same goes for Joachim Fest’s two-vol. Hitler biography, which continues as the standard account]. The number of works published worldwide on individual aspects of the war or overall portrayals is probably in the millions.

In addition to the academic works, memoirs of the protagonists involved were published, the victors such as Winston Churchill’s History of the Second World War, Georgy Zhukov’s Memories and Thoughts, or Konstantin Rokossovsky’s A Soldier’s Duty, and the defeated such as Erich von Manstein’s Verlorene Siege (Lost Victories), Heinz Guderian’s Memories of a Soldier, or Otto Lasch’s, How Königsberg Fell. The few remaining leaders of the ‘Third Reich’, such as Albert Speer and Karl Dönitz, also achieved almost unimaginable circulations with their memoirs. In addition, there were the accounts of well-known publicists such as Margret Boveri, Sebastian Haffner, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, and Wolf Jobst Siedler.

The number of novels and stories in which the war and its consequences have been dealt with in literature is almost endless. The spectrum ranges from Heinrich Böll’s Haus ohne Hüter to Günter Grass’ Danzig Trilogy and ‘Beim Häuten der Zwiebel’ to Ernst Jünger’s Strahlungen, and Hans Hellmut Kirst’s ‘08/15’ trilogy to Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s Das Boot or Arno Surminski’s Jokehnen. Walter Kempowski’s monumental collection of quotations, Das Echolot, stands out among all these works.

In recent years, when some believed that there was hardly anything left to tell about the war, journalistic works about the ‘downfall of the little people’ (the subtitle of Florian Huber’s book Kind, versprich mir, dass Du mich erschießt), the fates of women (for example in Miriam Gebhardt’s book Als die Soldaten kamen, or Ingo von Münch’s Frau, komm!) and the fates of soldiers who had returned home (as in Svenja Goltermann’s work Die Gesellschaft der Überlebenden) were added. Sabine Bode’s books on the ‘forgotten generation’ of war children and grandchildren, which deal with the traumas passed on to those born after the war, attracted particular attention. Anyone who picks them up can only marvel at the fact that it has taken so long for someone to address these issues.

Outlook

This year, public commemoration has been much quieter. And not just because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to the cancellation of numerous commemorative events. There are also few new titles on the book market, where all newly published titles were written long before the outbreak. Even Der Spiegel, which often enough made money with cover stories about the ‘Führer’, refrained from publishing a cover story on the end of the war in the anniversary year.

Is this a sign that public interest is waning or that memories of the war and the Nazi era are slowly fading? We shall see. It was only at the turn of the year that a debate broke out between Poland and Russia about responsibility for the outbreak of the war, which shows us that the ghosts of the past are still very much alive.

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Other Views—Courtesy of Russia Today

I’d like to draw your attention to the ‘other’ side of this commemoration, specifically two pieces I found quite interesting that appeared on RT’s website (which isn’t banned in Norway).

First, the piece ‘Western memory of WWII is basically fan fiction’ by the historian Andrey Kortunov, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council. Its gist boils down to the following:

Historians seldom completely agree with one another even on some of the most important events of the past. There are different views on various historical events, such as World War II (WWII). With new documents being declassified and new excavations at the sites of the main battles, we are likely to see new theories and hypotheses emerging that will feed more discussions and offer contrarian narratives of the most devastating military conflict in the history of humanity…

The most graphic manifestation of the WWII falsifications is the now very popular assertion that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were jointly responsible for the beginning of the war.

The narrative equating Nazis and Soviets is nonsensical because it completely ignores the history of fascism in Europe and repeated attempts by Moscow to convince London, Paris and Warsaw to form an alliance against it. Only after the “Munich Betrayal” by the West, the 1938 pact among Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy that forced Czechoslovakia to cede territory to Germany without Czechoslovakian consent, did Moscow decide to go for a non-aggression treaty with Germany to buy itself time before invasion [this is the factual account told by A.J.P. Taylor in his The Origins of the Second World War (1961), which marked the downfall from grace as one of his time’s most relevant historians: ponder/wonder why?]

Likewise, the dominant Western narrative of WWII increasingly frames the conflict as a stark moral battle between good and evil [well, it wasn’t, as the Marxian historian Christian Gerlach of the U of Berne, Switzerland, recently pointed out in his Conditions of Violence (2024; full open access)] As a result, there is a growing reluctance to fully acknowledge the pivotal roles that Russia and China played in the defeat of Nazi Germany and militarist Japan…

The predominant view in most Western countries credits the US as the primary force behind victory, along with limited support from other allies. This reading of WWII has nothing to do with reality, but it nicely fits the now popular Manichean interpretation of world politics [huhum, I wonder how the Russian historian thinks about Krushchev’s statements to Life Magazine in 1971, which you can read here]

Another typical distortion of history is the selective portrayal of the victims of the war, often shaped by a distinctly Eurocentric perspective. Much attention is given to the atrocities endured by Europeans under Nazi occupation or by Europeans in Asia at the hands of the Japanese, while the immense suffering of non-European populations frequently receives far less recognition.

Every human life is of equal value, and all victims deserve empathy. Even those who served in the German and Japanese armed forces during WWII should not be indiscriminately labeled as criminals; the notion of “collective guilt” must not override the principle of individual responsibility for verifiable war crimes [no mention is made that this stance, in practice, invalidates the Nuremberg Tribunal’s verdict, but I suppose since this is an op-ed, it’s not an official stance…note that this is true, but it also applies to the Allied/Soviet forces who committed such crimes, e.g., the ‘strategic bombing’ of civilian areas, the ethnic cleansing of 12-14 million Germans in 1944/46—the largest such undertaking in history, while we’re on the topic of unequal remembrance and differential categories of victimhood]…

Contemporary politics inevitably shapes how we interpret the past, as people often seek historical narratives that align with their present-day beliefs and agendas [a truism: why didn’t the Soviet leaders simply welcome the German invaders? I mean, ‘refugees welcome’ and all that?]. Yet history should be approached with integrity, not as a tool to justify current political positions [this is in Russia Today, no less]. This is not about defending national pride or preserving comforting myths; every nation, regardless of size or wealth, carries both moments of honor and episodes of regret in its historical journey. A balanced national narrative includes both triumphs and failures [hear, hear: can we talk about the horrors of Stalinism here and now? I suppose we can’t—so much for that].

But when history is deliberately manipulated to serve short-term political interests, we risk blurring our understanding of the present and undermining our vision for the future [the first part is true, the second one not so much]. Such willful distortion is not only intellectually dishonest but could also lead to grave consequences.

Here’s another account in RT that relates a very different picture of the Soviet occupied parts of Germany: it features select letters of grateful Germans and Austrians after WW2.

Bottom Lines

A mixed bag of things, eh? If we take both accounts at face-value, I suppose we may surmise the following:

• 8/9 May 1945 is a particular and ambivalent date in German history (which also includes Austria).

• Speaking of Austria, here’s what leading socialist Adolf Schärf (president from 1957-65) wrote in 1955 (my translation, emphases, and [snark]):

  The Anschluss is dead

  One morning in early summer 1943…Wilhelm Leuschner [interior minister of Hesse prior to 30 Jan. 1933]…told me with certainty that in autumn 1943 there would occur the end of the Hitler régime in Germany. Representatives of many parties were in agreement about the formation of a new Reich government, which would have the support of the military. In this new government, Gördeler was designated to be chancellor and he [Leuschner] vice chancellor. Although locked up in a concentration camp, [former Austrian chancellor 1934-38] Dr. Schuschnigg and his wife were in contact with a group consisting of different parties based in Vienna. He [Leuschner] had come to Austria to win over Social Democrats [sic] and Christian Socials [conservatives] to join. If Austria were to join this German revolution, one could reasonably expect that the Anschluß of Austria to Germany could be salvaged in the upcoming peace negotiations…

  The well-known Moscow Declaration concerning Austria [which envisaged the restoration of Austrian independence] was not published before 1 Nov. 1943. The thought that the Anschluß, which most European states was recognised de facto—by some also de jure—would be reversed was, therefore, something new and extraordinary. At that time, it seemed that the great powers did not consider the prior state of Austria a priority or even desirable.

  Leuschner developed his ideas with great detail. Our conversation lasted about three hours…suddenly, I interrupted him. I do not deny it, not even today: since I came to know and love the treasures [orig. Geistesschätze] of German culture and its people, I had always wished that my own mental Heimat would Weimar, instead of Austria. Yet the longer the conversation lasted, I came to a very different conclusion…

  I interrupted my visitor and said: ‘The Anschluß is dead. The love for the German Reich has been swept away from Austrians. I know quite a few men and women from Germany who had moved from Germany to Vienna whose company I cherish, but I long for the day when the Reichsdeutsche [i.e., those Germans who had come to Austria after the Anschluß] will be expelled [orig. vertrieben] from Austria akin to the Jews.’ As I was saying these words, I had the impression as if it was not me who said them but someone else, a different person.

  Leuschner was both surprised and consternated…

  I subsequently informed my friends in all Austria of the conversation…and we all, albeit slowly, came to the same conclusion…

  A few days after my conversation with Leuschner I was visited by a Dr. Hurdes…he wanted to talk to me about that conversation, and he was impressed when he learned that the Social Democrats in Austria were no longer interested in upholding the Anschluß.

I’ve taken this extract from Adolf Schärf, Unsere Erneuerung [Our Renewal] (Vienna, 1955), pp. 23-5. It shows clearly how the impending defeat of Hitler’s Germany was the decisive factor in the generation of political support for the renewal of Austrian independence, at least among the Social Democratic leadership.

The memory and remembrance of WW2 in German-speaking Europe is so far removed from reality and facts these days, it boggles the mind. René Nehring’s piece touches on some of these issues while omitting others; the same goes for Andrey Kortunov’s piece; and I’m certainly not excluding my own musings.

I’m consciously excluding whatever is going on in France, the UK, and the United States over WW2, for these are things that are quite accessible to Western readers.

It is in this spirit that an hour of your time might very well be spent on Dmitry Medvedev explaining the Russian point of view:

(Note that merely posting this or that POV doesn’t mean I’m in agreement with anything that is conveyed.)

I’m pointing to these strange things to underscore one main aspect: the defeated Germans (and, to certain extents, this also applies to Japan) are remembering WW2 in a very different way to the victors. This isn’t to say it’s about the known adage (‘to the victor the spoils’, incl. how history is written) only, but that a more realistic accounting of what transpired is still impossible. None of the victorious powers will ever permit themselves to be held to the same standards (sic) of the vanquished; if that would ever occur, good luck talking to, say, Russians about the Soviet Union’s less-than-nice sides or to British and Americans about the ‘strategic bombing’.

History is written by the victors; to expect them to incorporate the self-flagellatory ways and means of the vanquished is worse than wishful thinking (it’s actually extra-stupid). Would a more differentiated accounting be preferable? Of course it would be, but I wouldn’t hold my breath until we get there.

And we may never reach that point.

So, let’s instead mourn all the dead, consider all the crimes, and work together to avoid history repeating itself.