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The Specters Haunting Dresden

http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_1_u ... esden.html

Honecker's Children

By JACOB HEILBRUNN


The spectacle on Sunday of thousands of neo-Nazis marching to protest the 60th anniversary of the allied bombing of Dresden has left Germany's political class reeling. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is weighing banning the far-right National Democrats, while others express concerns about an emerging sense of German victimhood about World War II.

The distress is understandable, but the upsurge in neo-Nazi activity in eastern Germany should come as no surprise. It is not simply high unemployment or the memory of the Third Reich that is the culprit, but something else that is frequently overlooked because it's seen as impolite, especially in European socialist circles, to mention: the anti-Semitic legacy of the former East German communist dictatorship.

Unlike West Germany after the war, the totalitarian regime represented continuity, not a break, with the Nazi past. Though the East German communists based their rule on the myth of anti-fascism, they had played a key role in bringing the Nazis to power in 1933 by undermining the democratic Weimar republic. The communists even directly collaborated with the Nazis during the 1932 Berlin Transport Workers' strike to cripple Weimar.

Yet after World War II, the communists claimed to represent a noble tradition of opposing Nazism and argued that West Germany, supposedly ruled by the same capitalists who created Hitler, was a new version of Nazism. Even as they denounced the West Germans, however, the communists drew upon leading Nazis to create the National People's Army and the Stasi, or secret police. It was no accident that the army wore the former Wehrmacht's field-gray. Former Nazis were used as cadres in factories, the universities, and the press. The Communist Party also was open to former Nazis. In this regard, the communists did not differ radically from the West Germans, who also tapped former Nazis to run the judiciary and military.

What did distinguish East Germany was its obstinate refusal to recognize the Holocaust. In schoolbooks and scholarly texts, the regime suppressed the truth about the murder of the Jews. Instead, it focused almost exclusively on communists who perished in the concentration camps. Memorials throughout the country were dedicated to communists, but never alluded to Jews. The same went for concentration camps; at Dachau, just outside the city of Weimar, there was no real mention of the Jews. What's more, East Germany participated in the anti-Semitic purge trials that swept across Eastern Europe in the early 1950s and, at the same time, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp was used by the Soviets to murder tens of thousands of German POWs.

The communists also refused to acknowledge the existence of Israel. The East German government not only supported the Palestinians, but helped to harbor and train terrorists. Carlos the Jackal -- his real name was Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez -- and Abu Daoud, a leader of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, often traveled to East Berlin. Libya also had agents stationed in East Berlin. It was all, so the thinking went, part of the struggle against the West's fascism, which Israel supposedly personified.

This cult of anti-fascism and sense of victimization lasted until the death throes of the regime in 1989. In Dresden, the famous Zwinger palace had an inscription denouncing the "Anglo-American bombers" -- echoing Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels condemnation of "Anglo-American terror bombings." The East German government even claimed that the western powers sought to annihilate Dresden and other cities to prevent the Soviet Union from inheriting functioning factories.

Today, the young eastern German neo-Nazis are the inheritors of the communist tradition. The National Democrats, who entered the Saxony state parliament last September, marched out of a ceremony recognizing the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp. And they assert that Germans were the true victims of World War II in places like Dresden.

A motley crew of octogenarian right-wingers like Gerhard Frey, a publisher in Munich, and Franz Schönhuber, a former SS officer, showed up at the rally in Dresden. But they are dinosaurs from the past, while the historical lies peddled by the communists are now being regurgitated by a younger generation in eastern Germany. The current spate of demonstrations against the Holocaust offers a reminder that Nazism and communism weren't die-hard foes, but kissing cousins.

Mr. Heilbrunn is an editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times.

Interesting. I'd always suspected that the communists were closer in ideology to Nazis than most people believe. This confirms that, and thus commies should be treated as such (scum).

Funny how there were murmurings that we should apologise for Dresden when the Queen visited Germany a few months back. What about all the cities they bombed of ours lol? Germans can be funny sometimes; they started the fuckin war. Why should we apologise to them??

Mind you, being a German herself, the very thought of the Queen apologising for the bombing of her motherland is absurd Silly cow probably does regret it, considering the Nazis in her own family.

She should be so lucky Britons still tolerate her and her pathetic family.

Agreed. They have no place in the 21st century. In Cromwell's time they would have been dealt with properly. I'm not holding out too much hope though; I know many people that tolerate them and will continue to do so, so we won't get rid of them just yet :|

On second thoughts, perhaps the people I personally know aren't representative of the nation as a whole lol.

Marko

Quite a revealing line below:

Although Queen Victoria’s descendants in the male line originally belonged to the German house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, during World War I this German connection proved embarrassing. Accordingly, George V proclaimed that British subjects descended from Victoria in the male line would henceforth take the surname of "Windsor".


I still feel sorry for Diana, though not the British tabloids way. Being Spenser she deserved better than marrying that gawk.

Diana was never a favourite of mine, neither were any of the royals. I hated the mawkish (and false) sentimentality that abounded after her death. The same tabloids who trashed her started to call her the "people's princess" (actually, that may have been Blair. He was going through a rather peculiar phase, where everything righteous was labelled as being the "people's").

There was a very amusing documentary back in 1998, comparing column inches written a week before her death to those a week after. They were very contradictory, and often by the same author.. One woman called her a wench the week before she died, before calling her the "queen of our hearts" upon her death. Ghastly. I do, however, agree that she deserved better than what she ultimately got.

As for the royals and their German roots, it certainly does explain a few things that have gone on lately. That's why I referred to the Queen as a German earlier. I didn't know the full details though, so thanks for relaying them.

Ah, finally a British republican. They're not in abundance.

David's Medienkritik
Politically Incorrect Observations On Reporting in the German Media by
David Kaspar & Ray D.


The Long-Burning Embers of Latent Anti-Americanism

On February 22, 2005, just one day before President Bush visited Mainz, Germany on his tour of Europe, this highly interesting interview was published in "Die Welt" on anti-Americanism in the German and European media. Here, now, is a full English translation:

Swaths Bombed Through Baghdad

How German media fall out of their role when reporting on the USA – A talk with anti-Americanism researcher Lutz Ebring


Everywhere that President Bush turns up these days on his trip to Europe he is received by public protests. At the beginning of his second term, the rift between Europe and the United States of America does not seem to have diminished, even though the diplomatic signs have since moved towards reconciliation. According to a poll from the US foundation German Marshall Fund, 59 percent of Germans and 62 percent of the French clearly reject the foreign policy of the US President. Nonetheless, 34 percent of those questioned believe it is possible that an improvement could come about in President Bush’s second term. What role do the media play in this process? Franz Solms-Laubach spoke about it with the Berliner journalism professor and anti-Americanism researcher Lutz Ebring.

DIE WELT: How objective are the German media when it comes to reporting on, for example, the USA?

Lutz Ebring: It is amazing, but journalistic expectations of professionalism quickly go lost when it comes to reporting on foreign nations. With domestic topics no journalist would consider composing such texts such as those he writes, without further consideration, on events in nations like France, Great Britain or the USA. These texts typically reflect the official line of the government in relation to foreign policy. This is, however, how it also is in the USA. It happens entirely unconsciously, but is simply unprofessional.

DIE WELT: The line between news and opinion is not maintained?

Ebring: In reporting on foreign nations it is definitely significantly weaker. A whole lot of daily journalistic routines that maintain behavioral controls stop at the German border.

DIE WELT: Why?

Ebring: One can only speculate about the psychological mechanism. Domestic news reporting is closer to daily life for most journalists, they are more sensitive to partisanship in the context of domestic politics. Beyond the borders there is no learned restraint. It is empirically clearly provable that themes having to do with foreign politics are weighed with far less care.

DIE WELT: And that is how anti-American stereotypes come through in the media?

Ebring: We attempted to classify those stereotypes related to the USA that break through time and again. They range from arrogance to non-culture, double-standards, prudishness to superficiality and are transmitted and reinforced by media such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines. A favorite example for that was an ARD news program at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq about two years ago, when the moderator, I believe it was Anne Will, at a time when the active bombing was fully underway and the Americans were picking out military targets with high-tech equipment and "intelligent missiles," said: The American Air Force has again "bombed swaths through Baghdad." "Swaths" – The word naturally reminds many Germans of the carpet bombings in the Second World War. If one were to use such a formulation in the news about a controversial domestic political topic: The telephones would be ringing off the hooks. I am certain that in this case there was barely a call.

DIE WELT: What differences do you see between the right-wing and left-wing political spectrum in Germany?

Ebring: From the right comes more the diminishment of everything American in a cultural sense as flat, superficial, worthless, false, cheap and loud. In other words, that which seems to be a horror for every person of culture. From the left comes the anti-capitalistic related diminishment of everything American with anti-Coca-Cola cries and the perceived threat of McDonaldsification. But these streams of thought are actually not all that different when one takes a more precise look. In the media it remains pretty much the same.

DIE WELT: Where do the roots lie?

Ebring: The anti-Americanism related to culturalism is tied together with the European cultural arrogance that sees itself as the counterpiece to the America it perceives to be without culture, and its beginnings reach back into the 19th century. After the Second World War, it was initially not very strongly defined because of the impacts of the Marshall Plan and other US measures to help Germany. The view of America first became overshadowed in the German public again in the late sixties with the student unrest of 1968 and the worldwide protests against the war in Vietnam. In this period the term "Americanization" became a virulently negative word.

DIE WELT: The criticism of Bush is then, in line with that explanation, an escalation of old stereotypes?

Ebring: This newest form of anti-Americanism is marked, not insignificantly, by the especially high ability to irritate that President George W. Bush jr. possesses in the German and European public. At the end of 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, only around nine percent of Germans still felt near to the Americans, 45 percent said: "America is distant to me." Five years prior to that, the relation was basically the opposite. The feeling reversed itself in the shortest time.

DIE WELT: Through the influence of the media?

Ebring: The media provide an interpretation, with potential political and cultural impacts, of complex phenomena for everyday life. On the other hand, the stereotypes must also already be present as a thought pattern among the media consumers. Only so can the silent agreement between broadcaster and consumer function when it comes to stereotypical shortcuts. There must, in other words, be a common denominator, otherwise the one would not understand what the other was saying.

DIE WELT: Can such thought patterns be changed?

Ebring: Our analysis has shown that personal experience does not protect against the sweeping use of stereotypes. Anti-Americanism therefore requires no Americans. Stereotypes live their own lives, are relatively immune to reality and resistant to change.

DIE WELT: No hope for improvement?

Ebring: In five years there will be a different President and Iraq will likely be pacified. That would naturally have impacts on the strength of the resentments that have fixed themselves onto certain individuals in the present situation. But beneath the surface smolder the long-burning embers of latent anti-Americanism. It has a long tradition and will remain, also when President Bush is no longer in office and Palestine is peaceful.

Mr. Ebring makes a point worth repeating: Anti-Americanism in the German media and society did not begin with, nor will it end with the Presidency of George W. Bush. President Bush is simply a convenient lighting-rod upon which the inherently anti-American elements in Germany and Europe can focus their hatreds without appearing to be anti-American on a wider scale. We've all heard it before. Many Europeans try to draw a clean and distinct dividing line when they say: "I am just anti-Bush, not anti-American."

But for many Europeans still filled with deep-seated anti-American resentments and condescension, this supposedly clean and distinct dividing line is often far more blurry than they would ever really care to admit...

David's Medienkritik

German Awards for Palestinian Killer Movie

The Palestine suicide bombers killing Israelis regularly receive a rather apologetic treatment in the German media.

Think "cycle of violence".

After all, there is "the occupation", and something has got to be done about it. The "root cause" of it all is the lasting injustice that is supposedly done by the Israelis to the honorable Palestine leadership under Arafat and to welfare organizations such as Hamas, Al Aksa, Hisbollah, and the likes.

Now sympathy with the Palestine suicide cause has moved a step further, from MSM to the movie screen. Read ( http://trans-int.blogspot.com/2005/03/p ... opean.html) John Rosenthals excellent piece on the awards handed out at the Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale) for "Paradise Now", a heart-breaking story of two young Palestinians poised to inflict maximum damage to Jewish lives. John notes the deafening silence of the German media at a news conference to the novel concept of indiscrimantly killing Jews:

"Indeed, during the entire nearly sixty minutes of the Berlinale press conference with Hany Abu-Assad and his collaborators, virtually no mention was made of the Israeli victims of suicide attacks – neither by the filmmakers, nor by the assembled representatives of the media."

David's Medienkritik

German Expert Identifies Truly Nice Dictator

Poor Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. He's such a nice guy, but unfortunately the Syrian military won't allow him to transform the country into an Arabic version of South Korea.

I am not making this up. This is what Michael Lueders claims, one of Germany's foremost Arabia experts, in a comment in the left-wing daily Frankfurter Rundschau. According to Lueders Israel and the U.S. government try to "demonize" Syria.

The Wall Street Journal

Deutschland Unter Alles?

By RICHARD W. FISHER
March 17, 2005

Today German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder will meet with opposition leaders Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber to confront an unpleasant reality: The once dynamic German economy is plummeting into a death spiral.

Germany's unemployment has risen to levels not seen since the 1930s. February's jobless rate of 12.6% reflects a host of competitive ills that has left Germany unable to hold its own in a world being shaped by a newly reconfigured Europe, an ascendant China and a highly adaptive American economy. Unless Germany quickly changes course, it faces inevitable decline in economic power and its role in the world.

I take no delight in delivering these harsh verdicts. My personal involvement with Germany goes back three decades, during which I grew to admire a nation that rose from the devastation of World War II to become a muscular, efficient force in the world economy.

Sadly, that Germany no longer exists.

The economy sputters. GDP grew at 1.4% a year from 1992 to 2002 -- and has since been flat. A flatlined economy means too few jobs are being created, leaving many Germans to face long spells of unemployment.

The German workers who are employed are less productive than many think -- and work too little. Total productivity grew by a mere 1% a year in the 1990s, hardly enough to support Germany's high wages and crushing social overhead.

German business labors under onerous permit requirements, marketing restrictions, price restraints and regulations. International surveys rank Germany dead last in labor-market flexibility -- by a wide margin. Corporate practices are out of date. What worked well when the West dominated the manufacturing era has proven stifling in the globalized information age.

Germany's financial architecture remains stodgy. The retail sector is bloated with over 2,500 banks. At the same time, the country lacks a vibrant equity and venture capital culture. Credit and investment capital aren't flowing to where they can be most effectively used.

Germany hasn't been willing to pay the price of maintaining its technical prowess. As a share of GDP, corporate research and development fell by 1.5 percentage points between 1989 and 1999. From 1991 to 2000, the share of researchers in the German work force actually declined.

The pipeline for future advances in German R&D is drying up. Germany's educational system has become overcrowded, underfunded and suffocated by a bureaucracy that's unresponsive to the economy's needs. Primary and secondary students have slipped into mediocrity on international tests. Apart from a few specialized institutes, Germany's higher education no longer ranks among the world's best. Intellectual-property rules hinder the commercialization of research.

Messrs. Schröder and Stoiber and Ms. Merkel have to face the reality that Germany remains stuck in the past, unequipped to compete in today's world.

Countries liberated by the end of the Cold War are taking on the industrial tasks that Germany once did so well. In the 21st century, advanced economies will prosper by moving as quickly as possible up the ladder of higher value-added info-, bio- and nano-production.

Success requires brainpower and entrepreneurship as well as great flexibility in labor and capital. These are not the strong points of the present German economy.

America sank into a quagmire in the 1970s. OPEC's oil-price shocks, Japan's inroads in autos and electronics, and the erosion of basic industries cast a dark cloud over the nation's future.

The United States revived in the 1980s and beyond because of its capacity to change. The private sector energized itself with innovation and productivity. Ronald Reagan reoriented basic economic policies and moved America toward a vision of a brighter future. His successors, including President Clinton, embraced continued opening of the economy and constant economic rationalization.

Like the United States, Germany can stave off decline only by reinventing its economy.

The German government acknowledges as much with its Agenda 2010, a reform blueprint that incorporates significant changes in labor policies and other areas.

But Agenda 2010 is only a start. Germany's future will depend on even bolder and more thorough reforms in the economy. Old methods of business, financial and labor organizations must change. So must the mentality of government, perhaps even its structure.

The massive changes required in Germany will be hard. Enthusiasm for reform tends to wane as societies face the reality of giving up a certain present for an uncertain future. Germany will not have the fortitude to follow through on reform without bold leadership from both the party in power and the opposition.

I understand the German fear of strong leadership, but it's high time to get over it. Time has diminished the specter of a bellicose and expansionist Germany. At the same time, Germany needs to overcome its internal defeatist attitude, the legacy of the past quarter-century's economic decline. Defeatism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The future belongs only to those who believe it's theirs and who strive for it.

The days of political jockeying and posturing are over in Germany. For both Mr. Schröder and the opposition, the choice could not be clearer: Either embrace fundamental change or risk inevitable condemnation by future historians of a once great Germany.

Mr. Fisher, vice chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, will become president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas on April 4.

Leo

I wonder what that bozo Synthese has to say about this?

:P

Mate

"I wonder what that bozo Synthese has to say about this?"

That America's falling apart, I guess:)

Hmmm...

I think he still is furiously trying to find citations of French military prowess. He's going to be spending an awful amount of time googling.

Pssst! Don't tell him Google is an American company!

:P

Malraux and Sartre are too sexy to write a good program. It's too contemptible and much less sophisticated than kissing Klaus's and Ivan's asses in turns:)

How Germans Fell for the 'Feel-Good' Fuehrer

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/interna ... 26,00.html

Stern's Gallery of Stereotypes

http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/20 ... lery_.html

The Belmont Club

Germany as Husband

My son-in-law forwarded "Germany Is Tired of Footing the European Bill" (from On-Line English edition of Der Spiegel). It discusses preparations for June 16-17 when Europe's heads of state will come together for their next summit and to ratify the European budgetary framework for the coming years. What may sound like a routine yawner is really a meeting at which nothing less than the future of Europe will be decided -- and especially Germany's role in that future. On those two days in June, the assembled heads of states will decide how much each member state should pay to Brussels and how much it should receive in payments from Brussels, if anything.

The potential pitfalls are huge; the European Commission's proposals in this regard are completely unacceptable to the German government. According to the current draft of the legislation, which bears the relatively innocuous-sounding title "Financial Forecast for 2007 to 2013," the EU's budget will increase from about €100 billion this year to €158 billion in 2013. This increase would have serious consequences for Germany, which, as Europe's largest economy, pays by far the most into the common budget. Between now and 2013, Germany's contribution to the EU would almost double, to about €40 billion. Instead of the current 8 percent of its federal budget, Berlin would then be required to send more than 10 percent of its budget to Brussels.

The authors observe that the Germans send significantly more money to Brussels than they receive back. In 2003, the difference amounted to €7.7 billion, making Germany the biggest net contributor by a long shot. Only the Netherlands and Sweden pay more on a per capita basis.

The Wall Street Journal Europe

Betraying the Past and Future

By THEO WAIGEL
April 1, 2005

All the self-congratulatory celebrations at last week's European Union summit can't disguise the fiscal fall from grace the finance ministers and heads of states committed under the pressure from Germany, France and Italy.

The Stability and Growth Pact, drafted 10 years ago in Dublin and adopted in 1997, introduced the concept of sustainability into Europe's fiscal policy. Decades ago, politicians realized that sustainability is a fundamental principle of environmental policy. But we have also known for some time that demographic developments make it necessary that we follow a new fiscal policy of consolidation. The shrinking pool of younger people can no longer shoulder the debt burden of the growing number of older people.

According to the official statistics, Germany's public debt amounts to 65% of gross domestic product. However, Germany's council of economic advisers calculated in 2003 that, including future liabilities for social security and health care, the actual figure comes to 250% of GDP. In the face of this gigantic burden for future generations, the Maastricht criteria should be tightened and the Stability Pact rules applied even more strictly. Instead, Europe's leaders meeting in Brussels displayed a cynical disrespect for those generations that will follow us by embarking on an irresponsible policy of fiscal folly.

The only thing that still matters to them is to somehow survive the next election. None of the finance ministers and political leaders cares about the next generation and the common good of Europe.

Without the Stability Pact, though, there would have been no support in Germany for the new currency. The motto back then was: "The euro will be as strong as the deutsche mark." This statement was filled with real meaning when the criteria for joining the single currency were rigorously enforced in 1997 and 1998. Back then, all politicians from all parties together with all the major social organizations and institutions in Germany agreed on the stability course.

Today, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Finance Minister Hans Eichel celebrate their fiscal fall from grace as an "economic success." In reality, they are taking a knife to the roots of the new currency instead of spreading confidence by upholding the agreed-upon rules.

The new pact strings together arbitrary rules that are neither economically relevant nor legally justifiable. How will the EU now deal with the new accession countries that want to join the single-currency zone? Even if these countries can't meet the original criteria, it will be impossible to reject them. They could simply point to Germany and France, who for years have ignored the criteria, mobilized majorities to force through decisions that violated European law, and then mutilated the rules beyond recognition.

The German chancellor, meanwhile, simply accuses his critics of economic incompetence. That's some cheek coming from someone who presides over record unemployment and zero growth, and whose finance minister breaks all the promises he has made in the last few years.

If Mr. Eichel really intends to keep the budget deficit below 3% of GDP, why change the rules? Like every year, he wants to make the public believe that he will meet the criteria only to blame the world economy, other unfavorable developments or the opposition for his failure.

Even countries that have stood in the past for stability, such as the Netherlands, Austria or Luxembourg, didn't exactly cover themselves with glory in this affair. The current EU president, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who 10 years ago contributed so much to the creation of the pact, no longer tried to do what is economically right but instead went for the political compromise just to put an end to the debate. It didn't help of course that Germany, France, Italy and the U.K. threatened to block any decision that would have been in line with the Stability Pact's deficit procedures.

Particularly Germany and France are gravely mistaken if they believe that budget consolidation would mean lower economic growth. The opposite is true. Budget consolidation along with structural reforms, a more flexible labor market and productive financial market would actually fuel economic growth, create jobs and reduce public debt. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton demonstrated how it's done in the 1990s.

In the past, Germany was at the top of European countries in terms of fiscal stability. Before the introduction of the euro, the deutsche mark was not only the anchor for other currencies but a model for stability and confidence.

If the euro didn't exist today, the fiscal policies of Messrs. Schröder and Eichel would have put the deutsche mark under intense pressure, and it could no longer have fulfilled the role of an anchor in Europe. The euro thus allows the Social Democratic-led government to "legally" conduct a fiscally wrong-headed policy.

Not today but tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, the citizens will have to pay for this fall from grace with higher interest rates and taxes and lower economic growth.

Just a few months ago, the previous president of the European Central Bank, Wim Duisenberg, called the Stability Pact a "gift from heaven." Asked what should happen with governments who violate this pact, he responded that such governments will be voted out of office.

This is the only way citizens can react to the broken promises made to them 10 years ago.


Mr. Waigel was Germany's finance minister from 1989 to 1998.

David's Medienkritik

Gemany's Grand Strategy

This is an interesting article of our friend D.L. from Heidelberg on Germany's Grand Strategy.
Germany has drawn two lessons from its history. Judging by the spate of documentaries appearing on ARD, ZDF, Phoenix, and Arte marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, the most important lesson is that Germans were not responsible for the wars that made the 20th century the bloodiest century in human history. Chancellor Kohl invented a new mantra, namely that Germans were also victims of Nazism. The “Germans-as-victims” theme is one that state-funded television cannot repeat often enough. Not only did Germans suffer under

the Nazis, they also suffered at the hands of the Russians, British, and especially American soldiers who “occupied” their land. (A word that has a special connotation in German. German media still uses it to describe the coalition presence in Iraq.) Only the French were spared a detailed examination of their World War II behavior. And while Germany’s enemies did not treat all Germans humanely, it must always be remembered that it was a war of survival for the world’s democracies. German media, however, took German suffering out of context, in order to isolate it and imply that those responsible for it were nothing less than criminal.

The second lesson Germans draw from history is not to trust their ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Twice in the 20th century their nation was singularly responsible for the slaughter of tens of millions. As a consequence, instead of relying on an innate moral compass, Germany developed a default rule that makes sense for a nation that has chosen so badly. For Germans, war is always wrong. If the truth be told, the majority of Germans would not support war even to defend their own borders. The first lesson compliments the second. “It was not our fault for we suffered too - therefore war is always wrong.”



This national opposition to war for any reason raises an interesting question. The United States publishes its National Security Strategy for the world to read. Friends and enemies know how America defines its security and what Americans are prepared to do to ensure it. How does Germany define its security? What are Germans prepared to do? For years Germany identified its security interests with NATO and out-sourced its defense to the United States. Post-cold war the picture becomes less clear. There are no threats on its borders so Germany feels comfortable opposing U.S. security interests in the UN, NATO, and via the EU. As joblessness threatens his re-election prospects, the Chancellor is desperate to sell arms to China in the same scorched-earth mentality that used anti-Americanism to win re-election in 2002. He continues to dismantle the German military at a dizzying pace. If Germany has a strategic vision that describes out how it intends to maintain its place in the world, its actions suggest it has failed to read its own script.

Daimler Holders Assail CEO Over Weak Mercedes Results

By STEPHEN POWER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 7, 2005

BERLIN -- DaimlerChrysler AG Chief Executive Juergen Schrempp yesterday came under fire during a tense shareholders meeting that revealed deep frustration over plunging profit at the luxury Mercedes division.

With 8,000 shareholders looking on at a convention center here, representatives of various German investment funds complained about the 97% slide in Mercedes's fourth-quarter profit and accused Mr. Schrempp, who championed the 1998 merger of the company's German and U.S. halves, of destroying DaimlerChrysler's value.

The comments by the fund representatives -- including a demand to know the salary of Mr. Schrempp's wife -- came moments after Mr. Schrempp said the company's 2004 performance "demonstrates that DaimlerChrysler's business concept is working."


"How much longer do you want the shareholders to remain patient?" said Klaus Kaldemorgen, a representative of German fund manager DWS Investment GmbH. Another German fund-manager representative, Thomas Meier of Union Investment, said his fund would abstain from a vote of confidence to be taken on the company's overall direction. "The merger of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler, which was once called a marriage made in heaven, has not paid off," Mr. Meier said.

Despite the criticism, Mr. Schrempp has firm backing from the company's largest shareholders, Deutsche Bank AG and the governments of Kuwait and Dubai. Indeed, later on, investors representing 95% of the shareholdings gave the board their vote of confidence.

Still, the remarks indicate rising shareholder annoyance with the financial performance of the world's fifth-biggest auto maker. The company is contending with brutal price competition in the U.S., a weak economy in its home market of Germany, and a plunge in profits at Mercedes Car Group, its most important division.

The meeting, sometimes interrupted by audience members applauding the denunciations of Mr. Schrempp's record, unfolded less than a week after DaimlerChrysler announced the biggest recall in Mercedes-Benz history -- covering 1.3 million cars, or roughly the equivalent of a full year's sales by the Mercedes Car Group. It also came days after DaimlerChrysler's announcement of a major restructuring of its ailing Smart small-car unit that is expected to cost DaimlerChrysler as much as €1.2 billion ($1.54 billion) this year.

Under the 60-year-old Mr. Schrempp, who has been at the helm for a decade, DaimlerChrysler has aggressively expanded its world-wide operations, with uneven results. Chrysler, after slashing costs and introducing a raft of eye-catching cars, last year reported €1.43 billion in operating profit, reversing a €506 million operating loss in 2003. At the same time, DaimlerChrysler's commercial-trucks division has rebounded from losses to post a 64% rise in operating profit in 2004.

But quality troubles have hurt Mercedes, the company's crown jewel and source of as much as half of its annual profits in good times. Hit by the weak dollar and soaring costs for fixing faulty electronics in thousands of cars made in the past few years, Mercedes in the fourth quarter of 2004 generated €20 million in operating profit, down 97%.


Although the Mercedes recall announced last week includes cars made as recently as last month, Mr. Schrempp repeated assurances that "every vehicle that leaves our product lines today has the highest record of quality ever recorded." Mr. Schrempp also noted that DaimlerChrysler was able to compensate for the slide in Mercedes's profits last year through stronger results at its commercial-vehicles division and the Chrysler Group. DaimlerChrysler posted a 1% increase in operating profit in 2004 to €5.8 billion.

That defense drew a rebuke from DWS's Mr. Kaldemorgen. "Is it really useful to shoot yourself in the foot to prove you're a capable doctor?" he said.

In terms of market value, DaimlerChrysler is well behind industry leader Toyota Motor Corp., which has a market value of about $126 billion. Mr. Schrempp noted, however, that the company's 2004 market value -- about €35 billion -- was the third highest of any auto maker, and is roughly equal to that of Volkswagen AG and BMW AG combined. DaimlerChrysler's current market cap is roughly half of what it was after the 1998 merger.

In a sign of the emotions Mr. Schrempp arouses among some investors, one speaker demanded to know the salary of his wife, Lydia, who works in his office. The chief financial officer of the company, Bodo Uebber, declined to disclose Mrs. Schrempp's salary but said it is "in line with what is standard" for DaimlerChrysler managers.

The New York Review of Books

Review

Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945
by Max Hastings


Armageddon is a mosaic composed of hundreds of brightly colored fragments, each one a story told by an eye-witness. Most of the fragments occupy less than a page. The mosaic is a panorama of the last eight months of World War II in Europe, between September 1944 and May 1945. These were the months in which British and American armies in the West and Russian armies in the East fought their way across the frontiers of Germany and finally defeated German armies on German soil. The panorama is remarkable in many ways. The toll of death and destruction and misery during these eight months was unequaled by any similar period in the long history of human misfortunes, wars, and persecutions. The German armies fought with extraordinary skill and bravery to defend their shrinking territory, long after any realistic hope of victory had disappeared. The invading armies, in spite of profound political and cultural differences, succeeded in working together until their job was done. Each of these aspects of the panorama is illuminated by personal experiences described in the individual fragments.

The eyewitnesses are divided more or less evenly between soldiers and civilians, between males and females, between Germans, Russians, Poles, Jews, Britons, and Americans. Hastings interviewed most of them personally during the year 2002, when he traveled to their countries and met them in their homes, most of them by then old people recalling events that happened when they were in their teens or twenties. Hastings is well aware that memories recalled after fifty-eight years are unreliable. As he says, these memories are not history. They are the raw material out of which history may grow. They provide a useful corrective to official histories based on written documents, which may be equally unreliable. They give us direct access to the human face of war, the face that the official histories usually ignore.

To interview German and Russian witnesses, Hastings used interpreters whose help he gratefully acknowledges. The interpreters not only translated but also helped him to find witnesses with good stories to tell, and these witnesses then led him to others among their friends and acquaintances. Two groups of witnesses that he found in this way were Russian women who had been girl-soldiers in the Red Army, and German women who had been refugees escaping from East Prussia when the Red Army overran their homeland. The Russians describe a tough but in many ways joyful atmosphere of comradeship and shared hardship on the road to victory. The Germans describe a nightmare of death and destruction as they made their way as exiles from a lost paradise. It is not surprising that the best witnesses are usually female, since women live longer than men in all countries, and especially in Russia.

In addition to the recent interviews, Hastings also includes in his account interviews that he recorded long ago as raw material for his other historical books, Bomber Command, a history of the British strategic bombing of Germany published in 1979, and Overlord, a history of the invasion of France by British and American armies published in 1984. The earlier interviews are mostly with senior commanders and politicians who were no longer alive when Armageddon was written. Hastings also includes quotations from letters and documents that he found in Russian archives and in various other archives that recently became accessible to historians.

The older interviews and letters provide a striking contrast to the newer interviews. The older sources show us war as seen by commanders and planners, a succession of operations following one another in a logical sequence like the moves in a game of strategy. The new interviews show us war as seen by foot soldiers and civilian victims, a succession of murderous assaults that occur randomly and unpredictably, without any intelligible pattern. Both views of war are valid, and both are necessary components of any history that attempts to be truthful. Hastings keeps the two views in balance and blends them skillfully as he builds his mosaic. Where the two views conflict, he tends to give greater credence to the foot soldier than to the general.

My own limited experience of World War II leads me to share Hastings's bias in favor of foot soldiers. I belong to the same generation as Hastings's foot soldier witnesses. I was lucky not to be a foot soldier. I was a civilian living in London at various times when German bombers were flying overhead. From time to time a bomb would fall and demolish a couple of houses. Our antiaircraft guns made a lot of noise but I never saw them hit an airplane. I remember thinking that the German kids overhead were probably as bewildered as I was. The nearest I came to being hurt was in January 1944, when a bomb fell on our street and broke our windows. This happened while the German army in Russia was fighting monstrous battles to hold its ground against the Soviet winter offensive. The fate of the world was being decided in Russia.

Hitler was evidently out of touch with reality, sending his precious airplanes to London to break our windows instead of sending them to Russia where they were desperately needed. The most vivid impression that remains to me from those times is a feeling of irrelevance. The little game that I was witnessing in London was wholly irrelevant to the serious war that we were supposed to be fighting. My memory fits well with the picture of the war that Hastings shows us. The serious and purposeful fighting is done by a small fraction of the people involved. Most of the people, most of the time, are irrelevant. Irrelevant or not, they still suffer the consequences.

The history of World War II teaches us several lessons that are still valid today. First is the immense importance of the Geneva Conventions on humane treatment of prisoners in mitigating the human costs of war. All through Hastings's narrative, we see a stark contrast between two kinds of war, the war in the West following the Geneva rules and the war in the East fought without rules. A large number of witnesses of the western war, German as well as British and American, owe their lives to the Geneva conventions. In the western war, soldiers fought hard as long as fighting made sense, and surrendered when fighting did not make sense, with a good chance of being treated decently as prisoners of war. Many of the prisoners on both sides were killed in the heat of battle before reaching prison camps, but most of them survived. Those who reached the prison camps were treated in a civilized fashion, with some supervision by delegates of the International Red Cross. They were neither starved nor tortured.

At the same time, on the eastern side of the war, brutality was the rule and the International Red Cross had no voice. Civilians were routinely raped and murdered, and prisoners of war were starved. Soldiers were expected to fight to the death, and most of them did, since they had little hope of survival as prisoners. It is not possible to calculate the numbers of lives saved in the West and lost in the East by following and not following the Geneva rules. The numbers certainly amount to hundreds of thousands in the West and millions in the East. Americans who are trying today to weaken or evade the Geneva rules are acting shortsightedly as well as immorally.

A second important lesson of World War II is the fact that German soldiers consistently fought better than Britons or Americans. Whenever they were fighting against equal numbers, the Germans always won, a fact recognized by the Allied generals, who always planned to achieve numerical superiority before attacking. This was the main reason why the Allied advance into Germany was slow. If the Allied soldiers had been able to fight like Germans, the war would probably have been over in 1944 and millions of lives would have been saved.

Hastings explains the superiority of German soldiers as a consequence of the difference between a professional army and a citizen army. The Germans were professionals, brought up in a society that glorified soldiering, and toughened by years of fighting in Russia. The British and American soldiers were mostly amateurs, civilians who happened to be in uniform, brought up in societies that glorified freedom and material comfort, and lacking experience of warfare. The difference between the German and Allied armies was similar to the difference between Southern and Northern armies in the American Civil War. The Southern soldiers fought better and the Southern generals were more brilliant. The Northern soldiers won in the end because there were more of them and they had greater industrial resources, just as the Allies did in World War II. The leaders of the Old South romanticized war and led their society to destruction, just as the leaders of Germany did eighty years later.

Hastings says we should take pride in the fact that our soldiers did not fight as well as Germans. To fight like Germans, they would have had to think like Germans, glorifying war and following their leaders blindly. The Germans have a word, Soldatentum, which means the pursuit of soldiering considered as a spiritual vocation. Fortunately, the word cannot be translated into English. The literal translation is soldierliness, but the word "soldierliness" in English does not convey the tone of solemnity that Soldatentum conveys in German. We should consider ourselves lucky that Soldatentum is not embedded in our culture as it was embedded in the culture of Germany in 1944. The Germans who survived World War II are also lucky, since the devastation of their country finally convinced them that Soldatentum was a false god.

The third lesson of World War II is the value of international alliances. Inter- national alliances are slow and cumbersome and unromantic. Leaders of international alliances cannot move quickly. They must make compromises and accept delays in order to achieve consensus. They cannot make brilliant and disastrous decisions as Hitler did. They cannot lead their people to destruction. To fight a war within the constraints of an international alliance is a good protection against fatal mistakes and follies. Eisenhower was an ideal person to lead an international alliance. He was a mediocre strategist and an excellent diplomat. He had no interest in military glory. His priorities were to hold the alliance together and to win the war with the minimum number of casualties. Unlike the brilliant German generals who were his opponents, he demanded as little as possible from his soldiers. He preferred to end the war with live soldiers rather than with dead heroes.

Eisenhower won the war by going slow and avoiding big mistakes. The most important decision that he made during the period covered by Armageddon was to send a personal message informing Stalin that his armies would not try to take Berlin. The message was sent in March 1945, without consulting the political authorities in Washington and London. Eisenhower knew that several of his subordinate generals wanted passionately to march in triumph through Berlin. He knew that the attempt to do so might result either in a bloody battle with the Germans or in a disastrous clash with the Russians. He knew that many political leaders in Washington and London would give strong support to a grab for Berlin. He took personal responsibility for a decision that would be politically unpopular at home but would save the alliance with Russia and incidentally save the lives of his soldiers.

Hastings in his penultimate chapter, "The Earth Will Shake as We Leave the Scene," describes how the war in the east ended. The title of the chapter is a quote from Josef Goebbels, spoken shortly before he committed suicide. Stalin launched his final offensive against Berlin in April 1945 and lost 350,000 men in three weeks. The Germans lost about a third as many before they were overrun. The British and Americans stopped at the Elbe River and came home alive.

I remember a conversation with my father in 1940, when France had dropped out of World War II and England was fighting alone against Germany. I was depressed and despondent, but my father was disgustingly cheerful. I said the situation was hopeless, there was no way we could win the war, and we had only the choice between surrendering and continuing to fight forever. My father said, don't worry, just hang on, and things will turn out all right in the end. He said, all we have to do is to behave halfway decently, and the whole world will come to our side. I did not believe him, but of course he was right. We did behave halfway decently, and within two years the whole world came to our side. Instead of carrying the fate of the world on our shoulders, we became minor players in a grand alliance. The alliance took away our freedom of action, but allowed us to achieve our objectives at a reasonable cost.

The war that is now raging in Iraq illustrates once again the value of international alliances. If the decision to go to war had been in the hands of an international alliance, the war would probably never have started. If it had started by deliberate decision of an international authority, it would have been a war of limited objectives like the first Gulf War of 1991. It would have left a functioning government in Baghdad responsible for maintaining peace and security. The United States would have avoided the disastrous mistakes that are always more likely to occur when actions are taken hastily and unilaterally.

A fourth lesson of World War II is the moral ambiguity of war even when it is fought for a good cause. Armageddon is full of examples of moral ambiguity, both at the level of individual soldiers and at the level of governments. No matter whether their cause is just or unjust, individual soldiers in the heat of battle frequently kill prisoners of war or innocent bystanders. Women are raped, goods are stolen, and homes are destroyed. Horror stories are more horrible in the East but also occur in the West. Those who commit crimes are not always German. War is inherently immoral, and everyone who engages in war is doing things which under normal circumstances would be considered criminal. One of Hastings's witnesses was a private in an American infantry division during the German offensive in the Ardennes in December 1944. Speaking of German prisoners, he says, "If they wore the black uniforms of the SS, they were shot." He did not know that all German tank crews had black uniforms, whether they belonged to SS or to regular army units.

At the level of governments, there are two egregious examples of moral ambiguity, the betrayal of Poland and the strategic bombing of German cities. Poland was a moral problem for the Allies from the beginning of the war to the end. At the beginning, Britain and France declared war on Germany when Hitler invaded Poland, but took no military action in the West while Poland was overrun. Stalin had signed an agreement with Hitler to divide Poland between Germany and Russia. Britain and France were legally and morally obliged to defend Poland, but gave the Poles no help. During the years between 1941 and 1944, when Poland was occupied by Germany, airplanes with Polish crews were flying from bases in Britain to drop supplies and weapons to resistance fighters in Poland. These "special operations" to Poland suffered terrible losses, averaging 12 percent per operation. They were suicide missions for the crews that flew them. They provided minimal help to the resistance.

When the resistance fighters rose in revolt against the Germans in Warsaw in August 1944, the Allies again did nothing to help, and the Germans crushed the revolt mercilessly. Hastings found few witnesses of the catastrophe in Warsaw, since hardly any of the resistance fighters survived. Soon after that, Soviet troops occupied Poland and installed their own puppet government, with enforcement provided by the Soviet secret police. The final act of betrayal was the Yalta agreement of February 1945, in which Roosevelt and Churchill agreed, in effect, to let Stalin do what he wished with Poland. Britain and America were faced with an insoluble moral dilemma. To defeat Hitler, they needed to maintain the alliance with Stalin. To maintain the alliance, they needed to abandon Poland.

The moral issues raised by the strategic bombing of German cities are less clear-cut. The main question is whether the bombing of cities was morally justified as a military operation helping to win the war. Hastings devotes a long chapter, "Firestorms: War in the Sky," to the bombing campaign, with testimony from many witnesses who were flying in the bombers and others who were among the bombed. He lets the witnesses speak for themselves. They do not have much to say about the moral issues. The bomber crewmen still believe what they were told by their commanders, that the bombing was morally justified since it made a major contribution to winning the war. German civilian witnesses still mostly consider themselves victims of an evil and misdirected vengeance. Prisoners and slave laborers in Germany welcomed the bombing as a promise of their approaching liberation. Since I was myself a witness, serving as a civilian analyst at the headquarters of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command from which the British part of the campaign was directed, I add my testimony here to the others.

At Bomber Command headquarters, I was responsible for collecting and analyzing information about bomber losses. Our losses were tremendous, more than 40,000 highly trained airmen killed. Until the last few months of the war, a crewman had only one chance in four of surviving to the end of his tour of thirty operations. Many of the survivors signed on for a second tour, in which their chances of survival were not much better. The total economic cost of Bomber Command, including the production of airplanes and fuel and bombs, the training of crews, and the conduct of operations, was about one quarter of the entire British war effort. It was my judgment at the time, and remains so today, that the cost of Bomber Command in men and resources was far greater than its military effectiveness. From a military standpoint, we were hurting ourselves more than we were hurting the Germans. It cost us far more to attack German cities than it cost the Germans to defend them. The German night-fighter force, which was the most effective part of the defense and caused most of our losses, was minuscule compared with Bomber Command.

There is overwhelming evidence that the bombing of cities strengthened rather than weakened the determination of the Germans to fight the war to the bitter end. The notion that bombing would cause a breakdown of civilian morale turned out to be a fantasy. And the notion that bombing would cause a breakdown of weapons production was also a fantasy. After a devastating attack on a factory, the Germans were able to repair the machinery and resume full production in an average time of six weeks. We could not hope to attack the important factories frequently enough to keep them out of action. We learned after the war that, in spite of the bombing, German weapons production increased steadily up to September 1944. In the last few months of the war, bombing of oil refineries caused the German armies to run out of oil, but they never ran out of weapons. Putting together what I saw at Bomber Command with the testimony of Hastings's witnesses, I conclude that the contribution of the bombing of cities to military victory was too small to provide any moral justification for the bombing.

Unfortunately, the official statements of the British government always claimed that the bombing was militarily effective and therefore morally justified. As a result of their ideolog-ical commitment to bombing as a war-winning strategy, the leaders of the government were deluding themselves and also deluding the British public. Hastings says that in the last phase of the war "the moral cost of killing German civilians in unprecedented numbers outweighed any possible strategic advantage." I would make a stronger statement. I would say that quite apart from moral considerations, the military cost of killing German civil-ians outweighed any possible strategic advantage.

The strategic thinking of all the participants in World War II was dominated by their experiences in World War I. Memories of World War I were handed down from the parents to the children of that generation. Paradoxically, the winners and losers of World War I derived opposite conclusions from their experiences. The winners, Britain and America and France, looked back on World War I as an unmitigated horror. Their strategies in World War II were driven by the imperative that the horrors of World War I must not be repeated. For Britain and America, the key to victory was to be strategic bombing. For France, the key was a defensive strategy based on the Maginot Line. But the losers, Germany and Russia, looked back on World War I as a heroic struggle which they could have won if they had had more competent and resolute political leadership. Their strategies in World War II were driven by the idea that they could fight World War I over again and this time do it right. The key to victory was a great army organized to carry out enormous offensive operations, like the German offensive that almost overran Paris and the Russian offensive that almost overran East Prussia in 1914, but this time with better training and better equipment so that there would be no "almost." This strategy succeeded for the Germans in France in 1940 and for the Russians in East Prussia in 1945.

Hastings's book describes how these different strategies partially succeeded and partially came to grief in the bloody finale of World War II. While the British and American armies were cautiously moving into Germany, the Germans and Russians were fighting World War I over again, launching large-scale offensives and counter-offensives, accepting huge losses on both sides, as the Red Army fought its way from the Vistula to the Elbe. Two huge Russian armies raced one another to be the first to march in triumph through Berlin. The price that this race cost in dead and wounded was willingly paid. Meanwhile, the Americans and British failed to defeat Germany with bombing, but succeeded in avoiding the catastrophic carnage of World War I.

One of the notorious examples of the tragic waste of human life in World War I was the death of Henry Moseley, a brilliant young physicist who made a great discovery in 1913 and then died as a volunteer soldier at Gallipoli in 1915. The British government made a deliberate decision in World War II not to allow scientific talent to be wasted. As a result of this decision, I was given a safe job as a statistician at Bomber Command, while my contemporaries who flew in the bombers mostly died. I owe my survival directly to Henry Moseley and to the British strategy of minimizing the losses of scientists. If the authorities had not clung so stubbornly to their belief in the effectiveness of strategic bombing, they could have saved not only me but the others too.

After Armageddon was written, another book by a witness of the German tragedy was published in English, The End by Hans Nossack. Nossack was a famous German writer who was living in Hamburg during World War II. The city was destroyed in July 1943 by massive incendiary attacks, culminating in a firestorm similar to the one that destroyed Dresden in 1945. The destruction of Hamburg was the most successful of all the operations of the British Bomber Command. Nossack was taking a holiday in a village near Hamburg when it happened. After the firestorm, Nossack walked through the city and recorded what he saw. His book was written in November 1943 and published in German as part of a longer work with the title Interview mit dem Tode (Interview with Death) in 1948. The English version is elegantly translated by Joel Agee, and illustrated with photographs taken after the catastrophe in 1943 by Erich Andres. Agee has added a foreword describing the history of the book and the translation. The book is a work of art, distilling into sixty-three short pages the German experience of total destruction, just as John Hersey's Hiro-shima distilled the Jap- anese experience three years later. It is unfortunate that the publication of Agee's translation was delayed by thirty years.

The End was written only four months after the events that it describes, before the Allied invasion of France and long before the end of the war. It gives authentic testimony, un-tainted by knowledge of later events, of the effect of strategic bombing on a civilian population. It describes briefly the physical horrors of the clean-up after the bombing:

People said that the corpses, or whatever one wants to call the remains of dead people, were burned on the spot or destroyed in the cellars with flamethrowers. But actually, it was worse. The flies were so thick that the men couldn't get into the cellars, they kept slipping on maggots the size of fingers, and the flames had to clear the way for them to reach those who had perished in flames.

Rats and flies were the lords of the city. Insolent and fat, the rats disported themselves on the streets.

But Nossack was not so much concerned with physical horrors as with the state of mind of the survivors. According to his testimony, the survivors mostly returned to live in the cellars of their ruined homes and started as soon as possible to resume their accustomed routines. They preferred to live in caves among friends rather than in houses among strangers. The struggle to survive kept them busy and gave them little time for grieving. Since they had lost everything, all they had left was each other. They shared what little they had, and worked together to bring the city back to life.

Concerning the question whether the bombing increased or decreased the loyalty of citizens to the government, Nossack has this to say:

It would be a mistake, however, to speak of latent unrest and rebellion at the time. Not only the enemies but also our own authorities miscalculated in this respect. Everything went on very quietly and with a definite concern for order, and the State took its bearings from this order that had arisen out of the circumstances. Wherever the State sought to impose regulations of its own, people just got upset and angry.... Today the State credits itself with having exercised "restraint," but that is ridiculous. Others say we were much too apathetic at the time to be capable of revolt. That is not true either. In those days everyone said what was on his mind, and no feeling was further from people than fear.

Nossack's conclusion is that the bombing decreased the respect of citizens for the State but increased their loyalty to the community.

Concerning the question whether the bombing was criminal, Nossack says:

I have not heard a single person curse the enemies or blame them for the destruction. When the newspapers published epithets like "pirates of the air" and "criminal arsonists," we had no ears for that. A much deeper insight forbade us to think of an enemy who was supposed to have caused all this; for us, he, too, was at most an instrument of unknowable forces that sought to annihilate us. I have not met even a single person who comforted himself with the thought of revenge. On the contrary, what was commonly said or thought was: Why should the others be destroyed as well?

Nossack expresses his own astonishment that people accepted their fate with stoic spirit, as if the destruction were not the work of human hands but of an impersonal destiny.

The End gives us an intimate picture of Armageddon as it was experienced by an individual German. The German tradition in life and literature is intensely philosophical. More than other people, Germans isolate themselves from reality by spinning cocoons of philosophy around unpleasant facts. Nossack describes himself walking through the ruins of Hamburg like a disembodied spirit, detached from the things and people that he is observing. He writes:

We walked through the world like dead men who no longer care about the petty miseries of the living.... If after hours of searching you met a person, it would only be someone else wandering in a dream through the eternal wasteland. We would pass each other with a shy look and speak even more softly than before.

Perhaps this habit of philosophical detachment helps to explain why the German armies fought so professionally to the bitter end in 1945, when every day that they prolonged the fighting only increased the suffering of their own people as well as the suffering of the others.

Germany's new 'great depression'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4456087.stm

Professor Bainbridge

Germans on V-E Day

German aggression started the two largest wars in world history, yet the LA Times reports that the Germans are starting to view themselves as victims!

"Are the Germans now suddenly seeing themselves in a different light — as a community joined in suffering?" the magazine Der Spiegel asked in a recent issue. "Has the 'nation of perpetrators' become the 'nation of victims'? Has the chapter of self-chastisement now been closed?"

Apparently so, at least if the remarkable behavior of Germany's ambassador to the UK is typical of modern German thought:

"The British behave as if they had conquered Hitler's hordes single-handedly. And they continue to see us as Nazis, as if they have to refight the battles every evening. They are enchanted by this Nazi dimension," he said yesterday. ...

A recent survey showed that when British 10- to 16-year olds were asked what they associated Germany with, 78 per cent said the Second World War, and 50 per cent mentioned Hitler.

Hmm, I wonder where they get such notions? Meanwhile, in "other" news:

A photograph of Nazi Hermann Goering in the programme of the German Open tennis tournament and reference to the host club's "golden times" after its Jewish members fled in the thirties has caused outrage....

In a section of the programme on the club's rich heritage, Luftwaffe chief Goering is pictured sitting on the club's honorary tribune, with uniformed Nazi officers behind him.

The text describes how Jewish members of the club fled Hitler and continues: "With its membership reduced by half in this way, the club, previously known as a 'Jewish club', opened itself to new members."

"In sporting terms this change brought no interruption for the club and top German tennis. On the contrary, golden times ensued." ...

Rot Weiss President Hans-Juergen Jobski said the article was a catastrophe and inexcusable.

Gee, you think? But if Jobski thinks so now, why didn't somebody catch it beforehand? And they say bloggers need editors!

The Wall Street Journal Europe

Germany's Message
May 11, 2005

When German Social Democratic Party Secretary General Franz Müntefering called private equity investors locusts who "devour" companies and jobs he started more than just a "capitalism debate," as it is now so harmlessly called in Germany. It is not simply a debate about what type of economic system Germans want to see in their country but a clear anti-American polemic paired with what some consider anti-Semitic overtones. A leaked Social Democratic blacklist of supposedly "evil" capitalists contains not a single German company. Instead, all the names are American, some of them Jewish.

The message this sends is obvious: "Good German" capital works to the social advancement of the country's workforce while it is foreign, specifically (Jewish-) American capital that destroys jobs.

This kind of vulgar anti-capitalism is of course not open to reason and