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“After the Holocaust: National Attitudes to Jews: The Politics of Memory: Holocaust and Legitimacy in Post-Nazi Germany" by Manfred Henningsen 

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“After the Holocaust: National Attitudes to Jews: The Politics of Memory: Holocaust and Legitimacy in Post-Nazi Germany" by Manfred Henningsen 

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Post-Nazi Germany struggled to preserve and integrate memories of the Holocaust into public consciousness, and even failed to integrate into the political and social restructuring of West German society (Henningsen, 1989, p. 15). Rather, Holocaust memories and acknowledgement resided on the peripheries of public consciousness (Henningsen, 1989, p. 15). This linked to a widespread shame and a desire to to move on from a malicious point in German history.

During the Nazi rule, there was complicity and collaboration with the party that enabled the Final Solution. Amongst these, the elites that carried out and manifested the genocide ignored their roles in the Holocaust, rebuffing their participation in it (Henningsen, 1989, p. 15). Critically, the “amnesia” that manifested amongst these elites in conjunction to the de-emphasis of complicity created an erasure of their participation in the Nazi regime and their perpetuation in the Holocaust (Henningsen, 1989, p. 15).

Henningsen raised a critical point in Holocaust remembrance and Nazi legacy - the shame that arose out of this point in German history “charged Germany with accepting historical responsibility” for the victims of the Third Reich (Henningsen, 1989, p. 16).

The Manifestation of Amnesia into West German Structures

The Germans were left with the responsibility to prosecute Nazi criminals not already dealt with by the Allies. The German prosecution initiated 90,921 investigations and by January 1986, 6479 cases were completed (Henningsen, 1989, p. 18). Most Nazi officials and collaborators dodged criminal charges and were reintegrated back into society (Henningsen, 1989, p. 18-19). The courts that held these trials were manned by judges that were granted amnesty for their own involvement with the Nazi party (Henningsen, 1989, p. 19). Nazi elites were able to skate persecution, and to reintegrate into the Federal Republic (Henningsen, 1989, p. 20). This reintegration was also linked to the tensions rising against Communism in the East; to build a strong post-war society, the Federal Republic needed the old bureaucrats to resume positions in society (Henningsen, 1989, p. 20). If all these individuals were charged and imprisoned, it would leave a weakened state. The establishment of the Federal Republic in 1949 was riddled with former Nazi’s holding critical roles (Henningsen, 1989, p. 20).

Responsibility for the Holocaust was diverted by the mass victimization of collaborators, spanning from teachers in elementary schools to professors in university; this assisted in the de-emphasis of Holocaust accountability (Henningsen, 1989, p. 21). Plus, the reintegration of industrial elites such as Krupp, Flick, and I.G. Farben directors and their roles in the rebuilding of West Germany’s industrial sector subsequently thwarted any sort of discourse on Germany's economy and its role in the Holocaust (Henningsen, 1989, p. 21).

Medical professionals were also indicted for the roles they played under the Nazi regime, but they diverted any sort of punishment because the borders between healing and killing were “muddy,” rectifying them of any sort of responsibility (Henningsen, 1989, p. 21). During the Third Reich, medical experiments and procedures carried out by Nazi physicians resulted in the killing of Jewish, mentally ill, homosexual, and other peripheral groups of German society (Henningsen, 1989, p. 21). To illustrate, 90,000 physicians were mobilized, and only a minimal 350 were charged for their actions (Henningsen, 1989, p. 22). Henningsen highlighted how this number also implicated the coworkers that observed these medical atrocities being committed and did not speak up, meaning that this number should have been higher (Henningsen, 1989, p. 22).

German psychologists Alexander and Margarete Mitscherriich coined the term Die Unfihigkeit zu trauem, “The Inability to Mourn,” describing German silence on the Third Reich (Henningsen, 1989, p. 22). To deal with the guilt and responsibility of the Holocaust, Germans created metaphorical walls to protect their consciousness (Henningsen, 1989, p. 22).

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This project argues the legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust has created an internal conflict of identity and nationality in Germany. As the nation sought to reform its societal and political structures, it brought a struggle to articulate the atrocities of the Third Reich. This will be examined in the context of the Federal Republic and the Historian’s Quarrel or the Historikerstreit of the 1980s.

Questions Posed:

What were the defining conflicts of national identity?

How did the legacy of Nazism manifest in the social and political structures of the Federal Republic?

How have subsequent German generations dealt with their nation’s history of Nazism and the Holocaust?

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Ernst Nolte's article expressed a desire for Germany to separate itself from its Nazi past, creating distance from the Third Reich in order for German history to not be seen so different from other European and global histories (Nolte, 1993, para. 1).

Nolte argued that “all accusations of guilt that come from Germans are dishonest since the accusers fail to include themselves or the group they represent and in essence simply desire to administer the coup de grace to their old enemies” (Nolte, 1993, para. 5). Essentially, Nolte was concerned with how emphasizing Nazism in historical discourse distorted German nationalism.

To absolve this, Nolte pointed to how history was meant to be revised, but when it came to discourse on the Third Reich, any sort of revision was deemed “dangerous” (Nolte, 1993, para 7). Nolte disputed this notion, arguing that a reexamination and highlighting non-singularity could liberate Germans from their national past (Nolte, 1993, para. 7).

Nolte's central point was that the Holocaust was not "singular" in its atrocity, referring to the Bolshevik Gulag Archipelago as a prenotion to the development of Auschwitz (Nolte, 1993, para. 11) This comparison was meant to demonstrate how mass killings were observed throughout history and not unique to Germany as an attempt to alleviate the national past.

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Ernst Nolte and Jurgen Habermas’ dissemination of Nazi legacy and Holocaust remembrance illustrated the dichotomic understandings of the German past, pulling on widespread notions of guilt and shame for the atrocities of the Third Reich. As this debate initiated in the 1980s, generations after the end of WWII, it brought to light how subsequent generations were to articulate their national history.

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In Nolte’s revision, he wished for Germans to be alleviated from the past, and to move on with the passing of time. In doing so, he minimized the severity of the Holocaust and of Nazi criminality in an attempt to liberate the German consciousness. Habermas was highly critical of this rearticulation, and emphasized that the integrity of the newfound democracy depended on confronting the authoritarian past. Acknowledgement of Nazism, the Holocaust, and its implications on contemporary Germany was the key to maintaining a healthy democracy.

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While Nolte is not technically wrong, the Holocaust is not the first genocide committed in global history, and it certainly will not be the last, in doing so he takes away from Nazi atrocity and understates the extent of the Jewish genocide. Hitler was not the sole orchestrator of the Holocaust; in order for the Holocaust to reach the extent that it did, killing millions of Jewish individuals and other peripheral groups it had to be actualized by a large portion of the population. By pointing to other genocides when speaking of the Holocaust is not productive; all it does is trivialize the atrocity, and this is where Nolte’s rearticulation lacked and where Habermas' discussion pointed to.

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In the 21st century, the great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren of both Holocaust survivors and Nazi collaborators have access to a wide array of Nazi and Holocaust articulation in memorials, the classroom, and now online - how do they understand this event in German history, and how does it differ from previous generations?

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How does contemporary Nazi and Holocaust articulation inform other events not only in contemporary Germany, but globally? How can we use rearticulations to inform modern discourse?

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German philosopher and sociologist, Jürgen Habermas, 2019. 

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Habermas insisted that historical discourse cannot take a moral abstraction if it were to do serious historical analysis (Habermas, 1988, p. 27). He said that distinguishing between collaborators and perpetrators from victims was essential and collectivizing suffering under the Nazi regime was not productive (Habermas, 1988, p. 27). If one does this he “...obviously has something else up his sleeve.” (Habermas, 1988, p. 27).

Habermas also pointed to how Nazi and Holocaust remembrance centered on fears of Bolshevik threats that were used as defense (Habermas, 1988, p. 27). He argued that the Bitburg cemetery commemoration did push for a public acknowledgement of the German past, albeit through a nationalistic lens (Habermas, 1988, p. 27-28).

Crucially, the dichotomy between Bitburg, Bergen-Belsen, the SS-graves and the mass graves of concentration camps de-emphasized Nazi atrocity (Habermas, 1988, p. 28). Habermas criticized that the veterans and their meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan was an inherently political act, to re brush German image to one of fighters of Communist and Bolshevik threats (Habermas, 1988, p. 28).

Habermas further highlighted the responsibility of historians to legitimize the current political climate relied on the dissemination of the past (Habermas, 1988, p. 28). This meant for a “retrospective view” of history, meaning that even though contemporary historians are physically removed from the Nazi past, they still had a duty to examine history from their modern contexts (Habermas, 1988, p. 30). This strategy allows for a more nuanced view into historical events, by simultaneously studying those who lived it and those who lived after it.

Habermas was also critical of how Hillgruber portrayed Germany as a “courageous soldier” and of a “desperate civilization population” (Habermas, 1988, p. 30). In Hillgruber’s articulation, the Final Solution was solely on Hitler to blame, disregarding the Nazi policies, such as the Race Laws, that discriminated against the Jewish population (Habermas, 1988, p. 32). If these policies were enacted into the very socio political fabric of German society, this meant that perpetuation was not solely on Hitler but a larger pool of functionaries (Habermas, 1988, p. 32).

Habermas further condemned Nolte's attention to other mass genocides, such as Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, when referring to the Holocaust (Habermas, 1988, p. 34).

Nolte’s articulation allowed for "two birds to be killed with one stone" - the Nazi atrocity is no longer unique and singular in European history, and the Final Solution can be attributed to the Bolshevik threats of the East, whom still pose a threat in contemporary Germany (Habermas, 1988, p. 36). This both alleviates the German public consciousness and cleanses the national image and identity.

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“Holocaust Scholarship and Politics in the Public Sphere: Reexamining the Causes, Consequences, and Controversy of the Historikerstreit and the Goldhagen Debate: A Forum with Gerrit Dworok, Richard J. Evans, Mary Fulbrook, Wendy Lower, A. Dirk Moses, Jeffrey K. Olick, and Timothy D. Snyder" by Andrew I. Port 

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“Holocaust Scholarship and Politics in the Public Sphere: Reexamining the Causes, Consequences, and Controversy of the Historikerstreit and the Goldhagen Debate: A Forum with Gerrit Dworok, Richard J. Evans, Mary Fulbrook, Wendy Lower, A. Dirk Moses, Jeffrey K. Olick, and Timothy D. Snyder" by Andrew I. Port 

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Scholar Wendy Lower described the Historikerstreit to be a “struggle over the dominant legacy of Nazism in German political culture” (Port, 2017, p. 380). Lower also pointed to how Nazi and Holocaust scholarship at the time of the Historkerstreit centralized around German nationalism, focusing on the German army and people that fought against the Bolsheviks and were victims of the Allies’ bombing campaigns (Port, 2017, p. 380). The focus was on Germans, and did not bring Jewish victims to light. Lower says that “once again history was deployed to serve a national cause” (Port, 2017, p. 380).

Scholar Gerrit Dworok described how Conservatives were pushing for a commemoration of history that highlighted the goods of German history, but simultaneously acknowledging the atrocities of the Third Reich (Port, 2017, p. 381). Opposingly, left-wing liberals scrutinized this emphasis on the positives, and pushed for a democracy that centralized on commemoration of the Final Solution (Port, 2017, p. 381).

Scholar Richard Evans highlighted the politicized aspects of the Historkerstreit, as West Germany grappled with addressing tensions from the East and about alleviating West Germans of their national past (Port, 2017, p. 382).

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 “The Desire to Understand and the Politics of Wissenschaft: An Analysis of the Historikerstreit" by Mark S. Peacock 

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 “The Desire to Understand and the Politics of Wissenschaft: An Analysis of the Historikerstreit" by Mark S. Peacock 

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Habermas was critical of his oppositional scholars, saying that this articulation of Holocaust and Nazi legacy was an attempt to make Germany presentable on the global stage (Peacock, 2001, p. 87).

The Historikerstreit commenced in July 1986, and primarily took place in West Germany’s leading publishers, Ernst Nolte with the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Jürgen Habermas in the left Die Zeit (Peacock, 2001, p. 88). The quarrel centralized around articulations of the Holocaust, the causes, the preconditions, its uniqueness in European history, and the subsequent impact of the atrocities on modern Germany (Peacock, 2001, p. 88-89).

Nolte’s primary concern over Holocaust scholarship was that its articulation was surface level. He pushed for more nuance into Holocaust understandings, but stressed that facts should not be denied and that values from the National Socialist era should not be revived (Peacock, 2001, p. 90).

Nolte’s primary reworking of Holocaust scholarship centralized around understanding the Third Reich in relation to other political tensions at the time, by pointing to the Russian civil war and the Soviet brutality against German populations as a key influence to the Holocaust (Peacock, 2001, p. 91).

Nolte argued that the brutality of Auschwitz is reminiscent of the brutality against German kulaks (Peacock, 2001, p. 91). Nolte’s argument does not hold its weight, as Peacock illustrates: one, Jewish populations did not strive to eliminate or harm the Germans. Secondly, the Holocaust was fueled by a malicious antisemitism deeply rooted in the structures of German society, and that the development and implementation of the Holocaust was akin to an Industrial process, in which it was highly organized and managed (Peacock, 2001, p. 91).

Nolte concluded his remarks that modern German articulations into the Holocaust should be akin to a scientific revision, emphasizing the modernity of the 1990s (Peacock, 2001, p. 92).

Habermas initiated the debate, by responding to Nolte’s remarks, arguing that Nolte’s articulation was a conservative attempt to revitalize the national image of Germany (Peacock, 2001, p. 93). Habermas also pointed to how Hillgrubber’s articulation centralized around the struggles of German soldiers and their oppositions in the East, trying to defend Germans from the Red Army (Peacock, 2001, p. 93). Habermas argued that by honing in on the struggles of German troops, it allows for Nolte, Hillgruber, and like minded scholars to avoid moral struggles (Peacock, 2001, p. 93).

Nolte’s articulation primarily argued that the Holocaust was not a unique event in history, it wasn’t the first genocide and it won’t be the last. Habermas argued that this particular notion is dangerous, as it alleviates both moral dilemmas and it serves to “cleanse” the national identity (Peacock, 2001, p. 94).

Habermas was not entirely opposed to taking a revisionist approach to historical discourse, but he emphasized that when doing so, brushing aside any moral introspection was not productive (Peacock, 2001, p. 94).

Habermas further highlighted how West Germany’s inception into Western politics and sociality post WW2 brought changes, and scrutinized how this garnered a new-born patriotism and nationalism within revisionists (Peacock, 2001, p. 95). Habermas argued that Nolte’s discourse on the German past was clearly political in nature (Peacock, 2001, p. 95).

Despite Nolte and Habermas’ opposing discourses in German history, they both emphasize that a pluralism in history discourse is needed, and to recognize that political influences into historical discourse is dangerous (Peacock, 2001, p. 96).

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“Contemporary Germany and Denial: Is ‘Nazism’ All There Is to Say?” by Geoff Eley 

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“Contemporary Germany and Denial: Is ‘Nazism’ All There Is to Say?” by Geoff Eley 

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In the 1960s, there was an emerging class of intellectuals born between 1921 to 1933, coined the “1945ers” in which the end of the Third Reich had enormous implications into their lives, and were pushing for a liberal democracy (Eley, 2017, p. 48-49). Along with this growing pressure, intellectuals were pushing for a rearticulation of the sociopolitical fabric which relied on the open recognition and articulation of Nazi legacy (Eley, 2017, p. 48-49).

This sentiment was growing amongst private and public spheres of West German society, most notably within the West German student movement that was historically informed, rooting out Nazism in positions of authority and within social structures (Eley, 2017, p. 49-50). This pushed for a society that identified as democratic to disseminate its authoritarian past (Eley, 2017, p. 49-50).

Anti-student movement sentiment grew in West Berlin, backed by SPD mayors that implemented forceful police interventions and criticized leftwing students and their “destruction” of civility (Eley, 2017, p. 49).

Despite efforts to thwart the student movements, they successfully shook the civility the 1945ers wanted to solidify and maintain (Eley, 2017, p. 49).

The unacknowledged Nazi past was always on the peripherals of public German consciousness; this raised tensions of both sides of the political spectrum, the liberals and their need to protect democracy and the rising Left and other alternative movements such as feminism, ecologism, anti-nuclearism and the like (Eley, 2017, p. 50).

Der Spiegel published a story from three Jewish students in 1998, all emphasizing Holocaust memorialization and linking Germans to complicity and perpetuation (Eley, 2017, p. 57). A non-Jewish student, Kathi-Gesa Klafke, scrutinized this account and pointed to how Germans could be victims of the Third Reich as well (Eley, 2017, p. 57).

Klafke said that she herself and her family had nothing to do with the Nazi party and their Final Solution. She emphasized that her actions should solely define her, not the past (Eley, 2017, p. 57).