A bit of a stir was sparked recently by a newly opened photographic exhibit on display at the Paris Historical Library. The ruckus arose over what some feel is the exhibit’s skewed depiction of life in Paris under German occupation from 1940 through 1944. Entitled The Parisians Under the Occupation, the exhibit contains 270 color photos showing the people of Paris engaging in the pleasures of life seemingly undisturbed by events going on in the world beyond the picture frame. The portraits from the city of light show a place barely ruffled by the occasional intrusion of uniformed German soldiers enjoying a stroll or taking in the sights. Critics have denounced the show for its failure to place the photographs in proper context. They point out that the pictures were taken by a photographer accredited to the Nazi propaganda service whose choice of subject carefully excluded the hardships of wartime and the darker sides of occupation – such as executions or the deportation of French Jews.

One does indeed wonder what precisely the exhibit organizers intended. If they sought to remind Parisians that the jackboot-heel of German oppression did not lay equally as heavy on all French necks, then they have obviously succeeded. Any desire on the part of the French to see themselves depicted as victims is jarred by these pictures of smiling, well-clad and seemingly happy Parisians enjoying a delightful sunning at a sidewalk café.

By showing the ordinariness of daily life of many in Parisians, little affected by the “big events” going on around them, the exhibit obviously presents an incomplete picture of the times. But its incompleteness somehow points an even sharper finger at what has been omitted. It also reminds us of just how selective our viewpoints on the past can be, of our preference for remembering the pleasanter things of life – even when they are lived out against a backdrop of mass murder, war and widespread devastation. Sometimes – maybe most of the time – life just goes on.

By coincidence, and not unrelated, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum announced the addition of a set of recently acquired photographs to its permanent collection. Taken from the personal photo-album of the deputy to the commandant of Auschwitz, these pictures also show us people enjoying themselves and relaxing – except that in this case the people depicted are all SS-personnel living out their pleasurable lives in closest proximity to mass slaughter. Again, as with the pictures from Paris, it’s the ordinariness of the things shown and the purposeful exclusion of the horrors going on beyond the frame that is the most striking thing about them.

The two sets of pictures do differ in one way, of course. Viewed with a fuller knowledge, the “normality” of wartime Paris depicts, at worst, an unsettling, disturbing dissonance. The “normality” of SS life at Auschwitz, however, is an outright obscenity.


International Herald Tribune article on Paris exhibit:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/25/europe/paris.php

Paris Historical Library photographic exhibit:
http://www.paris.fr/portail/Culture/Portal.lut?page_id=102&document_type_id=2&document_id=50952&portlet_id=818

US Holocaust Memorial Museum SS photographs:
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/ssalbum/

The 4th division memorial at Ft. Hood, Texas, is a new addition to the site. It has a touching statue of a mourning soldier and a small child.

The themes of children and mourning are also present in this memorial in Hamburg, Germany. The use of the motifs of children and mourning in these two memorials could harldy be more different, however. The German memorial is devoid of text and clearly an anti-war message. The weeping child kneels among debris strongly suggesting mass death in battle (bullet-hole-ridden helmuts) at the feet of an older statue glorifying war. The adult figure wages war, the child despises it; the child is a victim.



In the American memorial, on the other hand, the soldier might be having his doubts. His face is covered as he weeps and his thoughts are not of greater purposes. He is not in a heroic pose, but prostrate and sad. The child, however, remains uprite, unbowed, and almost moving forward. She does not weep, but brings flowers to the grave and comfort to the living - comfort to pick up and continue.

Interestingly, she is not quite touching the man's shoulder, however, suggesting perhaps a kind of blessing, much as a pastor blesses a couple at their wedding or a departing congregation with raised hands. Since the soldier is in combat uniform and the memorial he kneels before is an improvised field memorial, the child shouldn't really be there at all. Perhaps she is only in his memory or on his mind, something the not-quite-touching hand might also be meant to suggest: She is not "really" there at all. Is it the soldier's daughter or the daughter of the dead man who consoles him?

While the American child's posture and gestures might be interpreted as encouraging the mission, she is probably interpreted by most viewers and visitors as an unambiguous symbol of mourning, at least on a consious level. But while she suggests hope at the very least, the German child is clearly a symbol of dispair and hopelessness.

While the German child weeps, "Why are you killing, Daddy?" or "Why is my daddy dead?", the American child suggests, "Don't cry, Daddy, it'll be okay."

The text excerpt from the speech placed directly in front of the weeping soldier in the American memorial removes the ambiguity, however, combining themes of family and mourning with a clear justification of the sacrifice and suggesting a national consensus backing the war.

One of my students and a former student who is currently stationed near there have both recently sent me photos of memorials at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

"Iron Mike"

Vietnam

Global War on Terror

"328th Rock" (First World War)

a memorial to an individual soldier, Francisco "Marty" Martinez

These memorials make a study in what one might call "internal" military memorialization. All the memorials are on the base, accessable to civilians only after passing the controls at the gate. They represent how the military presents itself to itself. The use of military insignia, acronyms and badges on the memorials mark them much like a uniform marks the living soldier with certain attributes which are earned and then worn as an outward indicator. The names are given with military ranks, something untypical for local town or church memorials. To an even greater extent than in other memorials, the dead are kept in their service identity.

The memorial to the fallen airborne infantrymen from the "Global War on Terror" (shown above) is interesting in that the name of the war also indicates a justification for the fallen. It contrasts with other memorials which are for conflicts which require additional justification - for example for "freedom" in the case of the Fort Bragg Vietnam War linked here.

Ephemeral monuments are everywhere. They are warnings to others and they serve important mourning functions for loved ones struggling with the sudden loss of a son, daughter, lover or friend. But how long does an ephemeral monument last? And can strangers also share in the grief associated with the site of mourning? This photograph shows the ephemeral monument to the Torino football player Gigi Meroni who was hit by a car on this corner of Corso Re Umberto in 1967 at the age of 24. The photograph, framed in plexiglass, gives the site a slightly more permanent air, but the materials gathered around it are typically ephemeral: fresh flowers, flags, notes scribbled on multi-coloured pens, balloons and ribbons are regularly found on the site. Very often the writing on these notes is that of a child and it is not uncommon to find teddy bears and other child treasures tied to the post. These are new mourners paying tribute to the footballer, many of them not even born when the player lost his life. Mourning at the site of his death becomes a ritual of belonging to the club. Perhaps that’s why this ephemeral monument has lasted so long.

If you have pictures and materials on other ephemeral monuments you would like to share please send them to us.

In an op-ed for the Miami Herald
(www.miamiherald.com/851/story/483609.html) the former chair of the psychology department at Florida International University, Marvin Dunn, addressed the state of Florida’s recent passage of an official declaration of apology for black slavery. Dunn expressed disappointment at the declaration, calling it “a meaningless act” that “cost the state nothing.” While recognizing the inherent difficulties involved in paying reparations to individual African-Americans, he suggests four ways by which the state may direct compensation to Blacks as a whole. His proposals are, first, that Florida create a comprehensive digital database of all public records relating to the practice of slavery in the state; second, that it underwrite production of a documentary on the history of slavery in Florida; third, that the state provide 1000 full college scholarships per year to Black students, and, lastly, that it should erect a monument to Blacks once held as slaves in Florida.

Certainly no historian (nor, indeed, any right-thinking citizen) could object to providing easy access to information about a subject as important as slavery. Similarly with the production of a film on the topic. Both can promote a wider dissemination and, one would hope, appreciation of the institution of slavery as it was once practiced in the state of Florida.

Dunn’s scholarship idea, by contrast, is problematic as it would seem to be merely a form of individual reparation payments offered under another guise. The idea of scholarships being awarded solely on the basis of kinship to a slave ancestor – even when those awarded such scholarships would have to meet all other admissions criteria – is still fraught with the same pitfalls as cash payments paid directly to individual descendants – and for those same reasons would be unlikely to garner the public support required for passage. In addition to the inherent unfairness of potentially awarding scholarships to those not in need of financial assistance (while the underprivileged go without), there is the larger question of just how Black a person must be in order to qualify. In an age of genetic testing, would some Whites also qualify, provided they could establish a certain degree of African ancestry? Not to mention the more likely problem facing Black state residents who, though possessing a long family history in Florida, lack any record of enslavement there. The payment of reparations in any form, it seems, is a solution whose time has long since passed.

The proposal for a slavery monument is an ambiguous one. A lot would depend on the form and intent such a monument would take. A monument meant simply as a statement of past shame – even one which, as Dunn suggests, honors the contributions made by slaves to “the early growth of the state” – would be little more than a codification in stone of the declaration of regret and apology already issued and likely would not attain much public resonance. In addition, there is also the not insignificant matter of Florida having been a Spanish possession until 1821, when it was ceded to the United States, effectively making the history of slavery practiced within its borders a shared responsibility. Moreover, any monument dedicated solely to commemorating slavery in Florida may be both too narrowly focused and too broadly defined to be of much use.

A monument modelled after South Carolina’s Black Heritage Memorial, located on the State House grounds, with its depictions of the Black (not merely slave) experience across the full length of the state’s history, might offer a better solution. The problem with monuments as such, however, is that they often serve as endpoints to the public discussion of an issue, and not as starting points. Museums and historic sites are perhaps better suited to preserving and promoting memories of the past. In any event, the core impetus behind any effort to deal in this form with the issue of slavery should be to nurture a greater measure of knowledge and appreciation of the complex history of race in America and how that history continues to have meaning for us today.

This week, the new German-made feature film on the wartime exploits of World War One’s leading air ace, Manfred von Richthofen (a.k.a. the Red Baron), began its run in German theaters. The movie, entitled The Red Baron, presents a portrait of a blond pretty boy who scores victories both in the skies and in love. Few historians nowadays would raise objections to the inclusion (no matter how awkwardly) of a romantic subplot in an historical drama -- the employment of such dramatic tools having long become commonplace in cinematic storytelling. What might well raise the historian’s ire, however, is the use of such subplots as a means of initiating a revisionist misrepresentation of historical fact, as is the case here. To quote from the synopsis included in the film’s website:

… von Richthofen soon realizes that his status as a hero is misleading. His love for nurse Kaete opens his eyes to the brutality and barbarity of war – a war that not only leaves no room for honorable chivalry, but also takes friends away from him who risk their lives in audacious air battles.

In a following paragraph (which appears in the German-language but not the English-language version of the site), it goes on to say:

When he realizes that he is being misused for propaganda purposes by the military government, resulting in the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who see in him their role model, von Richthofen makes the fateful decision to break with the cult of heroism surrounding him – a decision that transforms him into a legend ….

This transformation of von Richthofen from chivalrous aerial dualist into a heroic symbol of anti-war resistance is highly problematic and again raises questions about current trends in German historical memory. There is, in fact, no evidence to suggest that von Richthofen ever harbored any anti-war sentiments. He was, by all accounts, a cold-eyed and skillful trophy hunter engaged in eager pursuit of his 81st kill when he was himself shot down over the Somme in 1918.

The Red Baron is not a product of tinsel town – though made in a style commonly associated with Hollywood productions. The move was made by a German director using a German cast and script, all underwritten exclusively by German patrons. It is the past “Made (or, one might better say, manufactured) in Germany.” True, it isn’t serious history. It’s just entertainment. But even entertainment can tell us something about the way that people think about and view the past (or the present). Taking the sort of liberties with a historical figure as this film does points to a tendentious urge in the current German Zeitgeist to subsume their wartime experiences – whether those were, as here, during the First World War or, as in many other instances, in the Second World War – into a grander anti-war epic, without regard to historical accuracy in either the micro or the macro sense of the term. This wholesale conversion of the stuff of the past in service to a postwar ethos reveals just how much the ghosts of that past still haunt the German mind – and how easily that stuff can be reshaped to fit current fashion.

http://www.redbaron-themovie.com

Someone sent me this photograph of the bottom portion of a memorial on the campus of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado. It is interesting in that it commemorates neither the Air Force (which didn't exist as such until 1947) nor the Army Air Corps, but "overseas flyers". That is undoubtedly because the memorial seeks to include not only members of the United States armed forces who flew against Germany, but those American pilots who had volunteered and gone over even before we declared war (April, 1917) to fly with the British and French. But it does restrict the dates to official American involvement in World War One. That excludes American flyers which had been in action beforehand (such as the famed Lafayette Escadrille which had been operating from 1916) and any American flyers involved with the U.S. military intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1919 and 1920. Thus, although there is very little text, it is already somewhat inconsistent.

If anyone has some more photos of this memorial, or any others from the campus, they would make a great addition to sites-of-memory.de.

German officialdom has lately been ruminating whether or not the Germany military’s increased involvement abroad calls for the creation of a new decoration commending special acts of bravery – including possibly reviving perhaps the best known German military award: the Iron Cross. A peitition in support of re-issuing the Iron Cross was registered with the German parliament’s Petition Committee in 2007 and both the German Defense Minister and President Horst Koehler have signaled their approval in principle of the idea of a new decoration – though theydemur at reviving the Iron Cross.

Originally designed and issued in 1813 during the struggles against Napoleon, the Iron Cross was reissued for each of the major conflicts in which Germany was involved through the Second World War. It has not been issued since, however, because of the medal’s popular association with Nazism and German militarism and because it has historically only been awarded to German soldiers serving in times of war. Those in favor of bringing it back into service point out the German military’s current lack of any award specifically aimed at recognizing acts of bravery. They also remind the public of the Iron Cross’s history prior the Nazi era and its use as a national emblem (albeit in slightly modified form) on all vehicles employed by the postwar German armed forces. Somewhat despondently, they also refer to the German public’s generally cool attittude toward its own military services, and to the cuts and deficiencies those forces have faced – suggesting that a historically established symbol like the Iron Cross could compensate to a degree for these slights.

Judging from the public response to news reports on the matter, the idea of reviving the Iron Cross is not viewed at all favorably. Reader comments to stories on the topic carried in Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung were overwhelmingly (almost unanimously) negative. But this rejection appears to come less as a consequence of the historical „baggage“ that the Iron Cross bears than it does from its role as a commendation bestowed during wartime. Clear majorities of German public opinion are against Germany’s military engagement in Afghanistan – and many Germans oppose any Germany military involvement abroad (except perhaps as part of UN-sanctioned peacekeeping or purely „humanitarian“ missions). So the suggestion that their armed forces be granted a special decoration for bravery in combat runs against German self-perception of the country’s role in the world. Germans do not see themselves „at war“ (even in places, like Afghanistan, where combat is a reality) and so resist the notion that their soldiers be grannted war commendations. Online commentary reflects this sentiment, with few giving much attention to to the matter of the Iron Cross specifically and focusing instead on the the broader topic of German military invovlement. For the bulk of German opinion, it seems, there should be no medal for bravery in war (no matter the form the award may take) since there should be no war. So long as this view prevails, any commendation that Germany may issue will have little or no public meaning.

Background:

www.bmvg.de

www.demokratieonline.de

www.sueddeutsche.de

www.spiegel.de

www.faz.net

This past week, German television audiences were offered yet another opportunity to enjoy the sort of portrayal of their collective past once very much in vogue in Germany – and which now seems to be undergoing a revival: that of Germans as victims. ZDF’s prime-time, two-part made-for-tv blockbuster, Die Gustloff, tells the story of the sinking in early 1945 of the former German cruise ship, Wilhelm Gustloff, as it bore thousands of German soldiers and refugees from the clutches of the advancing Red Army to relative safety further west. Since the basic elements of the case were clear – refugees pour in, the ship sails out to sea, where it is attacked by a Soviet submarine and sunk at great loss of life – a good deal of “filler” had to be added to stretch the tale around the movie’s three-hour running time.

One might think that the facts of the story would provide sufficient tragic drama to engage most any audience. But the film’s creators found it necessary to invent a set of appealing lead characters and stock figures to lend the story even more pathos – along with the inevitable romantic sub-plot. Unfortunately, the result is nearly as sluggish as the overburdened Gustloff itself.

In this, Die Gusfloff is much like other recent movie-events of the genre. Over the past several years, Germans have been treated to numerous fictionalized retellings of some of the sadder episodes from their wartime past. The 2006 tv-drama, Dresden, for example, recounted the Allied attack on that city in February of 1945 – as set against the backdrop of a far-fetched romance between a German nurse and a downed RAF bomber crewman. And in 2007 came a story of the German “trail of tears,” entitled Die Flucht, telling the story of a group of Germans fleeing East Prussia in front of the Soviet army.

Taken individually, each of these might be seen as little more than historical (or historicized) fictions: the mining of the German past for modern entertainments. Taken together, however, and especially in combination with other recent films of a similar type, this appears to signal a shift in Germany’s culture of memory as it relates to the German experience in the Second World War. 2005’s 60th anniversary commemorations of the end of that war marked something of a watershed in the way that Germans viewed and depicted their Nazi-era past, as the focus moved from Germany’s victims to Germans as victims. Films like Der Untergang (Downfall), Stalingrad or the innumerable documentaries that ran on German television – along with books such as Joerg Friedrich’s Der Brand (The Fire), detailing the German civilians’ experience under Allied bombing, and Gunter Grass’ Im Krebsgang (Crabwalk), which also dealt with the sinking of the Gustloff – have been welcomed as part of an effort aimed at breaking a so-called “taboo” against commemorating (or even remembering) Germany’s own wartime sufferings and losses. The film Dresden was one of the most expensive productions in the history of Germany’s publicly-funded television networks – and garnered a sizeable share of the tv audience during its two night run. Friedrich’s and Grass’ books became best-sellers in the German market, setting off a wave of publications similarly devoted to distinctly German-focused works. The genre, whether on the page or the big (or little) screen, is popular and it sells.

Aside from the genre’s problematic focus on German suffering to the exclusion of all others – made even more pronounced by the tendency to view the war only from its end – this shift was made even more dubious by the fact that the “taboo” it was supposedly breaking never existed. The early postwar period in Germany was a time of nearly exclusive focus on German woes, German casualties and German losses in war, whether in film, publishing, memorialization (some of which is documented on this site), or everyday conversation. The suffering inflicted on others by Germans was dealt with only marginally, in the main only within academic, artistic and other intellectual circles. Popular memory in West Germany for at least the first fifteen years after the war was given up to exercises in exculpation and self-pity. And even later, when scholarly efforts at digging up the dirt on Germany’s Nazi past were making themselves felt more broadly (especially in official acts of commemoration), strong undercurrents of those earlier ways of remembering remained alive and active.

Contrary to popular impression, even the story of the Wilhelm Gustloff itself was not overlooked. Its story was the subject of a 1959 feature film, entitled Nacht fiel ueber Gotenhafen (Night Fell Over Gotenhafen). Therefore, films like Die Gustloff represent a resurfacing of underlying layers of German memory that may have been merely covered over for a time by other interpretations and depictions. It remains to be seen whether this will turn out to be a temporary phenomenon, or the start of a new re-mixing of the strata of German historical memory.

Note. The University of Leeds held a conference on the subject: “From Perpetrators to Victims? Discourse of ‘German Wartime Suffering’ from 1945 to Present” in 2007 and is now putting together research reports on the topic. Further information at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk:80/german/AHRC.htm
or
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=157840

The German weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel reports in its online edition that an 89-year-old man showed his 1944 Wehrmacht drivers' license when stopped by police (http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/0,1518,540060,00.html).

The Germans do not make you renew your license, so there are people who still have and use the old, fold-up paper documents from the 1950s. It seems plausible that a Nazi-era license might still be valid. In this case it wasn't however, and the man's grandson had to drive him home. The story has another unfortunate detail: The man does in fact have a "normal" license, but has "done without it for a while." Wouldn't the story have been cuter if he had been driving for over 60 years with the same military license he had probably used in France, Italy or Poland?

Nonetheless, the story retains a certain charm. What was the man thinking? It probably wasn't meant as a statement of identity or Nazi sympathies. Did he lose his original and hesitate to go back for a replacement, fearing he would be denied do to infirmity or poor vision?

Documents from the era are in and of themselves nothing particularly special, of course. Many are still valid and in effect, from property deeds and legal judgements to marriage licences, birth certificates and international treaties that Nazi Germany signed. Someone still carrying a Wehrmacht driver's license in his wallet, probably with a little swastika stamp over the photo of his youthful, uniformed face, just seems absurdly funny.

Impious behavior at memorial sites is not infrequent. The Holocaust memorial in Berlin had hardly been open a month when reports of children playing and lovers kissing among the pylons made the news. A report from this week's Baltic Times takes the cake, however: Apparently, more and more British nationals (presumably drunken male tourists) are getting caught peeing on the Freedom Monument in downtown Riga. For the first time the regional court handed down jail time to a British citizen: five days of administrative arrest. The problem has drawn comment from local politicians all the way up to the interior minister.

In the most recent case, the defendent claimed that he was not peeing, but just happened to be running around the statue when his pants fell down. His obviousely false testimony contributed to the decision to not give him the usual fine of 50 lats (about 70 Euros).

For my part, I am having difficulty understanding why anyone would relieve themselves directly on the monument unless they are blind drunk or actually intend to desecrate it. It is flanked on two sides by parks which offer much better opportunities. In addition, all the downtown bars and outdoor restaurants and cafes have facilities, some of them less than two blocks from the site.

According to the Baltic Times (Adam Krowka: "Playing with granite fire", Baltic Times, 20 February, 2008), the municipal authorities in Narva, a largely Russian city in eastern Estonia, on the border to the Russian Federation, removed a Soviet-era memorial on the morning of the 18th.

The memorial was a bas relief statue along a wall in the down town, old city area, dedicated to the "Communards," a reference to the brief period of communist control of the city during the immediate post-World War One period. It was built for the 50th anniversary in 1968. Judging by the photos, it would appear to be a typical and rather ugly example of Soviet 1960s monumental art.

The move is arguably far less controversial than the removal of the Red Army soldier in Tallinn. The site of the communards' memorial is not a buriel site and does not reflect history within living memory.

Still, the article mentions several issues that indicate that the removal is more than just getting rid of some old, granite blocks: several contruction companies denied the contract to remove the monument, seeking to avoid involvement in controversy. Futhermore, the initiative was taken by a journalist and history teacher, Tanel Nazur, who approached the city council with a list of 600 signatures of people who favor the removal. Since Narva's population is 68,000, critics immediately attacked the petition for representing fewer than 1% of the population. “So this means if 600 signatures are collected in Tallinn to remove the Freedom Monument, then they will remove it?” wrote one letter to the editor in a local paper. So far, however, the worst seems to be some bewildered and frustrated conversation on the Russian-language forum pages of Estonian papers, not riots and diplomatic crisis as was the case last year in Tallinn.

The move followed several earlier initiatives to have the monument moved to other locations, but which were refused by some city council members, for example inclusion in an outdoor park along with other Soviet-era monumental art.

Overall, the two crises show the importance of the Great Patriotic War in Russian memory, both in Russia proper and in areas of the former Soviet Union that are still home to significant Russian populations. Statues dedicated to the Red Army, the burial sites of fallen Soviet soldiers - those are holy ground. They transcend ideology. The events of 1918-1919 represent a much lower level of personal involvement and commitment. (A similar memorial in Tallinn is this one. It will be interesting to see if it is removed soon.)

The situation in Riga tells a similar story. There are still numerous memorials to the Red Army in the city, both in cemeteries and in public space. The monmument to the liberators of Riga is especially bombastic and was even the target of a bombing in 1999. But they remain standing. Those memorials which are purely "communist" in nature - busts or statues of Soviet Russians like Kirov and Lenin or even a large bronze statue of the Latvian communist leader Peteris Stucka - were all removed very quickly following the collapse of the communist regime. The local Russians did not rise up in rage to prevent this. They still gether at the "liberators" monument on important anniversaries and would no-doubt raise a lot of hell if it were removed. In any case it is not a situation where the Russians identify with and defend all elements of their Soviet past, although sometimes an ideological symbol can have national meanings.

In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, American-born, Berlin-based philosophy professor Susan Neiman assesses the state of Germany’s commemorative culture and finds it wanting – but not for the reasons one might think. She suggests that Germans use the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s seizure of power to reevaluate and recallibrate their country’s choices of whom it should commemorate for their acts of moral courage in standing up to the Nazi regime. In short, she finds that, in its selection of heroes, Germany has so far „chosen ... wrong.“

As the title of the article indicates, Neiman would prefer heroes who were able to „resist and survive“ over those whose „deeds cost them their lives, and accomplished nothing.“ She contrasts the self-sacrifice of Munich‘s White Rose student group and the conspirators of July 20th with the lesser-known protests by German women whose Jewish spouses were held, and subsequently released, from Gestapo captivity in Berlin’s Rosenstrasse. Neiman proposes that, in addition to restraining the attention given to the victims of the Nazis, we, and Germans particularly, should instead focus on those, like the women of Rosenstrasse fame, whose acts demonstrated that the Nazi regime could be opposed successfully. Only the latter, she believes, can serve as a working model for current and future generations.

One is inclined to agree with Neiman that Germans have often demonstrated a tendency to focus on death and failure in their memorial culture. „Gescheitert“ (failed) has become such a catchword in postwar usage that one sometimes wonders if Germans automatically assume that failure is the default setting for all human action. There is something to be said for the power of positive thinking.

But even so, Neiman’s suggestion here seems misdirected – at least in placing emphasis on events like those in Rosenstrasse. First of all, it is odd that Neiman should assert that „these brave women remain anonymous,“ especially since the Rosenstrasse protests were the subject of a 2003 feature film (entitled Rosenstrasse !) by the well-known German director, Margarethe von Trotta. More significantly, there remains some question as to just how successful those protests were in actually bringing about the release of the Jews held by the Gestapo in Rosenstrasse, with some scholars arguing that the Nazi authorities never intended to deport those they were holding to concentration camps. (For more on this debate, see: www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/Rosenstrasse/Rosenstrasse_index.htm)

Most importantly, however, is the question of whether these protests constituted acts of resistance qualitatively equivalent to those taken by the likes of the White Rose, the Kreisau Circle and other resistance groups. While taking nothing away from the courage these woman demonstrated, a distinction should nevertheless be drawn between protests, like those in Rosenstrasse (rare enough in itself), which aimed solely at altering or stopping specific actions taken by an evil regime, and those acts, such as by the July 20th plotters, that were aimed the much larger purpose of putting an end to that evil regime. While the one sought to save individuals linked to the protesters by the intimate bonds of marriage, the latter sought to further the greater good of all: family, friends and strangers alike. It seems to me that there is still something to the biblical adage that no man hath greater love than to sacrifice his life for others.

When read in combination with Neiman’s book, Fremde sehen anders, it seems clear that her suggestion serves as part of her larger purpose of encouraging Germans to embrace a more positive view of themselves and their history. But, to use a German aphorism, she is “running through open doors.” The time when a hypercritical caste of Germans saw their country through darkened glasses is past – except perhaps among a small group of mostly leftist negativists. The majority need no encouragement from Dr. Neiman. Most Germans feel quite comfortable in their skins – at times perhaps a bit too comfortable.