The Germans had also gone on school trips at that age, although the locales were of a quite different nature. As part of their curriculum they had to take tours of concentration camps like Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. There they were shown film clips about the Third Reich, World War II and the Holocaust, they stepped into rebuilt barracks, saw the remaining gas chambers and ovens.
Visiting a former concentration camp might be a traumatic event for a child, but intentionally so. A nine year old can neither understand the chains of historical events leading to disaster, nor grasp a number like six million dead. But after watching the gruesome black and white images followed by a walking tour of the buildings and grounds, the exhibit of a few shoes and personal belongings from the murdered will bring a tangible reality to the horrors of this period in one's country's past.
Four generations of young Germans have now seen these stark reminders of a time not that long ago. These early moments of realizing the consequences of dictatorship and war are imbedded in their subconcious forever. Those visits are also the root of a pacifist reflex, that is continually reinforced by history classes, literature and movies focusing on wartime Germany. A reflex that helped widen the gap between Germany, the US and Israel during the latest Intifada and the war in Iraq. The rest of the world is not aware of this pacifism. Germany's criticism of Israel's tactics and her opposition against the war in Iraq are perceived as being part of a greater European sentiment, which echoes the grim dynamics of anti-semitism. There have been numerous conferences and panels exploring the new forms of both.
For both one can find plenty of evidence. There was the chairman of the North Rhine Westphalia chapter of the Free Democratic Party FDP Jürgen Möllemann, who openly played with antisemitic notions during the campaigns for the elections in 2002. There was the German justice minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin who caused international furor by comparing George W. Bush to Hitler. And there was a heated debate about Martin Walser's new novel “Tod eines Kritikers", in which he attacked Germany's best known literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who is also a jew.
In the end these cases served as proof, that the problem of antisemitism is not as big a problem in Germany, as for example in some countries of Eastern Europe, where new radical rightwing movements gain political influence, or in France, where a liberal stance towards radical elements in the Muslim population brought forth harsh prejudice. Möllemann's rightwing populism marginalized the FDP in the elections. Däubler-Gmelin had to step down. Walser will be forever tainted with the stigma of being an antisemite.
Still in the fall of 2002 a conference at the New York University sought out to explore the parallels of antisemitism and antiamericanism in Germany and Europe. Moshe Zimmerman, historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, remarked at a panel there, that 99 percent of Israelis had never heard the names Möllemann, Däubler-Gmelin or Walser. Still - in the eyes of America and jewish communities in the US the mood had been set.
It's easy to see why the criticism of Israel can be perceived as having anti-semitic undercurrents. As Ian Buruma wrote in his essay “How To Talk About Israel" the European left-wing was almost relieved to be able to express dislike of Israel after the Six Day War, when it's members took up the cause of the Palestinians. In Germany the continuing solidarity of the left with the Palestinians is further muddled by the dogmatic side of their pacifism. Israel's right to self-defense almost never plays into the debate. Facing almost daily suicide attacks ’War is bad' might seem like an oversimplistic mantra. It indeed is an unreflected reaction.
The same reflex came into play just before the war in Iraq. US spin doctors made it appear as if Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had used the looming war in Iraq to fuel anti-american sentiment just to win the elections. Quite the contrary was the case. As all politicians, Schröder merely reacted to polls which told him what his people demanded. No support for a war in Iraq. Besides the fact that the German constitution clearly outlaws any comittment of German troops abroad.
The Iraq war admittedly also gave rise to populist forms of anti-americanism. The enormous success of the books by filmmaker and left-wing demagogue Michael Moore can be seen as evidence of those sentiments. In the context of a German mass readership, Moore's “Stupid White Men" functions mainly as reinforcement of anti-american stereotypes hiding behind an American author's humorous and valid criticism of his own government. Those stereotypes have been perceived as ugly echoes from the past, since anti-americanism is driven by many of the same dynamics that have fueled anti-semitism for centuries. It starts with the infamous fear of a money driven cosmopolitan culture, as echoed in conservative local politicians' recurring warnings about the ’americanization' of German cities. There are the conspiracy theories, like in the books about the US government's possible involvement in the attacks of September 11th that are widely read in German leftwing circles. Even the archaic momentum of scapegoating can be found in the protest gerneration's use of America as symbol of a corporate capitalism that has been praticed by Europe just as well.
But again the main force behind this outburst of anti-american fervor has been the reflexive pacifism of young Germans. They see their opposition to any military operations in the Middle East, no matter if carried out by Israel or the US, as proof that Germany is indeed a model citizen of the international community. In their minds there is no room for a more refined debate about military interventions. And although even the left in America can clearly differentiate between wars against utopias like Cuba, Vietnam, and Nicaragua, and wars against dystopias like Nazi Germany, Serbia and Iraq, Germany's dogmatic outright rejection of war as a last means can appear self-destructive.
Take the war against terror. While the US clearly abuses it for its own interests, there is however a common interest for all mankind to confront this new threat. But neither the American nor the European public understands the meanings and consequences of different forms of terrorism. It might have been useful to diffuse these differences in America in the interest of spin control, but in Europe, the resultant confusion just hardened the pacifist reflex. If the secular state terrorism in Iraq, or the nationalist Palestinian terrorism fueled by fundamentalist fervor and outside funding are presented as one and the same as the apocalyptic international terrorism bent on wiping away modernity and secular life from this planet, then even a superficial debate about the Middle East becomes impossible.
So both the US and Germany stubbornly kept to their chosen paths of foreign policy. The US waged a unilateral war that might mean the end of an international community under the auspices of the UN. Chancellor Schröder, whose coalition government almost fell after he comitted German troops to Afghanistan, declared that even with a UN mandate German cooperation in Iraw would be impossible.
In his now famous essay “Power and Weakness" Robert Kagan described the US as having a realist view of a Hobbesian world and accused Europe of hiding behind their luxurious state in a Kantian paradise of peace and security. The Iraq war might have cemented these respective positions. Both are rooted in almost opposite experiences. Both sides will have to learn now to neither fear nor disrespect the other's. The only way to a middle ground.
At a recent dinner party in New York the conversation turned nostalgic. The German and American guests had all grown up in the 60s and 70s and compared childhood milestones. They discovered each of the Americans had taken school field trips to chocolate factories when they were about nine or ten years old. The native New Yorker marveled about endless lines of chocolate bars in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The Californian reminisced about the fascinating machinery that injected cream filling into Hostess Cupcakes. Both remembered the youthful awe these wonders of dessert-making technology instilled.
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