AFTER NATIONALISM

Victory in Europe was accomplished by May, 1945 --- V-E Day is celebrated on May 8.  Hitler had committed suicide on April 30, 1945, in effect avoiding taking any responsibility for what had occurred.  Smith (2020) details the huge numbers of both civilian and military deaths leading to the end.

A LIVING CONCEPT OF FATHERLAND c. 1945–1950

Smith (2020) provides lots of statistics on the losses during the waning months of the war.  And while 80 percent of the Jews that had been exterminated by late 1944 (the rest killed during the last year), the loss of German soldiers increased dramatically. Over 350000 German soldiers were killed in August, 1944, alone.  In January, 1945, the pace had increased to 450,000 German soldiers lost in that one month, with over 250,000 in subsequent months through April, 1945. Civilian deaths also mounted, with bombing by the US and Britain bringing death to over 300,000 civilians in the last 2-years of the war. Whole cities were flattened. By the spring of 1945, around the time Hitler committed suicide in the bunker under Berlin, that city had been turned into dust and ash. 

And, the death did not stop immediately after the war.  Germans were evicted from the eastern Europe lands.  Smith (2020) points to numbers like 1.5 – 2 million people being evicted and largely unaccounted for, many of whom tried to get back to Germany, but were often not able to find food and shelter in the war torn lands even if getting to Germany was achieved.  The Soviet army was especially involved in rape and other brutality against the Germans being evicted, and being pushed back toward Germany. American GIs were also involved in rape.   The occupation forces after the war were doing a number of unethical things.

It also happened during the late-1940s that many displaced people, including many Jewish people who came back to areas where Germans and Poles had taken their property, well, it was not to be relinquished.  Also in the late-1940s, it became clear that many Germans seemed quite unaware of what the Nazi SS had been doing.  A documentary name Death Mills was run in theatres.  Many seemed totally in disbelief that fellow Germans had carried out such atrocities during the war. Smith (2020) spends considerable time in explaining how Germans came to terms with what had happened, leading eventually to moving forward with empathy-compassion.

THE PRESENCE OF COMPASSION c. 1950–2000

Germany turned inward and did not really rejoin the world community until well in the 1950s.   It must also be recognized that Germany had been in effect bombed into oblivion, losing factories, rail lines, transportation hubs. Surprisingly, the political frame of National Socialism that had reined in the period 1933-1945 was still held in high regard by many Germans, making only the claim it had been implemented badly. In effect, many Germans were still all in on Nationalism, but not the Radical Nationalism the Nazi SS had brought into play.

The matter of “the Jewish question” was still around in the early-1950s, with 2/3 of Germans thinking the formation of an Israel for the Jews was a good idea.  “In April 1961, 74 percent of West Germans affirmed that Jews were of a different race than Germans while only 10 percent said the same of the English (Smith 2020, p. 429).”  The idea of a Germany free of all Jews abated over time, but was still running at about 19 percent of Germans  thinking it a good idea as late as 1965.  Even that late, fully 47 percent answered the question as not sure.  

With substantive help from the US (the Marshall Plan) and other allies, the German economy rebounded.  And, while the bad economy that contributed heavily to the rise of the National Socialists in 1933, by “… the end of the 1950s, less than 10 percent of Germans polled still thought the prewar period of the Nazi regime counted among Germany’s best years (Smith 2020, p. 430).”  Also, most did not want to rebuild the Germany military. It came to be believed that “… Germans had a historic chance to become a nation among nations again (Smith 2020, p. 431).”  

And, then, the matter of East Germany controlled by the Soviet Union came into play, especially with the Berlin Wall going into place in August, 1961.  By 1969, most in West Germany acknowledged the two states of Germany.  Also, the economy boomed in West Germany:  “By 1970, real GNP had tripled, and the money the Federal Republic spent on education and scientific research outstripped defense spending, just as it had decades earlier in the Weimar Republic (Smith 2020, p. 436).”  The West Germans were not into spending money on the military.  Along with less emphasis on the warrior culture of the military, the symbols of Nationalism came to be viewed as some old frame from the past, no longer relevant. The tenets of National Socialism faded from consideration. Also, by the 1970s, the word “Holocaust” came into play, as the reality of the genocide came into full view.

By the early 1980s, a large number of foreign workers had been brought into Germany.  So, a bit of the old Nationalism came back into play, fearing that Germany would once again lose purity. Foreigners were encouraged to leave, even providing financial incentives to leave Germany. The preference for ethnic homogeneity was once again coming into play. A sociologist,  Robert Hepp, published a book in 1988 titled The Final Solution of the German Question. Hepp contended the rates of immigration at that time would bring about “… ‘the disappearance of the German people’ and ‘the end of German history’ (Smith 2020, p. 453).”

And, then, the matter of the Berlin Wall:  The East German Revolution of 1989 --- and other pressures, and failures in the East German, Soviet Union area --- led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November.  Reunification of the two Germanys began with earnest in 1990: Five East Germany states joined the Federal Republic in October of 1990.  West Germans, especially, came feel more like a Nation, as the reunification brought both back under the umbrella of Germany.

Immigration actually started to increase, with backlash, like the killing of a Turkish woman, a granddaughter and grandniece.  Upwards of hundred foreign workers were to be killed by anti-immigration extremists, but:   “In the 1990s, Germans did what they did not do in the early 1930s, and what they would have likely not done in the 1950s either: they went out en  masse and protested for someone else, revealing the presence of compassion (Smith 2020, p. 457).”  Using DIT framing, it seems empathy-with people  of other ethnicities --- the starting point to compassion for the other --- was back in play in Germany. As Smith (2020, p. 458), “Germans also began to separate out the prejudices of nationalism from their sense of belonging to a nation,” with said Nation having many different ethnicities in play. Smith (2020, p. 459) then asks: “Do Germans, then, still live in the nationalist age? No, but they still live in the age of nationalism, and they continue to struggle with it.”

Smith (2020, p. 473) sums it up this way: “As citizens of a nation, Germans have instead by and large come to embrace what Dolf Sternberger imagined in 1947 as ‘a living not a deathly concept of fatherland.’ This does not imply a turn away from the nation, or its troubled history. Rather, as Richard von Weizsäcker understood, it involves seeing German history as the source of a different kind of strength—and the compassion it can summon as new measure of the worth of a nation: the German nation.”  In DIT terms, it seems the Nation is now formed by less concern with ethnicity, and more of  a point to empathy-with everyone --- going every direction --- living within the geographical boundary of Germany, looking for common ground in a shared other-interest that defines the Nation.