Yankee in a New World recently asked on her blog if Germans and Americans have historical guilt in common. I started to answer that no, I don’t think we really do, then realized I had so much to say that I needed to write it in a post.
I think, out of countries that have committed atrocities in the fairly recent past (say, the last 300 years), Germany is one of the ones that has owned up to it best. Germans have really beaten themselves up about what occurred in the Holocaust. Americans feel bad on some level about the enslavement of Africans, the extermination of most of the Native American population, and the treatment of African-Americans, but that’s about where it ends. I don’t see American society as a whole really owning any of the other atrocities America has been involved with. I’ve spoken with many people who had never heard about the treatment of Chinese in the west or the internment of the Japanese during WWII. And can many Americans really say that guilt from these acts has shaped who they are?
Things may be changing with the youth now, but my husband is a child of parents who went through WWII. He was born very late to his parents, his much older brothers are my mother’s age, and I can honestly say that German historical guilt has shaped him to the core. My father-in-law, Franz, was drafted and sent to fight in the Russian front, where he was captured and held prisoner in Russia. Rainer told me once that when he was a child, his father would watch WWII documentaries, silently, with tears rolling down his cheeks.
My mother-in-law Hildegard’s fiance was killed in battle. Rainer has said on a couple occasions that if Nazism and WWII hadn’t happened, he would never have been born. I think that weighs on him sometimes.
Rainer’s grandfather was a local Nazi party leader for their very small village. Rainer’s parents went through the rebuilding of Germany, through times when there wasn’t enough to eat, there were no utilities, no comforts. How has this affected my husband? Rainer is the most pacifistic person I have ever met in my life.
My family finds it hard to understand why Oliver will not be allowed to play with guns, or violent video games, or have action figures, or toy soldiers. They joke about how Rainer won’t allow Oliver to wear camouflage or military apparel. I used to tell Rainer that he married into the wrong family, my grandfather was a career Marine, a WWII and Korean War veteran. My dad volunteered for the Marine Corp and fought in Vietnam. I’ve got several active duty and retired military cousins.
But as time went on, and I got to know his parents and his country, and see how WWII affects them still, I start to wonder about how proud we are of our victory in WWII, of how we can’t get enough of movies glorifying the war. I’ve become very aware of how often Germans show up as movie villains, and wonder at how easily Germans accept this.
When I was living in Rostock, I got appendicitis, and ended up in the hospital for a week with an 80-something year old roommate. We had a grand old time and she taught me some Plattdeutsch (including some curse words!), until one day I sat up in bed indian-style. “That’s how the American soldiers used to sit,” she said to me in German. She told me about how she was a teenage girl during the war, and afterwards, when she and her friends saw soldiers coming, they ran and hid because they were so afraid of being raped. Now I was thinking, sure, some rapes probably happened, but this sounds like overreacting, however, thinking back, whether it was true or not, that fear she had as a teenager was still there on her deeply-lined face, over 60 years later.
So no, I don’t think Germans and Americans have historical guilt in common. I don’t think Americans actively feel much guilt about what our past countrymen, our ancestors, have done, but I think Germans do. Before the World Cup in 2006, you never saw German flags flying. Since the World Cup, Germans are finally starting to feel some pride in their nation again. It’s not strange to see a German flag flying from a house, or a car window, anymore. And I’m happy about that. I’m glad that Germans can feel good about their country again.
What is your experience? How do you think WWII (and the Cold War) has affected the people of Germany?
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Very intesting post. As an American living in Germany some of the time as my wife is german and my grandfather was from Germany and traveling the world on my sailboat the rest of the time I am often faced with explaining America to others. There can be NO DOUBT America has blood on its hands, BUT………I would make sure that anyone wishing to FULLY understand AMERICAS role in the Native Americans and Slavery…..especially Europeans.
We must understand that YES America which was the 13 states after 1776 was still French and Spanish west of there….
It is hard to break the Status Quo isnt it…….My point is this…..
Most historians agree that at least 80 % of the native Americans were killled off after first contact with EUROPEANS…….ditto in the Carribean …..due to disease, genocide etc………the EUROPEANS killed off far MORE Native Americans Before 1776 than the Americans After that…..guess it is down to your interpretation of when America became America…….we didnt stop as soon as we should have and there is a horrible momentum we failed to stop…….but lets not fool ourselves as to WHERE this came FROM………EUROPE……its still happening…..i see see signs STILL in 2010 in Germany as switzerland…..AUSLANDER….RAUS!………Gheert Wilders rise…..the far right in so many european countries and the Uk is bad as well….lived there a time in 2005 / 2006….the US is FAR from pefect…but i prefer it by far….WARTS and all.
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