The legacy of the Nazis
| Television broadcast | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The legacy of the Nazis |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Year (s) | 2015-2016 |
| length | 45 minutes |
| Episodes | 5 in 2 seasons |
| genre | History , documentation |
| Director |
Jobst Thomas Sonja von Behrens Heinrich Billstein Michael Fräntzel Dominic Egizzi |
| production |
Thomas Schuhbauer Susanne Zimmermann Paul Balbach |
| camera |
Cornelia Goos Roman Hauska Patrick Brandt Pepe Brandt Sven Kiesche Boris Maulau Felix Korfmann |
| cut |
Katrin Dücker-Eckloff Jochen-Carl Müller Fabian Teichmann Jochen-Carl Müller Sascha Zimmermann |
| First broadcast | December 19, 2015 (three parts) and April 2, 2016 (two more parts) on ZDF |
The Legacy of the Nazis is a five-part documentary series by ECO Media TV production for ZDF from 2015/16.
content
The documentation deals with the title topic chronologically in five episodes.
Result: 1945-1960 - We didn't know anything about it
Experts and contemporary witnesses have their say in this episode: Philipp Gassert (historian from the University of Mannheim ), Uwe Danker (historian from the Institute for Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary and Regional History ), Edgar Wolfrum (historian from the University of Heidelberg ), Klaus-Detlev Godau- Schüttke (former judge and book author), Sönke Neitzel (historian at the University of Potsdam ), Ernst-Wilhelm Stojan (former local politician), Philipp Marti (historian and book author), Helmut Opferkuch (former criminal secretary).
The documentation begins with a description of Germany's situation at the end of the war , when the country was in ruins, the so-called zero hour . In Flensburg , the last imperial government was arrested by the victors. The almost eight million members of the NSDAP went underground. The Germans saw themselves as victims of Hitler , the war and the Allies. The country was not only physically destroyed, but also morally ruined. The Germans were now confronted with the crimes of National Socialism . In the summer of 1945, residents of Weimar were brought to Buchenwald concentration camp by US soldiers so that they could see what had happened there. Many Germans were horrified by what had been committed in the German name. German society consisted of millions of party members, Wehrmacht and SS people . The problem for the Allies was how to deal with these millions of people. The British wanted to radically cleanse the society of the National Socialists in Northern Germany and therefore arrested 90,000 Germans who, for example, served as officials such as mayors or local group leaders. A total of 182,000 people were arrested in all three zones of occupation. The guilty should be separated from the innocent. Every adult German had to be willingly checked. A questionnaire with over a hundred questions had to be answered while denazification procedures were in progress. Certificates of discharge, so-called Persilscheine , could be enclosed with this denazification questionnaire . This extensive trial was hated. The vast majority of those examined in more detail in this way were classified as followers. According to American estimates, five million Nazi perpetrators should have been charged. But the Allies needed administrative staff, producers and farmers to build up the country.
During the Nuremberg Trials , which had been going on since 1945 , at least 180 people were indicted, including leading National Socialists such as Rudolf Hess , Hermann Göring and Wilhelm Keitel . Many incriminated National Socialists were interrogated in Nuremberg, including Werner Heyde , who was partly responsible for the mass murder of the disabled . In 1947 Werner Heyde escaped the American guards during a transport and went into hiding in Schleswig-Holstein. He found work as a sports doctor in the sports school in Flensburg-Mürwik . Heyde wasn't the only Nazi criminal who came to Schleswig-Holstein. Before 1933, the rural province of Schleswig-Holstein was the only province with an absolute majority of the NSDAP. In the last days of the war, many Nazi criminals went to Flensburg, because the last Reich government was located there in the suburb of Mürwik. In 1946, 1.5 million locals and 1.2 million refugees and displaced persons lived in Schleswig-Holstein. It was difficult to verify these people. The result of denazification in Schleswig-Holstein became apparent at the end of the 1940s: of 406,000 accused, not a single one was considered to be the main culprit or guilty party, just 2,217 were counted as accused, 66,500 as followers and 206,000 as exonerated. The remaining proceedings were discontinued. The Allies gave the political cleansing, to eradicate National Socialism from the middle of society, under German responsibility, because they did not want to establish a judiciary for the victors. There was a final line mentality . Hunger and housing shortages had to be combated. A study from 1951 found that only three out of every hundred adult Germans rated denazification as positive. In December 1950, denazification ended in the Federal Republic of Germany by a resolution of the Bundestag. In 1950 the new bourgeois government in Schleswig-Holstein consisted entirely of former NSDAP members, with the exception of a minister. As promised in the election campaign, the Schleswig-Holstein government passed the law to end denazification in March 1951. According to this law, Nazi officials were again allowed to serve in the civil service. In no other federal state had so many incriminated National Socialists been brought back into "office and dignity". In 1959 Werner Heyde, who had gone into hiding under the name Fritz Sawade, was exposed. The affair drew nationwide circles. Before he could be convicted in court, the imprisoned Werner Heyde committed suicide. A Kiel investigative committee found that at least eighteen medical colleagues, lawyers and high officials of the state had known of his true identity and did not comply with the profile and arrest warrant. None of these confidants were held responsible. The GDR later filmed " The Heyde-Sawade Affair ". Another case that became known was that of Herta Oberheuser , a camp doctor in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp , who had carried out cruel experiments on the prisoners. She had been sentenced to twenty years in prison at the Nuremberg Doctors ' Trial. After five years, she was released early and subsequently ran a private practice. Only after international protests did she lose her medical license.
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Konrad Adenauer , an opponent of Hitler who had been imprisoned by the National Socialists, became the first Federal Chancellor of the young Federal Republic in 1949. Adenauer's political course was determined by Christian values and anti-communism . The Cold War had started. The Korean War (1950-1953) stoked fears of a third world war in the German population . Adenauer also sharply delimited his party, the CDU , to the right . Nevertheless, he was pragmatic in dealing with the history of his people. The future was more important to him. In the German Bundestag in the 1950s up to 26.5% of the MPs were former NSDAP members. In the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture , up to 22.5% of officials were former NSDAP members. In the Foreign Office, up to 42.3% of the civil servants working there had a Nazi past. In the Federal Ministry of the Interior , up to 66% of senior officials were former NSDAP members. Adenauer's close advisor, Hans Globke , was a senior civil servant during the Nazi era. At that time he wrote a commentary on the Nuremberg Race Laws. However, during this time he had also kept in contact with the Catholic resistance against Hitler . During the denazification it was classified as unencumbered. Under Konrad Adenauer, Globke became State Secretary and Head of the Chancellery. Adenauer's strategy was to involve the former National Socialists on the premise that they would support democracy. Adenauer needed experts to govern. The proportion of former NSDAP members in important functions rose throughout Germany in the course of the 1950s. Experts were needed everywhere to build the state, so that many former Nazi officials and judges returned to high positions. Unaffected experts apparently hardly got any chances. Of the sixty university professors who had been removed from the University of Heidelberg by the National Socialists, only four were given their chairs back. There was little effort on the part of the German institutions to bring back those who had been dismissed because the posts had been filled.
At the beginning of the 1950s, new beginnings and upswing were considered more important. Discussions about the past were found annoying by many. The economic boom began. Housing construction got underway, new housing estates emerged and temporary accommodation disappeared. Women can dress fashionably again. In the West German cinema were home movies shown. In 1950, for example, the box office hit Schwarzwaldmädel hit the cinemas. The "Sehnsuchtsfilm" showed the city dwellers the undestroyed Germany, with idyllic landscapes, a homeland that had not lost its beauty despite the war. Critical films were hardly published, they were not viewed with pleasure. The popular homeland films shaped the holiday destinations of Germans. Vacation abroad was not yet common shortly after the war. In the 1950s, more and more Germans spent their holidays on the island of Sylt and the Westerland there . When Westerland developed into a tourist magnet, Heinz Reinefarth was the town's mayor. Rumors circulated about the popular mayor about his Nazi past. During the Warsaw Uprising , SS-General Reinefarth commanded all SS units used to suppress them and gave orders for mass shootings. Since then he has been considered the executioner of Warsaw in Poland. After the war, he was not called to account. A Hamburg verdict in 1948 absolved him of any guilt. He denied his role during the uprising, presented himself as a "gentleman Nazi" who, contrary to his own intentions, achieved the SS general position through the war. In 1957, two alleged Augsburgers visited Mayor Reinefarth to make a film. What Reinefarth didn't know: the two film people who interviewed him came from the GDR. The DEFA introduced yet in 1957 the short film holiday on Sylt done, which dealt with Reinefarths past. Since 1945, like in the rest of Schleswig-Holstein, there have been a large number of refugees on Sylt. The voting weight of these refugees proved to be significant in the elections. Who also "sold" Reinefarth was in the state elections in Schleswig-Holstein in 1958 for the All-German Bloc / League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights in the Schleswig-Holstein parliament elected and became the only SS general in a German parliament. The Nazi war criminal Reinefarth remained unpunished until his death. A memorial plaque on the town hall of Westerland has been commemorating the crimes of Reinefarth since 2014.
The Nazi past continued to be largely suppressed. In 1955 the last German soldiers returned home after ten years of Soviet captivity. The Germans viewed these as victims. The reports and pictures of the returnees , who saw their families again after years, touched the whole country. In contrast to the returnees, the Nazi victims were not the focus of social interest. Official redress has been slow. Only fifteen percent of the NS victim applications had been processed in 1956. At the same time, numerous former Nazi officials enjoyed the care of the state. In 1956, a documentary by Südwestrundfunk , entitled " The Forgotten ", reported on the forgotten German Jews of Paris. Hundreds of German-Jewish survivors of the Holocaust lived in poor conditions in France. The film sparked a wave of private helpfulness.
The Ulm Einsatzgruppen trial began in the late 1950s . One of the accused, SS Police Leader Bernhard Fischer-Schweder, was jointly responsible for the mass shootings of captured Russians, Jews and other civilians at the beginning of the Russian War in 1941 during the advance of German troops. In 1958 Fischer-Schweder was sentenced to ten years in prison for aiding and abetting community murder. The main legal responsibility for these and similar acts were Hitler, Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich . In the German case law it prevailed that all other perpetrators were merely assistants. One consequence of the process was the establishment of the Central Office for Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg .
Result: The 1960s - the perpetrators are among us
Experts and contemporary witnesses have their say in this episode: Inge Deutschkron (German-Israeli journalist), Norbert Frei (historian from the University of Jena ), Edgar Wolfrum (historian from the University of Heidelberg ), Philipp Gassert (historian from the University of Mannheim ), Sönke Neitzel ( Historian of the University of Potsdam ), Karl-Otto Saur (son of the Secretary of State for Armaments Karl-Otto Saur ), Tilman Jens , son of Walter Jens , Rolf Hochhuth (writer), Hannes Heer (student in the 1960s).
The episode illuminates the subsequent decade of the 1960s. The war seemed a long time ago to the Germans. The economic miracle unfolded completely. In many families there was mostly silence about the Nazi era. The literary critic Walter Jens , a member of the anti-fascist literature group 47 , in which writers presented and criticized each other's works, kept quiet and suppressed his NSDAP membership and was not the only one. The former Secretary of State for Armaments, Karl-Otto Saur , who was jointly responsible for the exploitation of forced laborers, behaved differently . He did not remain silent, but even proudly told his children that Hitler had appointed him Minister of Armaments in his will, which appalled them. Many former Nazi perpetrators continued to live unmolested in the country. But more and more current reports in the media meant that people were increasingly concerned with the past. At the end of 1960, three months after the re-inauguration of the rebuilt Cologne synagogue , it was smeared with swastikas and Nazi slogans. The perpetrators were not old Nazis, but young people. This event also made it clear that more science and research on National Socialism was needed for education.
At the beginning of the 1960s there was initially only one TV station on the ARD . But soon afterwards, in 1963, ZDF went on air. In 1960/61, a multi-part documentary series was broadcast for the first time during the Nazi era. The television series The Third Reich , however, gave viewers the chance to ignore the painful facts due to the sparse, critical commentary, so that the series only offered reminder television . The murder of the Jews was only dealt with in one episode. Jewish survivors did not have a say. Shortly afterwards, in April 1961, survivors of the Holocaust were seen. The Eichmann trial began in Israel . SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann organized the deportation of millions of Jews. Twice a week the process, in which there was global interest, was also broadcast on German television. Eichmann presented himself as a simple, normal man, not a beast. The trial observer Hannah Arendt described its effect as the “banality of evil”. A poll in western Germany at the time showed that 66% of the population were in favor of Eichmann's punishment. At the same time, however, 53% of the population were of the opinion that it would be better to deal with the present instead of the Nazi past. Eichmann was sentenced to death in May 1962. The television report Schützenfest near the train station by young critical filmmakers from the SDR , in which shooting club traditions were documented in an exaggerated manner and parallels were drawn with the Nazi era, triggered a storm of indignation in 1961. The film was supposed to be a foretaste of the social revolt of the 1960s.
In early 1963, the play The Deputy of the Writer Rolf Hochhuth premiered. The author criticized the Pope's silence on the Holocaust during the Nazi era. As a result, there were demonstrations by Catholics against the play. One Catholic who liked the play, however, was the Christian Democratic Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. A few months later, in December 1963, the Auschwitz Trials began in Frankfurt am Main , the first major legal battle with Nazi crimes in West Germany. The indictment against the perpetrators had been prepared by Attorney General Fritz Bauer . 22 guards from the Auschwitz extermination camp were charged . The process educated the public about warehouse operations. According to a survey, 60% of West Germans were interested in the court case; in the Eichmann process it was 95%. One of the main defendants was SS-Oberscharführer Wilhelm Boger , who was a member of the camp Gestapo and after whom the torture method known as the " Bogerschaukel " was named. The defendants downplayed their own role in the atrocities. The murders had to be proven individually, which turned out to be difficult as the immediate witnesses had also been murdered. The prosecutor argued that Auschwitz was a large, industrial extermination plant. Everyone who participated in this had a legal share in the guilt. The court did not follow this line of reasoning, but instead insisted on proof of individual offenses in accordance with criminal law. After two years of trial, the judgments followed, six life sentences, eleven imprisonment sentences and three acquittals. Politicians did not want any "special jurisdiction" and did not change the legal basis after the trial. However, the investigation of the National Socialist crimes was at risk at the time. At that time, murder was statute-barred after 20 years. The statute of limitations had already been abolished in the GDR. In the course of the statute of limitations debate , the statute of limitations was first legally extended by the Bundestag before it was finally abolished.
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1965 called Chancellor Ludwig Erhard to the Bundestag, the end of the postwar period in which he one final stroke wanted to fold into the past. In the same year, the former Wehrmacht officer Rolf Pauls went to Israel as the first German ambassador, which led to massive protests in Israel. The reparation payments as well as the diplomatic relations with the " people of the perpetrators " were entirely controversial in Israel. Incidentally, the right-wing extremist NPD had been founded a year earlier and then moved into several state parliaments. When the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial was opened in 1965, no official representatives from the Federal Republic were present. During the same period, however, a few groups of young people went to Auschwitz. A new, younger generation began to question the worldview of parents in the 1960s, and in particular the past of adults. The then student Hannes Heer, for example, became a member of the Socialist German Student Union at Bonn University in the 1960s and was involved in the student movement . After a left-oriented group of students added the addition "KZ Baumeister" to the signature of Federal President Heinrich Lübke in the university's book of honor , Heer was expelled from the university as a participant. But he was able to continue his studies. The Nazi legacy also divided generations in society in general. In 1966 there was a grand coalition in Bonn , so there was hardly any opposition in the Bundestag. In 1969 the social-liberal coalition under Willy Brandt followed .
Result: 1968-1989 - The muff of a thousand years
Experts and contemporary witnesses have their say in this episode: Beate Klarsfeld (German-French journalist), Hannes Heer (1968 student of history), Stefan Aust (journalist and author of The Baader-Meinhof Complex ), Norbert Blüm (CDU politician ), Philipp Gassert (historian from the University of Mannheim ), Edgar Wolfrum (historian from the University of Heidelberg ), Serge Klarsfeld (French lawyer and historian), Wolfgang Weber (public prosecutor in the Majdanek trial ), Sönke Neitzel (historian from the University of Potsdam ), Kurt Schrimm ( Central Office for Nazi Crimes 2000-2015), Rolf Hochhuth (uncovered Filbinger's Nazi past), Charlotte Krüger (granddaughter of SS-Sturmbannführer Bernhard Krüger ).
At the center of this episode is the question of the change in mentality between 1968 and 1989. Around 1968, many young people asked themselves what kind of generation it was that had come back from the war. Many children who asked their fathers how they had spent the war received no answers. In 1968, students loudly took to the streets to protest against their parents' generation. This West German student movement of the 1960s partly questioned the Nazi past of the parents' generation. A well-known banner from this time bore the words Unter den Talaren - Muff von 1000 Jahre . However, the majority of Germans no longer wanted to know anything about the Nazi era. In 1966, 46% of those questioned were in favor of drawing a line. In 1969 that number rose to 67%. In fact, most of the former NSDAP party members and old National Socialists had long since abandoned their fascist and National Socialist tendencies by and large and accepted the Federal Republic. By then they were no longer National Socialists, but had become democrats. They had been socialized and integrated into democracy.
The Germans showed indulgence for their film favorites from the Nazi era. Heinz Rühmann , who had made a film career under the National Socialists, was silent about his contacts with the National Socialists. By Johannes Heesters 1,967 photos surfaced that made him in 1941 during a visit to the Dachau concentration camp showed. Heester's justification was that he did not sing for the concentration camp guards. Showmaster Hans Rosenthal was also popular in the 1960s . Rosenthal had to go into hiding during the Nazi era in order to survive. Rosenthal did not speak about this event in the 1960s and it has not yet been reported to the public. It was different with Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger . In 1968 Kiesinger was slapped in the face by the journalist Beate Klarsfeld because of his NSDAP past . As a result, his Nazi past was discussed. Kiesinger himself did not admit his failure and showed no remorse. Kiesinger was not re-elected soon after. Willy Brandt , who had been in the resistance against the National Socialists, became Chancellor and set new standards. Politically, Brandt seeks reconciliation with the former war opponents in the east and demonstrated this with the kneeling of Warsaw .
In the 1970s, Germans began long-distance trips all over the world and became world champions in the process . In 1972 the Germans wanted to overcome the shadow of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin and present themselves as a democratic, cosmopolitan country with the Summer Olympics in Munich . The cheerful, happy games came to an abrupt end with the Munich Olympic attack by a Palestinian terrorist organization , in which all Israeli hostages died. The 1970s became the decade of left-wing extremist terror by the Red Army Faction . The RAF wanted to instrumentalise the Nazi past for their own purposes and denounced the old National Socialists. In addition, the RAF wanted to “expose” the Federal Republic of Germany as a fascist state in order to turn the German citizens against it. In 1977 the Federal Public Prosecutor Siegfried Buback and his two companions as well as the head of the Dresdner Bank Jürgen Ponto were shot by the RAF. The next victim, the employer president Hanns Martin Schleyer , was selected by the RAF because of his past as SS-Untersturmführer. The RAF kidnapped him and demanded the release of arrested accomplices in exchange for him. The federal government did not allow itself to be blackmailed. The RAF then murdered Schleyer, who had kept to the democratic rules of the game after the war. The then RAF member Peter-Jürgen Boock found in retrospect that they kidnapped Schleyer as "anti-fascists" and then found themselves doing it that they were no better. What the terrorists criticized of the Nazis reappeared with them.
The women's movement took to the streets in the 1970s for women's self-determination , sexual freedom and the right to abortion , against Section 218 . Their morals did not correspond to the ideals of mothers and grandmothers. At the same time, the Majdanek Trials began in Düsseldorf . An unusually large number of women were indicted. Of the sixteen SS members charged, seven were women. The trial gave victims the opportunity to share their suffering. The trial, which began in 1975, ended in mild sentences in 1981, as the court found that the defendants had acted under orders. The judiciary persecuted only a few of the 200,000 people involved in the Holocaust. Between 1970 and 1989 6,039 Nazi proceedings were initiated. Charges were brought in only 340 cases. 189 defendants were convicted, 92 were acquitted. In 1971 Beate Klarsfeld and her husband Serge Klarsfeld tried to kidnap the former SS officer Kurt Lischka to France, because there was an indictment there, so that he would most likely have been convicted there. But Lischka fought back physically and was able to escape. Nevertheless, the case received press coverage. Eight years later, in 1979, Lischka, Herbert Hagen and Ernst Heinrichsohn , who had even been elected mayor of a small community after the war, were indicted in a German court for the deportation of Jews from France and convicted in 1980. In 1978, the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg Hans Filbinger had to resign due to public pressure. It had previously become known that Filbinger had sentenced a sailor to death during the Nazi era ( Filbinger affair ).
In 1979 the US series Holocaust - The History of the Weiss Family was broadcast on German television and seen by twenty million German citizens, a large part of the adult population. As a result, a broad debate about the Holocaust took place for the first time. But stories of fascination with the brown past have also been published. In 1983 the star presented the Hitler diaries , but they quickly turned out to be forgeries. The search for a supposed Nazi treasure in the Toplitzsee caused a sensation. In 1987 it became known that the former SS-Sturmbannführer Bernhard Krüger had forced concentration camp prisoners to produce British pound notes with which the British economy was to be destabilized. At least six prisoners died during the Bernhard action . At the end of the war, the SS sank stocks of counterfeit money in the Toplitzsee . The grandfather's National Socialist past put a strain on the family life of the Bernhard family. There were frequent arguments with the son and his wife.
In Bonn at the beginning of the 1980s, thousands of citizens demonstrated against retrofitting as a result of the West ’s double decision by NATO . Retrofitting advocates and opponents of retrofitting each argued with the Nazi past. The opponents of rearmament declared that rearmament leads to war. Those in favor of rearmament, however, declared that the democracies of the 1920s and 1930s were not defensive enough. In October 1982 there was a change of power in Bonn. Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of the SPD, who previously served as a Wehrmacht officer, had to resign after the discussions about retrofitting. The younger CDU leader Helmut Kohl became chancellor and spoke of the “ grace of late birth ” and called for a spiritual and moral turn in the country. The generation of war children took over the leadership of the country. Kohl faced the Nazi past.
In May 1985, US President Ronald Reagan visited Germany. 40 years after the capitulation, Kohl wanted a reconciliation on an equal footing. At the Bitburg military cemetery , where young Waffen SS soldiers were also lying, the dead were to be remembered together. The Bitburg controversy followed the project . Many saw Germany consistently as a perpetrator people . Kohl obviously saw this in a more nuanced way. The Germans were victims as well as perpetrators. SS soldiers were seen by many as the epitome of war criminals, they should not be honored. The public question arose as to whether SS men were allowed to differentiate? The SS soldiers in the cemetery were at least partly drafted young people. In addition, the Wehrmacht was part of the criminal state. There were also Wehrmacht soldiers who committed the worst war crimes. A few days after Reagan's visit to Bitburg cemetery, Richard von Weizsäcker gave the most important speech of his term in office. In his speech on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe and the National Socialist tyranny , he stated that May 8th was a day of liberation . He freed everyone from the inhuman system of Nazi tyranny. The mood of the Germans clearly changed at the end of the 1980s: in 1964 only 54 percent of the Germans thought Hitler's Reich was an injustice state. In 1979 it was 71 percent. In 1990 it was 85 percent. A broader, critical discourse had become established. On November 9, 1989, the SED dictatorship ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall . The new, reunified Germany has since had a " doubly difficult past ". In addition to dealing with the Nazi era, there was also the coming to terms with GDR injustice.
Result: 1945-1989 - The GDR: aspiration and reality
Experts and contemporary witnesses have their say in this episode: Sönke Neitzel (historian at the University of Potsdam ), Rainer Eppelmann ( pastor , GDR opposition activist and politician), Annette Leo (daughter of Gerhard Leo and later a journalist in the GDR), Henry Leide ( Historian and federal commissioner for the Stasi documents in Rostock), Dieter Skiba (from 1958 to 1990 Stasi employee, most recently head of the MfS department for Nazi and war crimes), Heinz-Joachim Schmidtchen (SPD supporter who opposed the compulsory unification of SPD and KPD to the SED , from 1946 to 1950 imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and holder of the Order of Merit of the State of Brandenburg ), Norbert Frei (historian of the University of Jena ), Silke Satjukow (historian of the University of Magdeburg ), Edgar Wolfrum (historian of the University of Heidelberg ), Bernd Heller (former GDR citizen whose grandfather and father were in the concentration camp), Philipp Gassert (historian of the University of Mannheim ), Gerhard Wiese (lawyer at d en Auschwitz trials), Ingo Hasselbach (former GDR neo-Nazi, dropped out in 1992).
The episode deals with the anti-fascist claims of the GDR and how the GDR really came to terms with the National Socialist past. In 1949, the Soviet denazification was complete. In the year mentioned, the Soviet memorial in Treptower Park was inaugurated and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was founded. This newly created state justified its existence with the fact that, in contrast to the Federal Republic of Germany, it was a Nazi-free zone. Many people believed in the establishment of such an anti-fascist Germany and internalized the anti-fascism proclaimed by the GDR leadership. Anti-fascism served as an ideological basis for the GDR and was constantly emphasized accordingly, for example on the day of liberation from National Socialist rule on May 8th. On this day, meetings took place at relevant monuments, such as the Soviet memorial in Treptower Park, which is dedicated to the Soviet soldiers who died in the fight against National Socialist Germany, but was also considered a symbol of the GDR's anti-fascism. Fourth graders had to participate in this collective experience with ritualized wreath-laying activities and the like. Since the 1950s at the latest, the communist resistance fighters have been the main actors in the concentration camps . The other groups of victims, Jews, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses therefore disappeared from public memory. This courageous, heroic communist resistance against National Socialism served as a "protective blanket" for the 17 million GDR citizens (protective blanket tactics). The fact that the Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps served as Soviet special camps after the war was kept secret by the GDR. In Sachsenhausen, for example, the SPD supporter Heinz-Joachim Schmidtchen was imprisoned. Because he spoke out against the compulsory unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED in 1946 , he was subsequently declared a fascist without trial. Dissenters were fought and called fascists. Schmidtchen was held captive in Sachsenhausen until 1950. At the beginning of 1950 the Soviet internment camps were closed. The Waldheim trials followed , which met with great outrage around the world. Here the 3,400 alleged Nazis from the internment camps were tried by special courts set up by the SED. 32 death sentences were passed. 24 of these were executed. In an illegal process, Heinz-Joachim Schmidtchen was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The fight against fascism was part of the political self-image in the GDR, but questions of personal guilt were not asked in the GDR, as the country viewed itself as the legacy of anti-fascist resistance. Because of this decreed anti-fascism, any family member could claim that it had nothing to do with the evil events of the Nazi era. GDR citizens did not have to ask painful questions about the Nazi past. Since the beginning of the 1950s at the latest, many of the GDR citizens have also wanted to put the Nazi past behind them, similar to the citizens of the FRG. The families did not come to terms with the war. For example, the young Rainer Eppelmann did not find out that his father had been an SS driver in the Buchenwald concentration camp .
The GDR leadership needed competent and loyal people to build the GDR state. But even the GDR could not choose its people and therefore made similar compromises with regard to coming to terms with the past as in the West. It made use of the existing resources and did not do without the many small former National Socialists. The “Soviets” had previously set up block parties , for example the NDPD , which was supposed to serve as a reservoir for former NSDAP members. Nevertheless, in 1951 there were around 12 percent of ex-NSDAP members in the SED. One of these former NSDAP members was, for example, Kurt Blecher , who served as head of the press office of the GDR leadership. A part of the GDR population did not agree with this reintegration of the numerous NSDAP party members, especially the victims of fascism who founded the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN). In 1953, the VVN in the GDR was therefore dissolved by the state leadership. In 1952 Ernst Großmann founded the first model LPG . He did not tell the party about his Nazi past as a security guard in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In the private sphere, however, he often spoke of his past. When its past became known, the party could no longer ignore the case. Ernst Großmann was expelled from the SED. As a Nazi criminal, however, he was not brought to justice. Bernd Heller was a young GDR citizen from the area around the VVN who privately researched former National Socialists in the GDR. At that time he took the position that the National Socialists had to be removed from the state. Bernd Heller found former National Socialists in new positions in all areas of society. Many SED officials asked him to stop his investigations. He also found what he was looking for in the leadership of the party. Heller learned from the father of a friend of Defense Minister Willi Stoph , the avid in the Nazi era Hitlerites was the striker had subscribed to and had the fiftieth birthday of Adolf Hitler wrote an article in the striker. Even the mirror brought Stoph which officially was considered a resistance fighter, with a song of praise to a leader parade in the Nazi era in conjunction. The Stasi became aware of Heller through his investigations. His list of 71 party representatives with an NSDAP past was his undoing. Heller was eventually arrested. During an interrogation, a Stasi man impressed on him who the Nazi was, the Ministry of State Security decided , no one else. He was sentenced to one and a half years in prison and then deported to West Germany . When the state was built, the National Socialist legacy was not completely disposed of at other levels. The NVA uniforms were based on the previous Wehrmacht uniforms. The steel helmet of the GDR was based on an unissued steel helmet of the Wehrmacht. The GDR youth organizations FDJ and the pioneer organization that had been built up showed clear similarities to the youth organizations of the Nazi era with their marches and their clothing design. The enemy was not located in the past, but in the west. In the west, so the government and its propagandists claimed, were the fascists. Fascism and anti-fascism had become a battleground. Nevertheless, people left the GDR at the end of the 1950s, which is why the GDR leadership closed the border to the west with the Berlin Wall . The GDR justified the measure with its state doctrine that it would be an "anti-fascist protective wall" to prevent the entry of people who were fought as fascists by the GDR state. The wall also separated the families of eighteen-year-old Rainer Eppelmann , for example . The father went to West Berlin and the rest of the family stayed in the East.
.JPG)
In 1958 the Buchenwald concentration camp, in which many communists were imprisoned during the Nazi era, was opened as the first concentration camp memorial on German soil. However, everything that did not fit into the GDR's view of history, which consisted of the fact that communist resistance fighters were the main victims of the persecution and deportation to the camp, had been removed beforehand. Camp areas that mainly housed Jewish prisoners had already been torn down by the Russians. The newly created Vorzeigeort for the state anti-fascism should Jugendweihe trips served. The GDR young people should get to know this history of the camp. In the schools of the GDR, too, the children hardly learned anything about the Holocaust, but primarily something about the struggle of the communists against the national socialists. For example, the Jewish Resistance fighter Gerhard Leo was one of these prominent communist anti-fascists. In line with the “protective cover tactics”, the fact that his Jewish father-in-law died in a concentration camp was kept silent. In 1967 Gerhard Leo was the moderator of the foreign policy objective . Since he felt that a contribution to the Six Day War was anti-Semitic, he refused to moderate and subsequently lost his moderation post . He later went to Paris as a GDR correspondent and wrote a book about his past as a resistance fighter. Nevertheless, he remained loyal to the GDR state and defined himself primarily as a resistance fighter. He too pushed aside his Jewish roots.
Since many important archives from the Nazi era were located in the GDR, they could use burdensome file information for propaganda purposes and for the secret service. The GDR had the so-called brown books published with incriminated NSDAP members and war criminals. It pursued the goal of attacking the "system supporters" of the Federal Republic and diminishing their reputation in order to discredit and destabilize the Federal Republic as a whole. The aim was to convey that the National Socialists were in the West and that the GDR was the better German state. In fact, contrary to the generally propagated view of the GDR that the National Socialists were only in the West, there were also Nazi perpetrators in the GDR, some of whom were also brought to justice. Much, however, was also obscured by the Ministry of State Security , which decided who should be considered a Nazi. With the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt in West Germany in 1963, a new phase in crime management began. The trials also posed a challenge to the GDR. In 1966, the GDR finally conducted its own Auschwitz trial. The accused was Horst Fischer , arrested by the Stasi in 1965 , who practiced undisturbed as a doctor under his real name in the GDR after the war. During the Nazi era, Fischer, as a camp doctor in Auschwitz, selected the prisoners. He sent them to the gas chamber or segregated them as workers for the IG Farben plant . The confessing fisherman was eventually sentenced to death. The propagandistic concern of the trial was to bring IG Farben to be the main culprit for the crimes in Auschwitz. In 1967 the Ministry for State Security founded Department IX / 11 for the “prosecution and investigation of Nazi crimes”. The Stasi department collected documents on crimes and perpetrators in the FRG and GDR, so that in the course of time they filled shelves ten kilometers long with files. The main task of Department IX / 11 was propaganda activities to discredit and destabilize the Federal Republic. If it became known that GDR citizens had participated in crimes, prosecution should be initiated. However, clear files were often ignored. The Stasi also used the file information to blackmail and recruit former Nazis who had returned to office and dignity. SED party members and higher functions of the GDR were spared from investigations. Ultimately, the Stasi investigations did not serve the purpose of legal processing, but only the internal and foreign policy interests of the GDR. Between 1950 and 1989 there were 1,977 convictions in the FRG and 739 in the smaller GDR, of which the Stasi were responsible for only 160. In relation to the possibilities and the effort made by the Stasi, there was a questionable discrepancy between the results. Incidentally, the files of Department IX / 11 were not made available to the public during the GDR era. The Gauck authority took over the files after the fall of the Wall .
The rise of Erich Honecker to power in the early 1970s raised hopes for change. In 1973 the GDR presented itself as a cosmopolitan state with the World Youth Festival . In the 1970s there was rapprochement between East and West. However, the view of the past did not change. The repeatedly repeated anti-fascist rituals, slogans and parades remained the same over the entire forty-year existence of the GDR, but have been celebrated more loosely since the 1970s. The GDR did not have the money to repair the war damage. The few Jewish communities, for example the one in Berlin, felt this. The New Synagogue was determined after the Second World War Memorial against War and Fascism and disintegrated since. The restoration of the New Synagogue began during the GDR era, but was only completed after the end of the GDR, in the early 1990s. In the GDR there were victim pensions, but no compensation for expropriations in the Third Reich as in the Federal Republic. In the GDR, the state of Israel was considered an enemy; it was thus an anti-Zionist state. The PLO was considered a friend, it was supported by the GDR as well as by the Soviet Union. The difficult relationship between the GDR state and the Jews led to latent anti-Semitism in the country. In the last few years of the GDR, its leadership sought more political recognition from the West. Honecker wanted to be received not only in Bonn, but also in Washington and London, but without a better relationship with the Jews this seemed impossible. The leadership therefore tried to change the relationship with the Jews and with Israel. On the fiftieth anniversary of the pogrom night, Erich Honecker received an Israeli delegation in 1988 and declared on the occasion that his own resistance to Hitler fascism and the anti-Hitler coalition was not in vain and that a new basis for every human being had been created. By the early 1980s, the GDR image of history had long since become implausible. In particular, the young GDR population, a generation that was no longer guilty of National Socialism, found it difficult to begin with the rituals and old phrases of the resistance fighters. After the war, the previous generation had benefited from believing in the GDR worldview. She had been lured by good positions. The new phenomenon of neo-Nazism appeared. East Berlin's Ingo Hasselbach became a leading neo-Nazi. For him, in the beginning it was just about protesting against the system. The young people wanted to break taboos and sprayed swastikas on the walls in order to become public. The Stasi initially only monitors the scene. After participating in rioting, Hasselbach was arrested and taken to the Brandenburg prison. The state put all legal cases in a prison section. There she met the former Nazi Heinz Barth , who radicalized Hasselbach and other young people. Heinz Barth was jointly responsible for the murder of 642 residents in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane . In 1983 Barth was sentenced to life imprisonment by the GDR judiciary . After the fall of the Wall, Hasselbach rose to become the leading ideological head of the Berlin neo-Nazi scene. He got out after the murder attacks in Mölln .
In 1987 there was a turning point in dealing with neo-Nazis in the GDR. At a punk concert in Berlin's Zionskirche in 1987, skinheads, including acquaintances of the imprisoned Hasselbach, beat up churchgoers. After the attack on the church, investigations, trials and draconian prison sentences for the perpetrators followed. Since the GDR located the fascists entirely in the West and did not deal with the Nazi past of their own country, the GDR authorities no longer reached the young people with arguments. The GDR reacted to the neo-fascist tendencies with a wave of skinhead trials with harsh prison sentences. In 1989, the increasingly dissatisfied people demanded non-violence and democracy. With the end of the GDR , the time of rigid rituals ended. Democracy with its open confrontation with the brown demon of history followed.
Result: 1990-2015 - reappraisal or final line?
Experts and contemporary witnesses have their say in this episode: Sönke Neitzel (historian from the University of Potsdam ), Esther Bejarano (Holocaust survivor), Edgar Wolfrum (historian from Heidelberg University ), Ingo Hasselbach (neo-Nazi dropout), Philipp Gassert (historian of the University of Mannheim ), Daniel Goldhagen (political scientist), Karin Püschel (a former political teacher who researched her family history), Hans Holtermann (Oskar Gröning's lawyer), Éva Fahidi (Holocaust survivor), Thomas Walter (lawyer).
In the episode that concludes the documentary series, developments in the period from 1990 to 2015 are explained, a period in which the coming to terms with the past continued and at the same time a new patriotism awoke. On October 3, 1990, a new era began with the Day of German Unity . In 1990, according to a survey, 60% of Germans wanted to leave the Nazi era behind. Abroad, in particular, there were fears of a new “Greater Germany”. Reunification was followed by the liquidation of the ailing GDR economy. Many people lost their jobs. In this tense situation, asylum seekers were distributed to the new federal states . What follows is the so-called asylum debate . In 1991 there were riots in Hoyerswerda . A year later riots followed in Rostock-Lichtenhagen and the Mölln assassination attempt , in which three people of Turkish origin died. In 1993, five people of Turkish origin died in the Solingen assassination attempt . On May 26, 1993, the asylum compromise in the German Bundestag resulted in a new regulation of the German asylum law, which significantly restricted the asylum law. In the course of establishing Germany's full sovereignty , the last Russian troops left German soil in the following year .
In 1996 the Love Parade in Berlin finally became a mass spectacle. For years the Love Parade was registered as a political demonstration, so that, among other things , demonstrations were made for peace, joy, pancakes . The Love Parade was seen as an expression of a history-forgotten, depoliticized fun society . Nevertheless, the preoccupation with the Nazi era continued. In 1996, the American political scientist Daniel Goldhagen , son of a Holocaust survivor, threw the German public into an uproar with his new book "Hitler's willing executors". Goldhagen's main thesis was that German society in the Third Reich was anti-Semitic and enthusiastically participated in the genocide of the Jews, so that not only the National Socialist elite had to answer for the Holocaust, but also millions of ordinary Germans. The sparked Goldhagen debate on the German question of guilt was heated. Goldhagen's thesis was understood by many Germans as an assignment of collective guilt . Many historians were also critical of his main challenging thesis, but the debate that was triggered led to more research and new knowledge. During this time, the so-called Wehrmacht Exhibition , under the direction of the historian Hannes Heer , wandered through the country. The exaggerated exhibition divided the country. The central thesis of the exhibition was that the Wehrmacht helped to carry out the Holocaust and that entire troops were systematically involved in war crimes. This was followed by protests by right-wing extremists and war veterans . The exhibition also led to a broad debate, which was so broad because it affected the core of society, namely the male population who had waged the war. Gradually the knowledge spread that parts of the armed forces were involved in war crimes . The myth of the clean Wehrmacht disappeared. As a result of the debate, the questions regarding participation in National Socialism were examined in an even more differentiated manner. As a result of the exhibition, many Germans also immersed themselves in their own family history. And mostly learned from personal stories that there wasn't black and white, but shades of gray. During this time it became clear that a generalization, as in the 1960s and 1970s, did not make sense; instead, each case must be considered individually.
In 1998, 63 percent of Germans were in favor of drawing a line. In the same year, the writer Martin Walser gave a speech in the Paulskirche during the awarding of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade , in which he stated that the permanent presentation of German shame, i.e. the excessive exposure of the Nazi past in the media, when watching, led to defensive reactions leads. Auschwitz is not suitable as a threatening routine and moral club. Ignatz Bubis , the chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany , criticized Walser's statements. Prominent politicians such as Klaus von Dohnanyi encouraged Walser in his statements. At the same time, Gerhard Schröder became the new Federal Chancellor. A few weeks after Walser's speech, Schröder delivered his government speech in the German Bundestag, in which he declared: “We are proud of this country, its landscapes, its culture, the creativity and the motivation of its people. What I am formulating here is the self-confidence of an adult nation that does not have to feel superior to anyone, nor inferior to anyone. ”Germany took part in the Kosovo war under Federal Chancellor Schröder . In a speech on the NATO mission in Kosovo , Joschka Fischer from the coalition partner of the Greens argued with the lessons from the past: “I stand on two principles, never again war, never again Auschwitz, never again genocide, never again fascism. For me, both belong together ”. In 1999 it was decided to build the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 resulted in the first alliance of NATO . The Federal Republic took part again militarily. Gerhard Schröder's chancellorship ended in 2005.
During the 2006 World Cup , Germany was patriotic and hospitable. During the world championship, the so-called summer fairy tale , the country was treated to a relaxed approach to national symbols. With society, the process of dealing with things became more diverse. In 2004, Bernd Eichinger published the controversial film Der Untergang , in which a close-up version of the private Hitler could be seen. In Der Bonker by the comic artist Walter Moers and in the film He's Again , Hitler was drawn as a grotesque figure and mocked. One problem with such a humorous, demonizing portrayal of Hitler could be that it simultaneously leads to a trivialization. In the 2011 trial against the former concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk in Munich, the longstanding court practice that only those Nazi perpetrators could be found guilty was broken for the first time. Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for aiding and abetting murder in over 820,000 cases, since every Auschwitz employee was jointly responsible for the mass murder. The process changed the legal practice that had been established since the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials in the 1960s. In the trial against Oskar Gröning, the accountant of Auschwitz in 2015, before the Lüneburg district court , the accused could again not be proven to have been killed. Groening cooperated, described the events in Auschwitz and declared his moral complicity as well as his regret that he had participated in the acts in Auschwitz. Because he was part of the Auschwitz system, Gröning was sentenced to four years imprisonment for aiding and abetting murder in several thousand cases.
At the end of the episode, the question of the following title: "Work up or draw a line?" Is answered in summary. The Germans have dealt openly and critically with the dark sides of their past, have achieved learning, have grown democratically and are now part of the Western community of states. In 2015, 42% of Germans wanted to draw a line under the National Socialist era. When the last contemporary witnesses have died, a new way of dealing with the Nazi past must be found. New developments, Pegida , NSU terror , attacks on asylum seekers' homes , the welcoming and recognition culture during the refugee crisis in Europe from 2015 onwards must be assessed with a view to history. The Germans must not stop coming to terms with the past because it is an ongoing process. The Nazi past serves as a warning and test for the democratic society. Dealing with the Nazi past is an elixir of life for German democracy.
background
Different directors were responsible for the individual episodes. All episodes were produced by ECO Media TV production on behalf of ZDF. The name of the narrator leading through the episodes was not given on the opening credits and the credits. In the aftermath of the years 1968–1989, parts of the film material from Der Fuehrer went - the Nazis stayed - post-war careers in Northern Germany , a documentary from 2001, was obviously reused. In 2015, the episodes: “1968–1989 - The Muff of a Thousand Years”, “1945–1989 - The GDR: Claim and Reality” and “1990–2015 - Coming up or coming to an end?” Were broadcast for the first time on the ZDFinfo channel. A year later, the episodes “1945–1960 - We didn't know anything about that” and “The 60s - The perpetrators are among us” were also broadcast on ZDFinfo. Later broadcasts of the documentary series also took place on the Phoenix station . The first broadcast order resulted from the production order. There are no episode numbers in the opening credits. Subsequent broadcasts followed the content or chronological order.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e As a result: 1945-1960 - We didn't know anything about that
- ↑ a b c In the following: The 1960s - The perpetrators are among us
- ↑ a b c d e f As a result: 1968-1989 - The Muff of a Thousand Years
- ↑ a b c As a result: 1945-1989 - The GDR: Claim and Reality
- ↑ a b c d e In the following: 1990-2015 - reappraisal or final line?
- ↑ See Der Spiegel : Concentration Camp Compulsory Inspection 1945. Confrontation with Hell , from: February 23, 2018; accessed on: October 24, 2018
- ↑ See Rat Line North
- ↑ See GEO epoch. Denazification: a people in court , accessed on: October 25, 2018
- ↑ See Refugees in Schleswig-Holstein after the Second World War
- ↑ The year 1955 is mentioned in the documentation, probably the year the film was made. However, the documentation was only sent a year later.
- ↑ The abolition of the statute of limitations in 1979 is not explicitly mentioned in the documentation.
- ↑ Constantin Goschler : Guilt and Debt: The Politics of Reparation for Victims of National Socialism since 1945 . Göttingen 2008, p. 219; accessed on: October 26, 2018
- ↑ See Bonner General-Anzeiger : "Rudi Dutschke Bonns". 68 student leader Hannes Heer comes back to Bonn on: April 27, 2018; accessed on: October 24, 2018
- ↑ The entry was made without a hyphen.
- ↑ See Oradour massacre
- ↑ This can be seen, among other things, due to a cutting error. In the documentation Der Fuehrer went - the Nazis stayed - post-war careers in northern Germany, reference is made to Werner Heyde's work in the marine sports school. This is followed by an explanation of the Germans' feelings at the time at 9.30 am. Images from the post-war Kiel are displayed. That these pictures come from Kiel is not mentioned. The Kiel Opera House , for example, is clearly visible. However, based on the previous pictures from Flensburg, one could assume that there are also pictures from Flensburg. In the fourth part of The Legacy of the Nazis, the images have been rearranged and given new accompanying text. In the minute 8.35, the pictures from Kiel are explicitly presented as pictures from Flensburg. Apparently because the images from the previous documentation were misunderstood and classified when they were re-cut.
- ↑ Further information about the television series "Das Erbe der Nazis", on wunschliste.de , accessed on: November 4, 2018
- ↑ In this logical order in terms of content, for example, the episodes are also listed on the ZDFmediathek ; see. ZDFinfo. The Legacy of the Nazis , Retrieved on November 4, 2018
Web links
- The legacy of the Nazis in the Internet Movie Database (English)