Re: Juenger/Harrer, nest-besmirchers and scapegoats

[Wahe <Wahe@aol.com>]

Ulrich Oswald wrote on 01.01.1998 

> And it lead to the fact that harmless student organizations,
>  football teams, Wandervogel, youth sport organizations, and many others
>  overnight became part of the SS or SA. 
>  [...]
> Only a long time later they learned that their faith didn't seem so
honorable at all. 
> Even when they didn't make themselves guilty in the strict sense of the
word,
> there lies a black shadow on all of them which cannot be washed off.

I'm not an expert on Nazi-organizations but to my knowledge nobody became a
member of the SS by *Gleichschaltung* or any automatic process without getting
to know it. Of course it's easy to judge from today's secure standpoint what
people did and should have done or not done in Nazi-Germany. But it certainly
cannot be stated, that someone could have lived through the time with the
impression everything was honourable and only realize after 45 that he
participated in evil.

If you read the diaries of Victor Klemperer, a professor of romanic philology
in Dresden, a jew married to a non-jewish wife, you get a very good impression
of how perfidious the jews were systematically harrassed thoroughly from 'the
thirties on. He gives the whole story, since he was not deported because of
his wife and was saved of the *Endloesung* by the bombing of Dresden which
destroyed all the Gestapo records. It started with subtle regulations (jews
not allowed to cinemas, to street-cars, not allowed to go shopping, then not
allowed to own cars, houses and so on) and was clear to see for everybody. Now
if you read e.g. the letters between EJ and Schlichter of the time just
recently published there is not a word of this. But the majority of the people
witnessed  this harassment and didn't object, resp. even a lot participated
heavily.

Especially v.Salomon's account in *Der Fragebogen* tells in detail how the
various forces of the national revolution helped the Nazi-party and Hitler to
power, not necessarily with intention, but in effect. Also without wanting to
throw stones, this could be called path-making (Wegbereitung). As the regime
unfolded and developed, it became clear and clearer that things were heading
in a nightmare-direction, but already beyond the point of no return, and I am
willing to believe that the majority felt very uneasy and tried to make the
best of it (again Klemperer reports having received a lot of soothing comments
from passers-by on the streets), but everybody had to care for his own life
and dependants. Think of the sorcerers apprentice in Goethe's famous poem. 
How would we ourselves then have acted ? How do we behave nowadays ? Don't we
drive cars, fly planes, have electric shaves, collaborate in using up the
resources and the atmosphere of mother earth for petty gains ? (Think of fifty
to one hundred atomic reactors quietly steaming towards a Chernobyl-like
holocaust in central Europe alone)

I don't want to say everything should be pardonned or be looked over and
forgotten, but it should be differentiated. So Globke was a scandal, while
Harrer is not really to be condemned, it's not really an issue.

Rolf Hochhut, who gained a certain publicity in the seventies for spreading
the info which finally made the former prime-minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg,
Hans Filbinger, resign because of some unnecessary death-sentences Filbinger
spoke as a navy-judge in the last days of war is an admirer of  and somehow
acquainted to EJ; but he was not admitted to his one-hundred-birthday-party
because of this and Filbinger being there. Was it really wrong to point at the
past of the head of state?

Things like the Harrer story keep coming up because a real discussion about
the Nazi-fathers only started end of the sixties, there was not much serious
talking about what people had done 33-45 in the decades before and a lot of
people seriously involved did again have leading positions after 45 and tried
to keep their records under the lid. And there was a lot of Horst-Wessel-song
singing after midnight when the old pals met.

I was born 56 and lived a couple of years abroad when I was ten years old
among British and American people. What I knew about the Nazi time then was
mainly histoires from parents and grandparents of how they got bombed at home
and wounded out in battle, and suddenly was confronted with being held
responsible for being German by the other boys at school, in a way branded.
Like it or not, I realized there were weights in my rucksack I didn't put
there but couldn't get rid of. So the zeal to pass some of this on and pin
responsability on elders developed by the post-war generations seems
understandable.

And the scapegoat : the guy aged around fifty who ruined his life by
scribbling *Adolf Hitler* on a slip in a hotel bar in Israel in a weak
instant, being a member of the Berlin symphony orchestra touring. Everybody
jumped on him and he lost his job in no time. (Hundreds if not thousands of
truely active Nazis were peacefully granted their pensions for decades).



Happy new year to all of you, it seems the days in between the years trigger
extra activities not only to dreams.


Walter Hedderich