Germans still don't get it

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

Rich, having read 1 (- in words: "one") article on the topic, thinks it to be a 
good idea calling his mail on the lousy Wehrmacht exhibition:

   >  "Germans still don't get it"

 Oh yes Uncle Sam, please forgive us our stupidness. That must be really  
 frustrating: More than 50 years of reeducation and then that! Too bad ...

 A-and Rich, probably not a historian, is humming his tune: "A photograph is a  
 photograph is a photograph ..."

 Sometimes to want the good is the opposite of good. Better check out the  
 argumentation of people like Bogdan Musial and Krisztián Ungváry (- both  
 neither German nor right wing). The exhibition tries to prove highly schematic 
 and 'ideological' thesisses [- There was no distance at all between the  
 Wehrmacht troops on the one side and Hitler and the NS-regime on the other;  
 The Wehrmacht as a whole organization took part in all Nazi crimes on the  
 Eastern front; The Wehrmacht leaders supported the idea of total extermination 
 war; The Wehrmacht was a criminal organization] with very questionable sources 
 (- ever thought about the multiple contexts in which these  photographies were 
 made?). Furthermore, some photographies definitely show victims of the NKWD,  
 the Soviet secret service. Ungváry estimates that less than 10% of the  
 photographies can be seen as 'conclusive' in the sense of the  exhibitions'  
 intention. 

 The exhibition's success reminds me of the one Goldhagen's book had, - a 
 "study" completely out of the question. Even Harvard is not what it used to be. 
 "Hitler's willige Vollstrecker" was mainly bought by those Germans who can't 
 make a living without a huge amount of guilt. While Goldhagen was reading - I 
 saw it on TV - the crowd was listening with pseudo religious devotion. Really 
 not my cup of tea ( - or to put it more German: nicht mein Bier).

 Don't get me wrong: NS-Germany was leading a racialist war and the Wehrmacht as 
 an instrument took part in it. The legend of the "clean" Wehrmacht, which is   
 spread by right wing movements who of course use the serious historical      
 critique for their own purposes, is definitely bullshit.

 Since I know the "Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung" a little bit closer, 
 I can tell you that their works, except for the ones of Wolfgang Bonß who left 
 the institut years ago, are hardly of any value. It's just a lot of money. You 
 know, Jan Philipp Reemtsma's father, a big tobacco entrepeneur, was the main  
 supporter of Hermann Göring. Now the son wants to wash away the sins of the 
 father. Very typical issue of left social psychology. He tries to do so by 
 imitating the famous "Frankfurter Institut für  Sozialforschung" (- where 
 Adorno, Horkheimer and others worked), which is, when you take a look at the   
 results, only embarrasing. When the critics, among them Bogdan Musial, got  
 louder, the institut tried to silence them by law. A practice which is neither 
 scientific nor liked by Mr. P. 

 When the Hiroshima exhibition in Washington was cancelled, there were a lot of 
 articles and reports on that in the German media. But none of them had the 
 title: "Americans still don't get it". But of course that's something 
 completely different. Ja, ja ... Hey Rich, ever thought about the fact that 
 your constant German bashing appears a little, uhh, "racialist" on the other 
 side of the ocean?!

 Nevertheless all the best, Kai  



> November 5, 1999
>
>
>           New York Opening of Exhibition on Nazi
>           Atrocities Is Delayed
>
>           By ROGER COHEN
>
>                ERLIN -- The planned opening in New York next month of an
>                exhibition linking ordinary German soldiers to Nazi war 
> crimes has
>           been postponed as a result of a dispute over whether some of the
>           photographs may be misleading.
>
>           The exhibition, called "The German Army and Genocide," has been
>           fiercely contentious since it opened in Germany four years ago 
> because it
>           challenges the view widely held here that Nazi atrocities were not 
> the
>           work of army but of Hitler's elite SS and fanatical death squads.
>
>           Having traveled to 34 cities in Germany, the exhibition was to 
> have
>           opened in New York at the Cooper Union on Dec. 2. It has provoked
>           rancorous dissent from right-wing groups that say the army was 
> relatively
>           untainted by the atrocities. The controversy culminated in a 
> bombing
>           attack in the western city of Saarbrücken in March.
>
>           Jan Philipp Reemtsma, a wealthy industrialist and art patron who
>           sponsored the exhibition, said today that the New York opening 
> would
>           be delayed for a three-month review of the exhibits by historians. 
> "The
>           exhibition has suffered an extraordinary loss of credibility," he 
> said.
>
>           In recent months, a Polish historian, Bogdan Musial, has argued 
> that at
>           least 9 of the 801 photographs do not belong in the show.
>
>           For instance, he has contended that a photograph called "Pogrom at
>           Ternopol," purporting to show German soldiers at a mass grave in
>           Ukraine, in fact captures a massacre by the Soviet secret police.
>
>           Another disputed photograph shows a German firing squad shooting
>           youths in Yugoslavia in 1941. Musial and other historians have 
> suggested
>           that soldiers involved were not German but Hungarian.
>
>           Such dissent has fueled an outcry over the exhibition, organized 
> by the
>           Hamburg Institute for Social Research and visited by nearly a 
> million
>           Germans. The show was shocking to many Germans who believed that
>           the army remained detached from the worst of Nazi crimes.
>
>           Because 20 million men served in the army during World War II, the
>           challenge posed by the exhibition was particularly intimate and
>           widespread, touching many German families that previously thought 
> of
>           themselves as relatively unsullied by Hitler's genocide.
>
>           The exhibition prompted a debate in Parliament, where some 
> deputies
>           broke down in tears as they told of their families' suffering 
> during the war.
>           Erika Steinbach, a member of the conservative Bavarian party, the
>           Christian Democratic Union, proposed a counter-exhibition to 
> restore the
>           reputation of the army, the Wehrmacht.
>
>           But the weight of the evidence -- most of it in the form of 
> gruesome
>           photographs taken by soldiers at the front and sent to their 
> families or
>           friends at home -- appeared overwhelming until the credibility of 
> the
>           exhibition was undermined by the doubts over a few photographs.
>
>           Most serious historians believe that, as Germany's top cultural 
> official,
>           Michael Naumann, has put it, "the Wehrmacht was responsible for 
> the
>           logistics of the Holocaust." Whatever the pockets of 
> professionalism, and
>           however limited the access of ordinary soldiers to Hitler's 
> murderous
>           designs, the Wehrmacht was in essence a tool of the Nazis.
>
>           In an interview in Stern magazine published before Thursday's
>           announcement of the postponement, Reemstsma, the sponsor, said: 
> "Our
>           exhibition is not the only one to contain mistakes, but it is the 
> only one
>           where errors make such large waves. And that is because the 
> exhibition
>           is so provocative to so many people."
>
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