20 years ago the illusion of the “clean Wehrmacht” was destroyed. – Politics

The Federal President called for new forms of commemoration, and in autumn 2020 the German Bundestag decided to set up a “documentation, education and memorial site on the history of the Second World War and the National Socialist occupation regime”. The suggestion came from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Foundation. A place is to be created that is dedicated to the terror and suffering of all victim nations, including the prisoners of war under German and National Socialist rule. On the way there is also a review of the “Crimes of the Wehrmacht” exhibition opening now 20 years ago.

So it wasn’t just Hitler’s camarilla

After the Eichmann tribunal in 1961, the Auschwitz trials and, above all, the TV event “Holocaust” in 1979, the Wehrmacht exhibition was the necessary bang in collective memory. Initiated and financed by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, it was opened in March 1995 and roamed through German and Austrian cities for four years. The project focused on enlightenment through information, not only triggered an important debate in the Bundestag (on March 13, 1997), but also confronted the general public for the first time with the delusion that the “clean Wehrmacht” had fought an honorable war while the crime against humanity was being committed Holocaust, the practiced racial and annihilation ideology against the Soviet Union and its civil society were perpetrated by evil powers and the villains of Hitler’s camarilla, i.e. a minority of fanatical National Socialists. Almost behind the backs of the brave Wehrmacht and unnoticed by the majority of good and unsuspecting Germans, the disaster happened, in which the majority had no part and therefore did not remember or even have to mourn the victims.

The exhibition showed how the Wehrmacht had supported the intention of the war of annihilation in the east that disregarded international law Red Army prisoners of war, towards “Bolshevik commissars” and the civilian population as a whole were part of the German strategy. In photos and documents, the exhibition not only showed the war crimes of the Wehrmacht, but also scenes of the murder of the Jews, such as in Krivoj Rog or in Kamenets-Podolsk in the autumn of 1941 in the Ukraine. She showed that the robbery of vital resources calculated the starvation of countless people who wore neither uniform nor had any hostile attitudes, who as children, women and old people were unable to fight back. The siege of Leningrad from September 8, 1941 to January 18, 1944 was by no means a military necessity: as many of the city’s three million inhabitants as possible were to starve. About a third of Leningrad’s citizens perished in the hunger war against their city.

Children and grandchildren suddenly had to rethink

The horror of the facts documented with photos generated resistance not only among conservative patriots. The children and grandchildren of former German soldiers wanted to preserve the image of the “clean Wehrmacht”. Even if the war was lost, its intentions criminal and the conduct of the war barbaric, the historical enlightenment intended with the exhibition threatened too many personal fates, deprivations and losses: it was bad enough that the crusade against communism, the hope of conquering “Lebensraum”, the dream of master humanity had failed. Now the accusation had to be dispelled that the war was a crime, those who waged it were criminals or at least accomplices, at least henchmen.

In October 1999, the counter-enlightenment triumphed and brought down the Wehrmacht exhibition company. As usual, this was done with reproaches in detail (Some photos and captions were actually wrongly assigned, which of course did not change the seriousness of the whole thing). The exhibition was closed at the beginning of November 1999. Prominent historians spent a year examining the exhibits, texts and interpretations and concluded that the “accusations of forgery and manipulation” were unfounded. The experts recommended correcting a few factual errors and occasionally considering overly general arguments. But the initiator gave in, bowed his head, and parted with the exhibition. The newly designed exhibition, rich in texts and scientifically precise, was flawless, but could not build on the emotional impact of the incriminated exhibition.

Enlightenment is still necessary – but how?

The third edition of the catalog for the second exhibition from 2001 to 2004 is now available. As a monument of meticulousness weighing a kilo, superbly designed and authentic and indisputable in every detail with photos, facsimiles and texts. But twenty years later, accompanied by a special issue of the Hamburg Institute’s in-house magazine, which celebrates the second attempt at the work of enlightenment, the catalog seems more like a museum. A compendium for the stable desk, an ornament in the bookcase. The healing outcry that accompanied the first exhibition is no longer audible.

Open detailed view

The topic remains relevant. In view of the lustful provocation of the right, in appreciation of the Vogelschiss theory of the AfD mastermind Gauland, the cheeky speeches of his followers and the applause they receive for them, reminders and enlightenment are still necessary. The suffering of Soviet citizens and the horrors of war in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe are still not present in the collective consciousness of Germans. For younger people, the events may be a long time ago, for members of the middle generation, the perception is perhaps determined by the images of the merciless Soviet occupying power, which sought to compensate itself by overexploiting the resources of the eastern zone, you then, in the form of the GDR, imposed by the Soviet political, economic and ideological system. The war generation remained silent or had erased the terrible images and experiences from their memories. Screen memories of the German prisoners of war who were held back in the Soviet Union, of the fate of the refugees and the expellees, helped to suppress German crimes.

Instead of museumisation, new formats of remembrance are now needed.

Wolfgang Benz is a contemporary historian. From 1990 to 2011 he headed the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the TU Berlin.