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PARTISAN REVIEW
There are no end to useful statements made by Hitler for those who
wish to make him out to be little more than an ardent anti–
communist. For that matter, shortly before he killed himself Hitler
expressed regret that he had been so kind .
Nolte sees Hitler's "most secret actions" as a reaction to the
communist menace of the day. He argues that it is important that
the Gulag Archipelago was "prior" to Auschwitz . These ideas ex–
hibit a strange sense of causality. His train of thought runs
something like this: Lenin and Stalin committed mass murders;
Hitler knew of this horror and therefore committed his own mass
murders. There is a lot that one can say about this logic; at the least,
one must point out that it seems to suggest that the murder of
millions of Jews was either performed as a deterrent to Stalin or as
the unintentional result of their somehow having been in the way .
Habermas ' s criticism of the apologetic tendency among some
West German historians deserves high praise for its acuteness and
civil courage . His advocacy of constitutional patriotism ties the
debate among the historians to the broad discussion regarding na–
tional identity . If Kohl and other conservative politicians wish to
minimize the significance of the Nazis in order to reestablish a tradi–
tional national consciousness , Habermas and others propose a
patriotic allegiance to the Grundgesetz, the Basic Law of West Ger–
many promulgated in 1949. This constitutional document ir–
revocably establishes : fundamental rights for every citizen; a social
state based on the rule of law as the form of government; and a right
of resistance against anyone who undertakes to abolish the order the
Basic Law creates. The Basic Law marks a decisive, radical demo–
cratic improvement over any other previous German constitution .
Some observers, such as Hans-Jochen Vogel of the Social
Democratic Party, worry that the constitution will be overburdened
if it is called upon to achieve what a national feeling does for other
people. But "constitutional patriotism" need not be a substitute for
a national consciousness. Germans can be proud of the achieve–
ments of their Federal Republic, national soccer team, and young
tennis stars. The most solid cornerstone for a national feeling,
however, is the democratic order constructed by the Basic Laws .
The first article by Habermas brought forth a flood of commen–
tary . Historians to whom he made reference claimed to have been
misquoted or quoted out of context. In the
Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung,
Joachim Fest , a biographer of Hitler, contributed an article
which would have been remarkable if only for its persistent whining
