JEFFREY HERF
235
In view of the fact that J enninger read the speech that was printed the
following day in the press, only an erroneous or a politically moti–
vated reading could lead to the assumption that Jenninger was in fact
advocating the views of the Nazis in the 1930s. Yet this interpreta–
tion carried the day, and Jenninger, who had just delivered one of
the greatest speeches on the Nazi era by any West German politician
since 1949, agreed to resign under enormous pressure.
Perhaps the left walked out partly because Jenninger refused to
repeat the myth that Hitler was never popular, or because the walk–
out seemed a good tactic to weaken the conservative-liberal coalition
in Bonn. Perhaps the conservatives accepted Jenninger's resignation
with the appropriate regrets because he had spoken so truthfully
about the past they had not faced in the postwar years. Jenninger
made them uncomfortable as well. Why go to the mat for a politician
who spoke so bluntly about what many conservatives would really
rather not discuss? After all, even in 1988, Jenninger had broken
taboos. I do not recall another West German politician who made
the link between the attack on the Soviet Union and the murder of
the Jews as explicit as he did . Nor can I remember another West
German conservative politician who spoke as critically as he did
about the "quick identification" with the victors and the retrospective
myth-making that entailed in the postwar years. So Phillip Jen–
ninger antagonized the left, which did not want to hear that Ger–
mans believed such rot, and his own conservatives, for whom he was
too blunt.
If
one compares Jenninger's speech with those of Weizsacker
and Kohl, or most speeches given on such occasions, its distinctive
feature is clearly its concern for truth in the most specific, concrete
manner. Jenninger offered , in Gertrude Himmelfarb's terms, his–
tory with the politics , ideas , and events brought back in. There is not
a sentence of euphemism in the entire speech. Every paragraph has
a name , date, place, and event, every act, an actor, and , as much as
possible, every effect, a cause . There are few, if any, passive sen–
tences .
It
has none of the ersatz profundity about modernity or im–
personal forces that was an important part of the apologetic
Kultur–
kritik
of a Martin Heidegger or an Albert Speer. Nor does it roman–
ticize the Germans as the victims of a detested Nazi regime. They
emerge as accomplices. He presented Europe and its anti-Semitic
face without adornment. The prose is clear and plain, the sort of
political language George Orwell fostered.
In the Bundestag though , those deputies of the left, the very
