FORMER WEST GERMANS AND THEIR PAST
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historians) use an image of the past to bash you over the head with and
block politics they don't like. And in Germany this was very easy, be–
cause of the enormity of this past. But my point is that talking about
enormity all the time obscures the past. There's a contradiction between
creating images of the past for the present and actually understanding the
past. I think Nolte and Hillgruber were in clumsy ways trying to do
that. You can argue with what they said, but I think that it should be
beyond question that they had the right to say what they said.
Karl Hyman: I
fought in World War II with the American army and
was much decorated. I come from a long line of very well-assimilated
German Jews who can trace their ancestry back almost to Roman times.
I have visited Germany since World War II, and I can tell you, there's
good news and bad news. When I was there the last time, I found that
the authoritarian Germany mentality has not abated. An order is an or–
der,
Bifehl ist Bifehl,
right or wrong. It was no problem for the German
army, Nazis and non-Nazis, to kill Jews. The Germans made the twenti–
eth century the bloodiest of all time. When I talked to a student assem–
bly in a
Gymnasium,
during the question and answer period, one of the
students said, "You talk like a Jew. Marx was a Jew. Litvinov was a
Jew, Trotsky was a Jew. You Jews brought Communism." At that time
the GDR was still under Russian control. Actually, they went from
brown fascism to red fascism. After he finished his speech, I said, "You're
wrong. You Germans brought Communism." I explained to him that
the Germans brought Communism because the Germans won against
Russia in World War
I.
Very few of us know that. The German general
staff knew that Lenin was in Switzerland, in exile. They offered to trans–
port him in a sealed railroad car from Switzerland to St. Petersburg,
which later became Leningrad, to start his revolution, which he did, suc–
cessfully. And he made peace with the Germans at Brest Litost.
The last time I was there , I thought of all the students I went to
Gymnasium
with who are gone, missing, except for one, a local phar–
macist. I visited him and asked him what he did during World War II.
He was on the Russian Front. I told him, "You're lucky you're here."
"Yes, very lucky." "How come you wound up on the Russian front?"
"Well, when the Russians attacked us. .. ." This goes to show that Nazi
propaganda, Nazi debris, is still on their brains.
Igor Webb:
Would anyone like to comment?
David Gress:
It's hard to respond to your feeling, but if the mentality
