HISTORY AND CURRENT PERCEPTIONS OF GERMANY
563
the beginning but with increasing confidence. Surprisingly, within about
thirty years Austrians have been successful in creating an independent Aus–
trian nation, historically unknown and hardly understandable to the gen–
erations of the parents and gJ:andparents. The mere existence of two
German states, I would guess, has been most helpful. When, in the early
eighties, a German historian proposed a new formula for discussing the
relations among the three German-speaking countries - three states, two
nations, one culture - only Austria's professional historians felt provoked.
The GDR used a similar strategy in coping with the Nazi past. In
their picture of history, the moving force was the capitalistic system that
created the Nazi dictatorship as its last bastion of defense. The most ag–
gressive, the most militaristic, and the most exploitative part of
monopoly capital decided, consciously, to hand over the executive force
to a party of adventurers. Finally, the oppressed working class expelled
the oligarchy with the help of the Red Army. The brave fighters for the
liberation of the oppressed didn't seem to feel any moral obligation to
get rid of the collective past of Nazism. The argument ran similarly to
the classical syllogism: Capitalism causes fascism; socialism is the opposite
of capitalism. Consequently, if the GDR is on the way to socialism, it
has nothing to do with fascism.
It
seems clear that both of these successor states saw affinities to each
other. As early as possible, they established diplomatic relations and in–
tensified economic exchange. As an irony of history, Austria, heir to the
overly heavy industry of the Third Reich, built iron and steel factories in
the former GDR to cope with world market problems in steel and iron.
The former Hermann Goring factory in Adolf Hitler's hometown of
Linz sold factory components to the GDR's newly erected industrial area
in Eisenhiittenstadt. On the other hand, the GDR's political elite utilized
Austria as an opportunity to overcome its own isolation.
Looking at the Federal Republic and its strategy for coping with the
Nazi past, one has to acknowledge that it was the only successor state of
the Third Reich that tried to seek the reasons and causes for the rise of
the Nazi dictatorship inside their own social structure and historical
development. Whatever one might criticize about the Federal Republic
of Germany, one has to appreciate the strong effort that was made in
the Western part of Germany after some years of agony. Germany's
Vergangenheitsbewaltigung
resulted in opening the political and cultural
attitudes to standards of Western democracy. The strategy of in–
ternalization was undoubtedly successful in dealing with the Nazi past,
but problems arose when the West Germans utilized this strategy in con–
nection with its eastern part.
