David Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey: Is war guilt behind Berlin's aggressive embrace of international "law"?
[Messrs. Rivkin and Casey served in the U.S. Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush.]
Call it a humanitarian offensive, or call it historical revisionism, but Germany is on the march again. Seventeen years after German reunification, and 61 after top Nazis were condemned at the Nuremberg Trials, Berlin is taking a newly assertive role in attempting to define permissible international conduct. Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel claims that there is no effort to "reinterpret" Germany's checkered history, the evidence suggests a determined campaign at rehabilitation. The premise seems to be that all states are capable of serious international offenses and that all states -- especially the United States -- must be subject to constant international correction. The German experience, in other words, is not quite so unique, and Germany, therefore, not quite so culpable....
Meanwhile, Germany is using its term as president of the EU's governing body to promote a new version of its own highly restrictive "Holocaust denial" laws across Europe. At first glance, in a Europe beset with a rising tide of anti-Semitism and increasingly afflicted with historical amnesia about much of its 20th-century history, reminding the world about the evil of the Holocaust seems a worthwhile undertaking. But the new German offensive actually trivializes the country's own crimes against the Jews.
Although a number of European states already have criminalized speech denying the Holocaust, the new German proposal would encompass the whole EU and add a highly significant feature. Henceforth, it would also be a crime to deny or grossly minimize (whatever that may mean) any finding of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes by the ICC. As justification, German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries recently stated: "Historically proven facts must not be denied. When an international court determines that such crimes have taken place, then you should no longer be able to say: 'You're making that all up.'"
Yet Berlin has little problem "engaging" the regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a true holocaust denier who has pointedly threatened a renewed genocide against Israel. The German-led EU's failure to take any substantive action when Iran recently seized as hostages 15 British sailors and marines highlights this double standard....
Finally, Germany's leading political parties have for some time been quietly talking about a new museum or center in Berlin to commemorate the ethnic Germans driven out of Poland after World War II. Having seized much of eastern Poland for Soviet Russia, Stalin compensated the Poles with a slice of eastern Germany, from which much of the native population was expelled. The U.S. never accepted these annexations until Germany and Poland did themselves, and the German suffering was real enough. The museum plan, however, along with efforts by private German groups -- such as the Prussian Claims Society -- to obtain compensation from Poland for confiscated land has the Poles understandably suspicious. It also is very much of a piece with other efforts by Germany to obtain a measure of the victim status that, in the modern world, has become a necessary badge of moral authority. That, of course, is how rehabilitation works.
Read entire article at WSJ
Call it a humanitarian offensive, or call it historical revisionism, but Germany is on the march again. Seventeen years after German reunification, and 61 after top Nazis were condemned at the Nuremberg Trials, Berlin is taking a newly assertive role in attempting to define permissible international conduct. Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel claims that there is no effort to "reinterpret" Germany's checkered history, the evidence suggests a determined campaign at rehabilitation. The premise seems to be that all states are capable of serious international offenses and that all states -- especially the United States -- must be subject to constant international correction. The German experience, in other words, is not quite so unique, and Germany, therefore, not quite so culpable....
Meanwhile, Germany is using its term as president of the EU's governing body to promote a new version of its own highly restrictive "Holocaust denial" laws across Europe. At first glance, in a Europe beset with a rising tide of anti-Semitism and increasingly afflicted with historical amnesia about much of its 20th-century history, reminding the world about the evil of the Holocaust seems a worthwhile undertaking. But the new German offensive actually trivializes the country's own crimes against the Jews.
Although a number of European states already have criminalized speech denying the Holocaust, the new German proposal would encompass the whole EU and add a highly significant feature. Henceforth, it would also be a crime to deny or grossly minimize (whatever that may mean) any finding of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes by the ICC. As justification, German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries recently stated: "Historically proven facts must not be denied. When an international court determines that such crimes have taken place, then you should no longer be able to say: 'You're making that all up.'"
Yet Berlin has little problem "engaging" the regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a true holocaust denier who has pointedly threatened a renewed genocide against Israel. The German-led EU's failure to take any substantive action when Iran recently seized as hostages 15 British sailors and marines highlights this double standard....
Finally, Germany's leading political parties have for some time been quietly talking about a new museum or center in Berlin to commemorate the ethnic Germans driven out of Poland after World War II. Having seized much of eastern Poland for Soviet Russia, Stalin compensated the Poles with a slice of eastern Germany, from which much of the native population was expelled. The U.S. never accepted these annexations until Germany and Poland did themselves, and the German suffering was real enough. The museum plan, however, along with efforts by private German groups -- such as the Prussian Claims Society -- to obtain compensation from Poland for confiscated land has the Poles understandably suspicious. It also is very much of a piece with other efforts by Germany to obtain a measure of the victim status that, in the modern world, has become a necessary badge of moral authority. That, of course, is how rehabilitation works.