Jeffrey Herf: Where Are the Anti-Fascists? ... The danger of Germany's strange silence on Ahmadinejad
The memory of the crimes of the Nazi era and the determination to oppose anti-Semitism in all its forms have been constitutive and distinctive features of German democracy since 1949, when it was articulated by the founding generation of political leaders of West Germany's Federal Republic. Judging by the memorials, commemorative days, books, and films about Nazism and the Holocaust, this tradition of remembering the murdered Jews of Europe remains firmly embedded in the political culture of contemporary German public life. Yet from its inception in the late 1940s, the postwar German memory of the Nazi past has always been attacked by those who "finally" wanted to draw a line under the past. Now, there is evidence that, under the impact of the war in Iraq, the terror stemming from radical Islamists, and the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb, antagonism to the United States and to Israel occupy a disturbingly important place in parts of German public life, perhaps even more important than an ability to recognize and fight against new forms of anti-Semitism and possible threats against Israel with weapons of mass destruction.
Works in Germany by intellectuals such as Matthias Küntzel, who wrote Jihad and Jew Hatred: Nazism, Islamism and the Roots of 9/11, and historians such as Klaus-Michael Malmann and Martin Cüppers, authors of Halbmond und Hakenkreuz Das Dritte Reich, Die Araber und Palästina (Crescent and Swastika: The Third Reich, The Arabs and Palestine) have recently explored the complex lineages and impact of radical anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe on the emergence of radical Islam in the Middle East in the 1930s and 1940s. Their work also builds on and adds to an impressive scholarship by historians from Germany and elsewhere. As a result of my own research on the diffusion of Nazi propaganda to the Middle East during World War II and the Holocaust, I've concluded that a process of coming to terms with the Nazi past that is Eurocentric--in other words, that limits itself to a history of events in Germany and the European continent--fails to grasp the connections between two eras of radical anti-Semitism, namely that of Nazism in Europe, and that introduced by radical Islamists in recent decades.
As I argued in a November 16th speech to the public forum Frankfurter Römerberggespräche (Frankfurt Conversations), the postwar German tradition of coming to terms with its Nazi past has never been only about how one should remember that history. It has always carried with it political implications for the present. The inauguration of restitution, trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity, West German and German foreign policies toward European countries invaded by Nazi Germany, and the establishment of a special relationship with Israel were all practical political consequences that drew on a clear and firm memory of the crimes of the Nazi era.
In fall 2005, when Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, threatened to wipe Israel off the map while he stressed Iran's determination to continue with its nuclear programs, the meaning of coming to terms with the Nazi past in Germany raised a very specific foreign policy question: What would the German political establishment do to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons with which Ahmadinejad could possibly implement his horrendous threat of perpetrating, in effect, a second Holocaust of the Jewish people? To be sure, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has denounced his threat with great analytical and moral clarity. She has called for U.N. economic sanctions against Iran. Others note that this is not only an issue for Germany and point to the role of businesses from other advanced economies in Iran. Yet German journalism, which does so much to recall the history of the murdered Jews of Europe, has done less to investigate the role of industry in Germany and elsewhere in the development of Iran's nuclear projects. As Benjamin Weinthal, a freelance American journalist in Berlin, reports in "The German Connection," an important article in last week's Haaretz, the Brandenburg state prosecutor's office in the city of Potsdam has been conducting an ongoing investigation into the role of German firms in the building of the Iranian nuclear plant at Bushehr. Yet the investigation and trial have not been a prominent news item in the German--or for that matter European and American--press. Let's hope that the United States National Intelligence Estimate released this week is correct, and that there is time in which to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons....
Read entire article at New Republic
Works in Germany by intellectuals such as Matthias Küntzel, who wrote Jihad and Jew Hatred: Nazism, Islamism and the Roots of 9/11, and historians such as Klaus-Michael Malmann and Martin Cüppers, authors of Halbmond und Hakenkreuz Das Dritte Reich, Die Araber und Palästina (Crescent and Swastika: The Third Reich, The Arabs and Palestine) have recently explored the complex lineages and impact of radical anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe on the emergence of radical Islam in the Middle East in the 1930s and 1940s. Their work also builds on and adds to an impressive scholarship by historians from Germany and elsewhere. As a result of my own research on the diffusion of Nazi propaganda to the Middle East during World War II and the Holocaust, I've concluded that a process of coming to terms with the Nazi past that is Eurocentric--in other words, that limits itself to a history of events in Germany and the European continent--fails to grasp the connections between two eras of radical anti-Semitism, namely that of Nazism in Europe, and that introduced by radical Islamists in recent decades.
As I argued in a November 16th speech to the public forum Frankfurter Römerberggespräche (Frankfurt Conversations), the postwar German tradition of coming to terms with its Nazi past has never been only about how one should remember that history. It has always carried with it political implications for the present. The inauguration of restitution, trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity, West German and German foreign policies toward European countries invaded by Nazi Germany, and the establishment of a special relationship with Israel were all practical political consequences that drew on a clear and firm memory of the crimes of the Nazi era.
In fall 2005, when Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, threatened to wipe Israel off the map while he stressed Iran's determination to continue with its nuclear programs, the meaning of coming to terms with the Nazi past in Germany raised a very specific foreign policy question: What would the German political establishment do to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons with which Ahmadinejad could possibly implement his horrendous threat of perpetrating, in effect, a second Holocaust of the Jewish people? To be sure, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has denounced his threat with great analytical and moral clarity. She has called for U.N. economic sanctions against Iran. Others note that this is not only an issue for Germany and point to the role of businesses from other advanced economies in Iran. Yet German journalism, which does so much to recall the history of the murdered Jews of Europe, has done less to investigate the role of industry in Germany and elsewhere in the development of Iran's nuclear projects. As Benjamin Weinthal, a freelance American journalist in Berlin, reports in "The German Connection," an important article in last week's Haaretz, the Brandenburg state prosecutor's office in the city of Potsdam has been conducting an ongoing investigation into the role of German firms in the building of the Iranian nuclear plant at Bushehr. Yet the investigation and trial have not been a prominent news item in the German--or for that matter European and American--press. Let's hope that the United States National Intelligence Estimate released this week is correct, and that there is time in which to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons....