(One 30-minute segment)

In 1999, Ger­many has gone to great lengths to present itself as being dis­tant from its Nazi past. The capi­tol has been moved from Bonn to Berlin, Goethe’s 250th birth­day is being cel­e­brated as denot­ing a Ger­man cul­tural renewal and a “center-left” gov­ern­ment has ini­ti­ated Germany’s third mil­i­tary incur­sion into the Balkans in this cen­tury. This broad­cast high­lights the illu­sory nature of this “new image” for Ger­many. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of resur­gent nation­al­ism and Nazi nos­tal­gia in the Ger­man army (the Bun­deswehr), the pro­gram under­scores the revi­sion­ist his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal atti­tude taken by the Schroeder gov­ern­ment. Per­son­ally tak­ing the lead in negat­ing the mes­sage of a recent exhibit about Wehrma­cht crimes dur­ing the Third Reich, Schroeder has echoed the Nazi line on “for­eign­ers” and “immi­gra­tion” and has con­sis­tently down­played the threat of resur­gent Nazi vio­lence in Ger­many. The broad­cast ana­lyzes the resur­gence of Ger­man “cul­tural nation­al­ism” and anti-Semitism. This should not come as a great sur­prise, in light of the fail­ure of de-Nazification in Ger­many. (See RFAs 1–3, 22 and 37 and Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Shows M-11, M-60, M-61, as well as FTRs 50, 70–72, 81, 86, 95, 99, 102, 152 and 155.) Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is a speech made by author Mar­tin Walser. In early 1999, Walser accepted a peace prize from the Ger­man Book Trade and Ger­man cul­ture min­is­ter and for­mer pub­lisher Michael Nau­mann. (For more on this speech and on the back­ground of Michael Nau­mann, see FTRs 122, 123 and 135.) In Walser’s speech, he sounded the theme that Ger­many no longer needed to feel respon­si­ble for the crimes of the Third Reich and warned that crit­ics should not attempt to hold the coun­try respon­si­ble for the Nazi past. Walser char­ac­ter­ized those who dis­cuss Nazi crimes as moti­vated by anti-German sen­ti­ment. His speech was widely praised by the Ger­man intel­li­gentsia, his ideas find­ing a wide and sus­tained audi­ence. Another crit­i­cal ele­ment of dis­cus­sion con­cerns resur­gent Nazism among young Ger­mans and sim­i­lar­i­ties between the man­ner in which crimes of young Nazis are down­played in both Ger­many and the United States. (See FTR-168.) Obfus­cat­ing the ris­ing tide of fas­cism with a facade of “psycho-babble” rhetoric, Nazi crimes are dis­missed as the work of “mis­un­der­stood youth” who are sub­ject to “social pres­sures”. In this man­ner, the prob­lem is cov­ered up. The work­ings of polit­i­cal con­spir­acy are mis­rep­re­sented (and mis­un­der­stood) as psy­chopathol­ogy, rather than fas­cist intrigue. One coun­sel­ing cen­ter in Ger­many became so solic­i­tous of its young Nazi charges that the staff wound up actively aid­ing the skin­heads in their Nazi activ­i­ties. (See also: FTRs 48, 120, 144, 147, 148, 149, 154, 159, 161, 166.) (Recorded on 9/12/99.)