(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Never before has the celebration of "the other Germany" been more extensive – the 60th anniversary of the July 20 assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler thus represents a watershed. New releases of several Stauffenberg biographies and stories about the German resistance, several television series partly about Stauffenberg, partly about German resistance in general, memorial exhibitions, wreath-laying in Bendlerblock – German press has been full of memorial articles, most at a high level.
Perhaps the Süddeutsche Zeitung was the most picturesque headline. Over a picture of Philipp Freiherr v. Boeselager from the memorial service at the execution site Plötzensee in Berlin, the newspaper summed up the content of the ceremony with the words: "Fight against barbarism is not treason". Von Boeselager, one of the few survivors from the July 20 circle, provided explosives for the assassination as a young officer. Also present was 93-year-old Freya v.Moltke, the widow of the hanged Helmut James v. Moltke, central to the civil resistance against Hitler (the Kreisauer circle). But critics are talking about a "memory cult". Are there new features in the picture?
Political use of July 20
On his 50th birthday in 1994, Franz Ludwig Graf von Stauffenberg, son of Claus, tried to purge communists from the memorial plaque in Bendlerblock, the place where his father and the other military conspirators were shot the night of July 21, 1944. He did not worry that the Wehrmacht continues to call barracks after leading Nazi officers – Stauffenberg jr. participated in a fairly general sport at the time: the politicization of the history of resistance. It was the CSU politician Stauffenberg who spoke at the time, he wanted to remove pictures of the emigrant opposition (including the later GDR politicians Wilhelm Pieck and Walter UIbricht) from places where his father was honored.
Today, such blindness in the right eye is much rarer. Here, too, is a familial paradox. After Peter Hoffman's great Stauffenberg biography – now in a new edition – it is clear that Claus through his friendship with the Social Democrat Julius Leber (arrested in early 1944 and a man who was intended as chancellor in post-Nazi Germany), was also in contact with the leadership in the German Communist Party. In other words, he was open to the need for some form of democratic representation of interests in a modern state. It was a thought that offered great resistance to his national-conservative, aristocratic-Protestant milieu after the experience of the Weimar Republic. Everyone today realizes that this was an emergency coalition with three purposes: kill Hitler, save Germany from the suffering a defeat would bring and restore the rule of law. Then a kind of normal policy would follow with all the conflicts and compromises that had to come.
Lead in German nation building
Here is an important feature: July 20 has become more de-politicized (in the sense of party-politicized) in step with the strengthening of the significance of the assassination as an identity-building symbol for the new Berlin Republic. What we see is a fairly obvious official use of history for nation-building purposes. Chancellor Schröder is invited to the June 6 celebrations for D-Day. A new openness to German victims during the war is shown, the allied bombing of German cities is criticized, a new focus on the flight of millions from the east arises and the will to point out the Red Army's mass rapes in 1945 becomes clearer. We also see a new German will to mark in international politics (troops in Kosovo and in Afghanistan) – everything is part of Berlin's attempt to say "enough is enough". We do not forget the story but we no longer whip ourselves to blood of it. Berlin is not Bonn and Bonn is not Weimar. In his speech, Gerhard Schröder, who himself lost his father in the war, also emphasized that the 20 July men also sacrificed their lives for "common European values", another point of connection to the identity of the Berlin Republic.
But this turning of historical pages is not easy. For Bendlerblock, like now huser the German Resistance Research Institute, the July 20 Memorial and the German Ministry of Defence, is the same place where Admiral Tirpitz planned the naval race with England that led to the First World War. The secret rearmament of the German army against the Treaty of Versailles was also conspired there and not least the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. That 20 July was not a democratic uprising is now calmly accepted as a historical fact. Instead, they speak of a "revolt of conscience" and emphasize that Stauffenberg dared to take a leap that few others dared: risking his own life.
The ambiguity of the nobility
Another interesting feature of the 60th anniversary is the interest in the relationship between Nazism / the German nobility. We see a careful revision of history after the death of the liberal ZEIT editor Marion Gräfin Dönhoff. She herself was expelled from East Prussia but did not take part in any form of revenge against Poland. Her views on the anti-Nazism of the nobility have been qualified. The German nobility wanted to ride on Nazism. They participated in its early conquests (Stauffenberg enthusiastically welcomed Hitler's conquest of power in 1933), shared its extreme nationalism, but not its "plebeian excesses", as it was often called. Two of Dönhoff's brothers were members of the NSDAP, something Gräfin Dönhoff underplays. She herself was on the verge of the July 20 uprising, but escaped with a Gestapo interrogation. Dönhoff opened up that several of the July 20 circle could be accomplices, even war criminals. "They were aware of their guilt and their shared responsibility," she wrote.
What she is right in is that it is not possible to speak uncritically about Prussian cadaver discipline and public faith. This code of honor also contained moral and intellectual resources that triggered the greatest sacrifices, Civil Courage. It is obvious that several of the opponents, those who were not present from the first moment, were driven into opposition when they primarily experienced the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews.
Again, the complexity of the story shows itself, because July 20 is a more meaningful date in German history than we often seize. On July 20, 1932, a German nobleman, Franz von Papen, led the illegal coup against the Social Democratic state government in Prussia under Otto Braun. This coup made Hitler's later surrender of power a few months later. Together with the East Elbe landowners, right-wing officers and heavy anti-republican business forces, the nobility became what German historians call "stirrup holders" for Hitler. In other words, the nobility was central to the entrance of Nazism as well as to its exit. Through July 20, it also contributed to its own suicide as a political force, thus facilitating the democratization of the Federal Republic.
The same tone was heard from London and New York: They did not want anything to do with the German resistance movement, the Allies were actually relieved that the assassination attempt failed. They wanted the unconditional capitulation of Nazism, to the great disappointment of the July 20 men. The Allies would not negotiate with a Germany that with a strong noble, pre-democratic element would become more difficult to deal with. Therefore: As with so many similar dates in German history – November 9, i.a. – July 20 is not a very simple solar disk to deal with.
