Pacifist Germany defies Europe’s nationalist tide
Berlin has not shrunk from the darkest chapters of continental history
PHILIP STEPHENS
There was a time when Europe thought it had made its peace with history. The nations of East Asia — Japan, China, Korea — might nurture the embers of conflicts past, but Europe had liberated itself with the creation of the EU. You did not have to be an ardent Europhile to see that economic integration served as the midwife for postwar reconciliation.
All this was before Poland’s authoritarian government reopened a claim for war reparations against its neighbour Germany, and Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban sought to rehabilitate the reputation of his country’s fascist wartime leader Miklos Horthy. The ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) in Warsaw now wants to criminalise any suggestion that some Poles were complicit in the operation of Nazi concentration camps.
Nations mostly celebrate history by marking triumphs over adversity or, sometimes, bathing in the nostalgia of past glories. In its moment of denial, Brexit Britain cannot get enough of Churchillian reminiscence about standing alone. The new nationalism is rooted in mostly imagined grievance.
Mr Orban has never quite reconciled himself to the loss of Hungarian territory under the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of PiS, sees a German or Russian plot around every corner.
The nationalist right has a keen eye for enemies. Jews have always been a favourite target. Now they are joined among adversaries of old by Muslim refugees arriving from the Middle East. Nor is Mr Orban alone in his revisionist take on 1930s dictators. In far-right Italian circles you often hear that history has “misunderstood” the fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
Harder to comprehend have been angry demonstrations in Athens against suggestions that the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia might more simply be called Macedonia. The tiny Balkan state stands accused of seeking to appropriate Greek heritage. But is Greece’s identity really quite so fragile? Surely after the tribulations of recent years the nationalists could find more recent grudges than an argument about the lineage of Philip of Macedon?
There is one European nation that has never sought to forget the history of the continent during the first half of the 20th century. Germans remain at once uncomfortable about talking about the past, but determined to confront it. This way they can legitimise the present.
Walk the streets of Berlin and there is no escape from Hitler’s calumnies — from the small, gold memorial plaques studded in the pavement to mark places where individual Jews were seized, to the grim but inspiring Holocaust memorial next to the Brandenburg gate and the bleak account of the rise of Nazism in the museum of German history.
Next week foreign and defence policy chiefs from across the advanced western democracies will gather for the annual Munich Security Conference. Two of the conclusions of their deliberations can be written in advance. Donald Trump’s disavowal of global leadership in favour of “America first” nationalism leaves Europe to do more to safeguard its own security. And the nation most able to shoulder more of the defence burden? Germany.
The hosts cannot complain. It was in Munich that chancellor Angela Merkel last summer offered a caustic assessment of Mr Trump as an unreliable partner. Only last month in Davos she called for Europe to “take its destiny into its own hands”. Talk to policymakers in Berlin and you get the same message: as Europe’s most powerful nation, Germany will play its part.
I wonder. Ms Merkel may tell international audiences that Germany will pay up for defence and security, but the draft coalition agreement her Christian Democrats have negotiated with the Social Democrats tells a rather different story. Beyond a few bromides — “German foreign policy is dedicated to peace” — the draft says nothing about Germany’s role in preserving an open international order. As for defence, well, “the Bundeswehr remains an indispensable element of German security policy”.
Critics call this freeriding. And there is something of that. Germany is a stable, prosperous society and its citizens have grown wealthy as others paid for Europe’s security. But no one should underestimate the weight of history.
Berlin’s Invaliden cemetery was built more than 250 years ago on the orders of Frederick the Great to memorialise Prussia’s war heroes. Among the graves is the tomb of the warrior Gerhard von Scharnhorst. But do not expect grandeur — the monuments sit on a small scrap of ill-tended land hemmed in by apartment blocks and the canal behind the city’s main railway station.
Scharnhorst shares the ground with the authors of Operation Valkyrie, the abortive attempt by military officers to assassinate Hitler. Somewhere, in an unmarked grave, lies Reinhard Heydrich, the SS officer who chaired the infamous Wannsee conference.
This is our “Arlington”, a former German foreign minister told me laconically. Another way of putting it would be to say that Germany’s stubborn pacifism keeps clear sight of history. That is inconvenient for those of us who believe that Europe does indeed need to do more to defend itself. But Germany at least has held on to a true account of events that angry nationalists pretend to have forgotten.
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario