Joseph Denton Reading Analysis Memory and Policy in East Germany from Ulbricht to Honecker From Divided Memory

by Jeffrey Herf Objective: For this analysis I am going to be drawing heavily from the Divided Memory reading in addition to pulling, slightly, from The Foundations of Modern Terrorism by Martin Miller.1 It was impossible getting through this section of Divided Memory without thinking about the concurring state terror and censorship in the Soviet Union following World War II. Soviet influence shaped immediate and long-term memory in their satellite regions to fit political goals. My objective for this analysis is to analyze East Germany and, to some degree, Soviet state political goals and resulting terror and censorship as the driving force for highly constructed memory of Nazism and the Holocaust. Analysis: Stalinism, Communism, and a new political structure were able to flourish in East Germany following World War II due to a defined memory of the Holocaust and Nazism that accused fascism and Hitler as central evils while ignoring antisemetism. Jeffrey Herf contributes immediate lack of dissent toward Stalinism, state policy, and general political thought in East Germany to a fear that political officials would relativize or diminish the burden of the Nazi crimes and give aid and comfort to fascists and imperialists abroad.2 East Germany created a common enemy the fascist. Having such a vague definition of the enemy allowed any group or individual that opposed the East German regime to be labeled as such. Fascism was used to brand state initiatives such as the

1 2

This is a text from my Modern Terrorism class, which I think, in this case, is highly relevant. Herf, Jeffrey. Divided Memory, 163. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Universiy Press, 1997.

Berlin Wall, called [the] antifascist protection wall, or the workers revolt of 1953, called [the] fascist provocation.3 Along with fascism, East Germany targeted imperialism and capitalism, which they asserted were western ideals that would ruin West Germany. Those that opposed such ideology were either silenced by fear or fled to West Germany before East German rigid security made doing so impossible. Political goals outweighed any objective analysis of what was actually occurring in Nazi Germany. Along with lack of opposition, the East German regime was able to define memory of the Holocaust and Nazism through contrived measures that strayed from reality, empowered typically marginalized populations, or controlled its population through force. Monuments that failed to recognize Jewish loss began to arise that, instead, denounced fascism and communalized struggle as a force affecting all peoples equally during the war. Women and teenagers were encouraged to join this unified front against fascism and did so at an astonishing rate, never bothering to comment on the atrocities that had occurred to Jews despite marching directly through concentration camps designed for extermination.4 Specific historical facts were altered to buttress East Germanys political agenda such as protest signs reading 7,000,000 million Germans killed (a dramatic overestimate) to diminish the number of Jews that were killed.5 A narrative was created that Nazis did not murder Jews for antisemetic reasons, but because of [an initiative] to divert middle-class anger over capitalist anarchy onto the Jews, making the Jews a logical scapegoat instead of a direct target.6 In general, Jews and

3 4

Ibid., 163. Ibid., 165. 5 Idem. 6 Ibid., 172.

antisemetism were not mentioned in political speeches regarding the tyranny of Hitler. Despite over seventy-five former members of the Nazi party [occupying] post[s] in East German politics, administration, journalship, and scholarship[,] the state claimed to have purged all such affiliates.7 They even pointed to West Germany as a political harbor for Nazism. The same type of propaganda that reigned under Nazi Germany found new roots in East Germany as Nazi writers were rehired at major press groups and, consequently, spread seeds of antisemetism through their publications.8 Jews began fleeing East Germany in wake of discrimination, their widespread removal from the political sphere, and policies that condemned Israel and equated Zionism to terrorism.9 All of these measures were so effective of eradicating antisemetism from the goals of Hitler and Nazism that such a memory would not be deconstructed until the collapse of the East German regime in 1989.10 The irony of East German politics following World War II represents the goals of Stalin to gain absolute control of the political sphere of the Soviet Union and its satellite states by unifying its populations against common enemies such as Nazism, westernization, capitalism, and fascism.11 Acknowledging the antisemetic roots of the Holocaust would mean creating a memory that would focus on preventing antisemetism instead of reinforcing state goals. By using terror and force to suppress usurpation, the state became the very enemy it vowed to never enforce, with a population that was either fully supportive or rendered helpless and unable or unwilling to remember or learn from

7 8

Ibid., 186. Ibid., 189. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 162. 11 Miller, Martin. The Foundations of Modern Terrorism: State, Society and the Dynamics Of Political Violence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

the past. A memory that recognized The Holocaust would not be possible until the fall of the Berlin Wall. This flood of western influence and capitalism into East Germany would not just present economic capitalism, but a free market of ideas that had previously been controlled by the state. This allowed for new and competing publications of history and interpretation that presented dynamic, diverse versions of what type of memory appropriately recognized The Holocaust.