Why are Germans in such denial about the past?

Question

Is it something in human nature? So many of them were alive during the Third Reich and the response during that time was to do nothing. So many of them must have saw what was happening to the Jews (getting kicked out of their homes, etc) and had to have had at least a slight idea of what was going on (Some of the books I have read seem to confirm this).

Yet after the war the response was to ban everything associated with Hitler and the Nazis. Now to have parades, symbols, etc associated with the Nazis is illegal.

To me it's completely fake. These people were willing to do nothing or aide in the Final Solution and now they act like nothing has happened and that they did nothing wrong. I guess in the end the people that are still alive from that time period are the ones that have to live with themselves and that they are blaming it on Hitler and a few individuals.

Answer 1

if your parents and country made a few bad decisions, started world wars, and was synonymous with evil to an entire generation of the whole world's population, you would probably attempt to avoid being implicated in that.

Answer 2

First, it's rather a long time ago now. Most of today's Germans hadn't been born at the time. The youngest adult in Nazi Germany would be as old as the Pope!
Secondly, most people aren't heroes. The 'kicked out of their homes' type of persecution happened during the Second World War. Anyone who tried to protest against it would have shared the same fate, not only as a Jew-lover but as obstructing the war effort.
Thirdly, Germans are not in denial about the Nazi period. It is extensively and objectively covered in school.

Answer 3

the Germans i have met are very aware of their past and seem to beat them selves up far too much over it
how ever if you were a German who was 20 in 1944 that makes you 90 today so when you say so many are alive you are wrong
yes Germans did oppose the dispossession of the Jews and they were arrested and executed. this was a police state where Hitler took power and did not allow voting. he closed down rotary , boy scouts any organisation that was not Nazi. your conclusion that the average German could have done something is naive.
it was the allied who started and enforced de nazifcation, it wasn't a German idea therefore it wasn't false in the slightest. Additionally Germans who may have been Nazi would have changed their mind after the defeat and the sack of Berlin by the Russians and many Germans would have been Luke warm at best about the Nazis and would have welcomed the de nazification

anti sematism was a common European thing, look at the Defus affair in France and the programs in Russia. persecution of the Jews was the norm in Europe.

Answer 4

I am a German of the "grandchildren generation", living and raised in Germany.

I agree that many people then knew or at least suspected what was going on and also witnessed many crimes against the Jews and other persecuted people themselves. It is also true that most of the old people who lived then deny that they knew. However I don't believe them. I have also read many things that show how much people could know and also about the prevalence of antisemitism in Germany at that time. But I guess it's really human nature that people deny it. I'd say a very high percentage of people in general who are caught in some kind of crime will say "It wasn't me" if they see any chance that someone will believe them. We wouldn't need any courts, police, and prosecuters anymore if all people deliberately confessed all they did wrong.

But actually the war generation is also questioned by many other Germans, and for example, in the last two years there were two excellent books published in Germany by German historians that show how people could know about the Holocaust while it happened. Sometimes you can also hear how people who were children then admit it. Some months ago when I visited a concentration camp memorial site (Mittelbau-Dora), there was an elderly woman in the group of visitors who said that she lived in the next small town as a child then and could see the smoke of the crematorium. She said she asked her parents about it and they replied that she should never ever mention that again. At the exhibition in Mittelbau-Dora and during the guided tour the knowledge and acquiescence of the "ordinary people" was also pointed out.

And the Holocaust, World War II and the entire Nazi time in general are taught at school, it's part of the obligatory curriculum. There are documentary films on TV, lots of books published about it and available in all public libraries, the former concentration camps are memorial sites, there are exhibitions in many museums... believe me I came to know about this past very early as a child, it was never a secret.
Yes, it is illegal in Germany to wave swastika flags or wear swastika on your clothes or something like this. But that has nothing to do with brushing something under the carpet. These laws are there because displaying swastikas in such a way is a form of expressing hatred, insulting others, and agreeing with mass murder. It is however not at all forbidden to show the swastika in a clearly educational context for example in documentary films, photos from that time etc. It is even in schoolbooks. We watched parts of Hitler's speeches at school, we had pictures of Nazi propaganda posters in schoolbooks etc., in order to understand the dangers of propaganda and to learn not be influenceable by such things as many people were in past.

Answer 5

you say these people. how many germans have you met?
have you even travelled to germany? how about europe in general?

i disagree with your assertion that germany is in denial about its past. i'm english and have driven extensively throughout germany, switzerland, and austria, and do not share your opinion.

the united states own history isn't particulary glowing with acts of humanity - hiroshima, for instance. do we blame all americans for taking land from the native american indians and dropping the atomic bomb on the japanese? would you argue that americans are in denial?

what was the response of some americans during the civil rights movement...?

easy to judge and cast an accusatory finger when you're not the one involved, or living a war you didn't fight. you or i can't possibly imagine what it must have been like back then.

books aren't people's lives. they are broad strokes. a dim picture of the past at best.

i stepped out of the london underground just a few minutes after the IRA bombing of harrods back in 1983. no book you will ever read can match the shock of what i personally saw that day...

go easy on other people's history.

Answer 6

It is not the whole of Germany's fault. It IS human nature- anything that happened that is traumatic or terrible in someone's life, they'd want to forget it. Of COURSE they'd want to ban anything that involved them with Nazis...they wouldn't want the rest of the world thinking that they still support that after what their country and all of Europe had been through.

Besides, would you fancy seeing a NAZI PARADE?

I believe that they are aware of what happened. It's nothing for them to be proud of.

My German algebra teacher had told me about his grandmother living in Germany during WWII, and she AND her family thought what the Germans were doing was horrible.

Answer 7

The opposite is true. That is why they ban any glorification of Hitler and the Nazis

Answer 8

My experience is that Germans are much more accepting of the shame of their past than the Japanese are of theirs. In fact the Japanese do not even seem to be aware of WWII much at all!

Answer 9

Must be shame but at least they do acknowledge their past unlike the Japanese who completely ignore theirs.