Germany's postwar reinvention

Summary

History Extra Podcast Summary
Episode: Germany's Postwar Reinvention
Release Date: December 9, 2024
Host: Danny Bird
Guest: Historian Frank Trentmann
Podcast Description: The History Extra podcast offers engaging historical narratives and insightful conversations with leading historians. In this episode, historian Frank Trentmann explores Germany's remarkable transformation from the devastation of World War II to its current status as an economic powerhouse and global leader.

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1. Introduction to Germany's Postwar Transformation [01:58 - 02:46]

Danny Bird opens the episode by setting the stage:
"In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, both physically and morally. But over the eight decades since, the country has transformed into an economic powerhouse and a leader on the world stage."

Frank Trentmann explains his motivation for the book "Out of the Darkness":
"In autumn 2015, during the refugee crisis, Germany took in almost 1 million refugees. This sparked profound moral debates among Germans, prompting reflections on how much the nation had changed since the Nazi era. I noticed that many discussions were framed in moral terms—saving, debt, compassion—which led me to explore these themes in depth."
—[02:58]

2. Germany Before 1945: A Period of Soul-Searching [02:46 - 07:04]

Contrary to the common historical starting point of 1945, Frank advocates beginning in 1942:
"In 1942 and 1943, Germany experienced significant soul-searching due to the catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad and relentless aerial bombings. Germans began questioning the war's purpose and their roles within it."
—[04:51]

He illustrates this introspection with the story of a Lower Saxony schoolteacher:
"Initially a staunch supporter of Hitler, the teacher changes his stance as his son goes missing at Stalingrad. By the war's end, he rejects Nazi symbols and convinces himself that he never truly supported the war."
—[07:14]

3. Division into East and West Germany and Approaches to the Nazi Legacy [10:33 - 15:52]

Post-war, Germany splits into East and West, each handling the Nazi legacy differently:

• East Germany (GDR):
  "Led by former resistance members, East Germany portrayed itself as a new, antifascist state, distancing itself entirely from the Nazi past. They initiated reparations to Jewish victims and ceased prosecuting Nazis by the early 1950s."
  —[10:47]

• West Germany (FRG):
  "West Germany viewed itself as the legal successor of the German Empire, taking on historical responsibilities like reparations. Chancellor Adenauer facilitated reparations to Jewish victims in the early 1950s."
  —[10:47]

Parallel Policies:
Both states conducted mass amnesties for former Nazis to rebuild society swiftly, leading to similar denazification outcomes despite differing political narratives.
—[10:47]

4. Multiculturalism in East vs. West Germany [15:52 - 23:38]

West Germany:

• Ethnic Citizenship:
  "West Germany's citizenship was based on descent, viewing being German as an ethnic trait. This hindered the integration of migrant workers, who were labeled as 'guest workers' with the expectation to return home."
  —[15:56]

• Migrant Workers:
  Despite attempts to limit immigration in the 1970s, millions stayed, leading to challenges in integration and the emergence of multicultural communities.
  —[15:56]

East Germany:

• Limited Multiculturalism:
  "East Germany had significantly fewer foreigners, primarily Soviet soldiers and select contract workers. The regime attempted to isolate these foreigners, preventing integration and citizenship."
  —[15:56]

• Xenophobia:
  By the mid-1980s, East Germany experienced heightened racial violence and discrimination, exacerbated by limited exposure to multiculturalism.
  —[15:56]

5. Moral Factors: Conscience, Compassion, and Complicity [25:09 - 34:05]

Frank Trentmann introduces the three Cs as the moral framework in German society:

• Conscience:
  Reflects individual and collective ethical considerations, evident in Germany's ongoing reckoning with its past.

• Compassion:
  "Compassion in Germany extends beyond historical atrocities to contemporary issues like climate change, where collective responsibility is acknowledged."
  —[25:18]

• Complicity:
  "Complicity isn't limited to the Holocaust; it also applies to modern challenges like environmental degradation, where societal lifestyles contribute to global issues."
  —[25:18]

Application of the Three Cs:
Frank explores how these moral factors influence German responses to various global and domestic issues, shaping policies and societal attitudes.

6. Reunification: Successes and Challenges [29:48 - 34:05]

Reunification in 1990:
Frank discusses whether the reunification of East and West Germany has been successful or fraught with lingering issues.

• Economic Integration:
  "Economists commend the remarkable economic convergence of former East Germany, transforming it into a competitive region despite initial disparities."
  —[30:02]

• Cultural and Social Challenges:
  "Many East Germans feel culturally marginalized post-reunification. Their experiences and histories are often overlooked in mainstream media, leading to feelings of invisibility and resentment."
  —[30:02]

• Demographic Issues:
  Declining populations and resistance to immigration in East Germany have led to economic and social stagnation in some regions.
  —[30:02]

7. Memory Politics and Modern Antisemitism [34:05 - 37:30]

Impact of Holocaust Memory:
Frank examines how Germany's extensive memory politics around the Holocaust have influenced contemporary antisemitism.

• Memory vs. Action:
  "While Germany has robust memorials and educational programs about the Holocaust, this does not automatically translate into the eradication of antisemitism."
  —[34:16]

• Recent Trends:
  Events like the October 7th attacks have exposed underlying antisemitic sentiments that memory politics alone cannot quell.
  —[34:16]

Historical Continuity:
Antisemitism has persisted in Germany despite concerted memory efforts, indicating that deeper societal changes are necessary beyond remembrance.
—[37:30]

8. Germany's Environmentalism: Roots and Contradictions [37:30 - 42:23]

Romantic Tradition and Environmentalism:
Germany's deep-seated Romanticism fosters a profound connection to nature, which has evolved into a robust environmental movement.

• Cultural Reverence for Nature:
  "Nature serves as a sanctuary from urban corruption, reflecting an anti-materialist streak within German culture."
  —[37:41]

• Green Movement Emergence:
  The anti-nuclear movement gave rise to the Green Party, integrating environmentalism into Germany's political fabric.
  —[37:41]

Contradictions in Environmental Practices:
Despite strong environmental advocacy, Germany's lifestyle choices, such as high CO2 emissions and car dependency, undermine its environmental objectives.
—[37:41]

9. Reinvention and Ongoing Challenges [42:23 - 43:17]

Complex Journey of Reinvention:
Frank emphasizes that Germany's transformation is not a linear progression but a zigzag path marked by conflicts and unresolved tensions.

• Achievements and Oversights:
  While significant progress has been made, challenges like cultural marginalization post-reunification and persistent antisemitism highlight ongoing issues.
  —[42:33]

• Open-Ended Future:
  The journey of reinvention continues, leaving room for future developments and resolutions of historical and contemporary challenges.
  —[43:17]

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Notable Quotes

• Frank Trentmann on Germany's Moral Reflection:
  "Complicity isn't just something that happens in the case of genocide. So the climate crisis, you could say, we're all consumers and through our lifestyles we are contributing to that outcome."
  —[25:18]

• Frank on Reunification's Cultural Impact:
  "People in East Germany who feel they're not being heard are partly feeling that because after 1990, their lives, the books they read, the music they listened to, the films they watched, were overlooked or ignored in mainstream German media."
  —[30:02]

• Frank on Memory Politics and Antisemitism:
  "The error was to assume that a dominant memory culture would automatically keep the lid on a reservoir of antisemitism."
  —[34:16]

• Frank on Environmental Contradictions:
  "The environmentalism and nature cult can easily obscure or cover up just how damaging the lifestyles of Germans can be. Many Germans want to have it both ways."
  —[37:41]

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Conclusion

In this episode, Frank Trentmann provides a comprehensive analysis of Germany's postwar journey from devastation to economic and political resurgence. Through exploring themes of moral reflection, division and reunification, multiculturalism, memory politics, and environmentalism, Trentmann paints a nuanced picture of a nation continuously grappling with its past while striving for a progressive future. The discussion underscores that Germany's reinvention is an ongoing process, fraught with both significant achievements and persistent challenges.

For those interested in delving deeper into Germany's post-World War II history, Trentmann's book "Out of the Darkness" offers an extensive exploration of these themes.

Additional Resources:
Frank Trentmann also discusses work by Daniel Cowling on the British occupiers of Germany from 1945 to 1949. [Find the link in this episode.]

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Transcript

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[Danny Bird]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. In 1945, Germany lay in ruins, both physically and morally. But over the eight decades since, the country has transformed into an economic powerhouse and a leader on the world stage. In today's podcast, historian Frank Trentman discusses this remarkable journey of reinvention and moral reckoning with Danny Bird. They explore Germany's Cold War division, guilt over its Nazi past, its deep rooted approach to environmental matters, and the evolving political landscape since reunification.

[Frank Trentmann]

Frank, thanks for joining me to discuss your book out of the Darkness. And let's jump straight in. Your book reflects on 80 years of Germany's recent history what compelled you to write about this period and why now?

[Alex Rodriguez]

Well, when I started thinking about the book the first time, we were in autumn 2015, so the so called refugee crisis. And in the course of the year, Germany took in almost 1 million refugees. And as part of that you suddenly had an outpouring of moral statements from politicians, from media, from regular citizens. There were a lot of discussions on what was going on in Germany at the time because it was quite unique and it took most Germans by surprise that other European countries didn't follow to open their doors to refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. And so I thought it was quite interesting that in the discussion amongst themselves, this was treated not just as a practical question, but really as a deep moral question which was a little bit like a mirror for many Germans to look at themselves and see how much have we changed since the Nazi era. And then I suddenly noticed there are lots of other things which Germans were discussing in a moral register. So saving and debt. I mean, these are not just financial decisions, but they seem to reflect on the virtue of a person's character, how parents treat their children, whether someone has been unemployed for a long time or not, treatment of animals, all sorts of things. So I thought, well, it would be quite interesting to wr about this.

[Frank Trentmann]

As a historian, you begin in 1942. Why was that year significant?

[Alex Rodriguez]

Well, it wasn't obvious at first, I should add almost all histories start in 1945, what's often called hour zero. But as I was doing research in the archives, I also started looking at diaries, letters from soldiers and mothers and other family members. It became clear that there was something going on in 1942, 1943, that really amounted to soul searching. And that had to do with the catastrophic defeat of the German army at Stalingrad and then increasingly relentless aerial bombing. And so more and more Germans, not all, but many Germans, for the first time in the Second World War, were asking themselves very fundamental questions, such as, why are we fighting this war? What are we fighting it for? What are our, our young sons or husbands dying for? Is it worth it? And why are the bombs falling on us? There must be a reason. And in the course of this soul searching, people came up with different answers. So on the one extreme, you have hardened Nazi fanaticism that interprets aerial bombing as a clear sign that Jews, together with the Americans, were out to destroy the German people. But then there were others who thought, well, this shouldn't be surprising given what we had done to the Jews. And so people start reflecting on the deportations and violence towards the Jews, and they start raising questions of complicity. So when I then had to decide how to structure the book and what kind of story and timeline I wanted to tell, it was clear to me that to start in 1945 would be a big mistake, because it would be missing. This earlier moment of reflection. Doubt, anxiety, fear, complicity was always tied to a fear of being punished for.

[Frank Trentmann]

What Germany had done on that basis. Do you think our zero has become a problematic concept, or did 1945 mark some kind of reset for the Germans?

[Alex Rodriguez]

I think 1945 is deeply problematic as a starting point, because the German people arrive in May, June 1945, not as neutral, let alone innocent lambs. So they enter the first years of peace with the brutal and increasingly murderous and destructive second half of the Second World War in their bones effectively. And that's important because people start positioning themselves with a view to the future in the final stages of the war. So for some, the war has now become so extreme that it's no longer possible to turn it around. So they keep fighting to the bitter end. That's sort of one positioning device you just keep on because a return seems impossible, exactly as Goebbels had actually wanted it to be. But then there are others who start to reinvent their biography in the last two years of the war. And so I just give one example, which I think is very telling, which is of a schoolteacher in Lower Saxony, so northern Germany. And that schoolteacher had cheered Hitler at the outbreak of the war and was absolutely convinced that Hitler was the greatest military leader and statesman the world had ever seen and that Germany would win the war. He instantly writes letters to colleagues who serve at the front, praising Hitler and the Nazi regime. And then his son is moved to the Eastern front and is declared missing at Stalingrad. So he sits at home, listens to the radio, talks to neighbors, can't sleep, is worried to death, doesn't know, is my son alive or not? If he's alive, might he be in the hands of the Red Army? Will I ever see my son again? And he starts in the course of 1943. This man then decides to no longer hoist the swastika on the acclaimed festive days until his son is back. He takes off his party button, off his jacket, and he stops writing secret reports to the intelligence services about what's going on in the town. By the end of the war, he's convinced himself that he never supported the war, that he was always skeptical and critical of what was being done to the Jews, and that in fact, you know, he had prepared himself for a new chapter in his life in which the Nazis no longer featured. So the final stages of the war are quite important if we want to understand where and how the transition of a people from a totalitarian regime who have to reinvent themselves and their lives and live either in Western Germany in a liberal democratic regime, or in East Germany as socialist, how that transition could possibly take place, as you've just alluded.

[Frank Trentmann]

To there, in the aftermath of the Second World War and at the outset of the Cold War, two German states emerged. And I was just wondering, how did those two states approach the Nazi legacy? Did they diverge?

[Alex Rodriguez]

They both diverge. And in many ways, they surprisingly echo each other. Now, the big divergence is that East Germany, so Communist, is led by people who had fought in the resistance, who are convinced that the Communist resistance, alongside the Red army, defeated the Nazi regime. So they are a new Germany. They don't share anything with what had been there before. And consequently, they also don't owe anything to the many victims of the Nazis, especially Jews, who, on top of it, were capitalists. So the narrative with which East Germany works is that of a sharp break in history, and it's a little bit like an immaculate conception. West Germany sees itself as the legal successor of the German Empire, which means it also takes on the responsibilities and obligations of the previous empires, such as reparations. And in the early 50s, Adenauer, as chancellor, pushes through what were at the time historic reparation payments to Jewish victims of a German background. So that's the big divergence. The parallels are, on the other hand, equally astounding. So if we look at the treatment of former Nazis, both the Soviet occupied zone, so the Eastern part that then becomes the gdr, has many, many trials of Nazis or people suspected to have been Nazis who are still in prison, of war camps or in prisons. Between 1945 and 1947, the same numbers, about 100,000 or so, are also being prosecuted in the Western zones that become the Federal Republic in 1948, 1949. Both east and West opt for amnesties. So you have mass amnesties, which are there to integrate former Nazi Party members into society, except really very, very hard Nazi criminals. And in both east and west, you have the same logic that's being spelled out by politicians, which is, we recognize that the majority of the German people, Hitler and were supporting the war. We can't really incarcerate many millions of people and start reconstruction. So we need to somehow draw a line, move on, and the ways in which this is done is slightly different. East Germany even starts a new party which is specifically set up for former Nazi Party members. And all they have to do basically is give a public profession that they've learned from their mistakes and that will now build socialism. If you then look at the trials, the denazification, the trials of serious Nazi and war criminals in East Lichen west In the early 50s, it comes to a standstill. Hardly anyone is now being prosecuted. So both societies want to look ahead. It's just that the east sees itself as an antifascist successor state, whereas West Germany is looking for integration into a Western alliance. But it's quite interesting, the parallels, I would add, if I may. One note, which is, I think, important to understand the contemporary situation. The two societies then really diverge in the 1970s and 1980s. In West Germany, in the 1970s and 1980s, confronting the Holocaust and Germany's responsibility for the Holocaust becomes a, or starts to become a kind of civil religion that's engaging with the past, or even overcoming the past, as it's called at the time, is very, very important in West German society. In East Germany you have hardly anything like that, because East Germany thinks the job has been done in 1945, because East Germany cleaned its hands of what had happened beforehand. So that really casts a shadow all the way to the present. Because memory, politics and how people are expected to position themselves vis a vis the Nazi past has been quite different at the level of civil society.

[Frank Trentmann]

How multicultural were the west and East German states?

[Alex Rodriguez]

I think here it's sort of important perhaps to emphasize that the idea that being German is an ethnic characteristic passed on through birth by one's forefathers, that definition of citizenship, so a kind of biological citizenship or blood by descent isn't something that was always there in German history. It is something new that only found its way into law in 1913. So just before the First World War, by the time of the Nazis, of course, it is no longer questioned. But the interesting thing is in the 1950s and 1960s in West Germany, so only 50 years after this law was passed, that citizenship by descent is so deeply entrenched that even the most progressive social democratic politicians cannot possibly imagine questioning it. So being German is passed on through blood, and hence migrants are and will remain foreigners. That's kind of the basis of the West German settlement. The interesting thing there is to note that I mentioned already the millions of forced laborers, but in the late 19th and early 20th century you had very large groups of, for instance, Polish Polish migrant workers who settled in the rural area, often as coal miners. So they weren't seasonal laborers. They were there and they lived there and they became part of these communities. But they were not in established politics and also in mainstream histories. They were not treated as part of German history. This is being increasingly reviewed in the 1960s and early 70s as you have several million migrant workers coming in, first from Yugoslavia and Italy and Spain, and then increasingly from Greece and Turkey. And what you have is a increasingly heated clash of opinions that's often between local politicians and local churches and charities and those at the federal. At the national level. At the federal level, the government's view remains that Germany is not a land of immigration, unlike the United States. These are guest workers, with an emphasis on guest, meaning they can come and they can work, and then the expectation is they will leave again. The problem with that is, and that wasn't entirely wrong. So out of the many millions who worked in at VW or Mercedes or in the mining industry, the majority actually did return to Italy and Turkey. But 4 or 5 million stayed, decided to stay, and they increasingly brought their families with them. And that raised completely new problems, because if they're children, well, you need schools, you need nurseries, you need healthcare provision and so forth. So in the early 70s, more and more voices from the main charitable and voluntary organizations dealing with migrant workers on the ground said to the politicians in Bonn, look, you don't understand what's going on here. Some of these people will stay and we should welcome them. And we need to plan and we need to think about integrating them through schooling, through better housing, welfare provision and so forth. You're living in a world of illusions if you think this problem will just go away because the people will return. They won't. And so then in the early 70s, the federal government decided, oh, we have a bright idea. We're going to pass a law which will stop industry from recruiting any new laborers. And on top of that, they introduced a regulation that any migrant who returns home, say, for holiday, cannot re enter unless they get special permissions. Well, the response to that was that most migrants who were in West Germany said, oh, I'm not going to leave now because I may not be getting back in. So instead of reducing numbers, you actually cemented numbers. So that's the West German situation. The East German one is quite different. First of all, the numbers are much, much smaller. So the largest number of foreigners in East Germany are Soviet soldiers stationed there, several hundred thousand. But then you have a much smaller contingent of so called sort of contract workers who are recruited. I compare them a little bit to serfs in medieval times because these labor contracts lay down very, very specific rules on how long people can enter East Germany where they can live mainly in separate homes that they can't get pregnant or will be removed. So they can't form ties or they're not expected to form ties with the local population. That's in total across the 40 years of East Germany. We're talking together with foreign students, we're talking about just a few hundred thousand people, not many, so much smaller number. And the regime tries, doesn't completely succeed, but the regime tries to really separate them from the local population. Most of them are from Vietnam, there are some from socialist brother countries in Africa, there's a short lived deal with Fidel Castro in Cuba. And overall citizenship is never on the cards. So you don't have a debate about citizenship giving them citizenship that you do in West Germany. But what you have is a mix of, on the one hand, fascination. We have to remember after 1961, East Germans live behind a wall. Takes several years before they allowed to travel into neighboring socialist countries. So it's a pretty stifled atmosphere. Many people thought it was, you know, fascinating. Suddenly there's a Cuban person at work who dresses differently or Vietnamese people who had access to making denim jeans that looked almost like Levi's. So there was a, on the one hand, an exoticizing of foreigners and using them in an economy of shortages. On the other hand, you have, by the mid-80s, you have a serious increase in racial violence and discrimination. Not that there isn't violence and discrimination in the west, but if you adjust it by population, the levels of violent xenophobia in East Germany is on a different scale.

[Jason Kelly]

What's up everyone? I'm nerd commentator Frankie Smith.

[Frank Trentmann]

And I'm entertainment journalist Tyler Coates.

[Jason Kelly]

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[Frank Trentmann]

You focus on three moral factors in your book. Conscience, compassion and complicity. What can this approach tell us about Germany's modern history?

[Alex Rodriguez]

Well, I picked these three not by random, but because they come up in so many debates that they are really, I would say, sort of the central pillars or central. That's perhaps not the best metaphor. They are the grammar through which Germans think about themselves and see the world. And each of these three Cs is conflicted. So complicity. When we think of German history, complicity, one instantly thinks of the Holocaust. And of course, debates about guilt and shame, with which I start the book, and atonement arising from that are very, very important. But if you think about it, complicity isn't just something that happens in the case of genocide. So the climate crisis, you could say, well, actually that's also a case of complicity, because we're all consumers and through our lifestyles we are contributing to that outcome. And there are indeed some philosophers who've recently applied complicity to environmental crisis, for instance. Similarly, the economic miracle is a collective project, so you're either in it or you're not in it. So I've been interested in how and when groups in German society connect problems to complicity and see them through the lens of complicity, and when that doesn't happen. Now that sounds abstract. So let me just give you one example, which is world hunger. So in the 1960s and 70s in Germany, but also British society and other societies become very concerned and agitated about famines, droughts, some of the environmental or natural disasters, others caused by war. So think of Biafra in Germany. This takes an interesting development. So initially, German groups, church led, at first argue that of course Germans need to collect money for these victims and these regions as a way of saying thanks to the help they received from the Western Allies after the Second World War. And indeed the first tin boxes, which are being used to in drives to raise money, were deliberately chosen to be the tins holding dry milk which Western countries sent to Germany after the Second World War. So that's sort of gratitude. Then you get an argument about we all live in the same world and Western countries like Germany, as industrial nations, are living off the back of rural or underdeveloped nations. And then in a third step you get an argument which is about complicity, where people and groups openly say, look, we actually have a responsibility for these victims of drought and famine because we are partly the cause of their misery. So that's a different argument. So I'm interested in how and when these sort of moral concerns, if you want, come together and galvanize people and also when they retreat. Because alongside what I just said, you also have groups who argue, why do we owe them anything? We are hardworking, we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps after the war. We don't owe anything to anyone. And you have people openly saying, well, sending money to help post colonial independence movements, for instance, or famine victims, that's really stupid, because then they will breed and then they will all come to Germany and take over the country. So at the same time you have older racist or solipsistic self interested arguments. But it's in that tension that German society develops. So it's never, you know, it's never a consensus. This moral terrain is contested all the way really to the present. In debates about migration, you can see that very well.

[Frank Trentmann]

In 1990, east and West Germany reunified just under a year after the fall of the Berlin War. Do you think reunification has been a success? Or has the disappearance of the German Democratic Republic had something of a sting in its tail?

[Alex Rodriguez]

I think. I mean, this debate about the failings of reunification. The Germans now prefer the word transformation to signal that something very serious happened after the formal union or absorption of East Germany into the Federal Republic. This is a highly explosive topic in Germany itself. What's interesting is if you step back and you look at foreign economists, including economists who are progressive in their economics and in their politics, many people say, look, this is a remarkable success story. You have a partial convergence of income, of health, of educational levels of mobility and so forth. It's absolutely remarkable how in a few decades a region which had suffered from heavy industry, low productivity, was behind in technology and all sorts of other ways. How they've come that far. I think what matters is not just the economic figures, but the subjective experience and memory that people have and use to make sense of those figures. So the people in East Germany who feel they're not being heard are partly feeling that because after 1990, their lives, the books they read, the music they listened to, the films they watched, were overlooked or ignored in mainstream German media. And so there was a sense of being not seen, not recognized and not respected. I think that has to be taken very seriously and requires cultural approaches, not only economic, economic ones. The other thing to say, though, is that a lot of the things which are rolled out as being peculiar to the east, for instance, the idea, or not the idea, the observation that the east is shrinking. So east, what used to be the gdr, has been suffering from a declining population. Birth rate is down every year, There are fewer people in East Germany and they're getting older and older. That actually in itself is not peculiar to the East. You can see it in other countries like Japan, but you can also see it in West Germany. The difference is West Germany also attracts many people who move there. And so the problem you have, and one problem you have in East Germany is that there are some people who want to have their cake and eat it. They recognize, rightly, that many parts in East Germany suffer from an aging population with fewer people in work and a shrinking population. But at the same time, many of these Same regions have 30, 40% in their population who are, or want to plan to vote for, the populist right, who are opposed to anyone moving into their community. So that's part of the problem. So you have sort of a clash of, on the one hand, lagging behind in social, economic development, and on the other, not wanting to open up, to be more dynamic and diverse. So there are many problems, but some of them are, I think, not just the objective facts, but it is expectations about what east and West Germany should be like, which are simply not realistic.

[Frank Trentmann]

In 2015, the German President said, there is no German identity without Auschwitz. Would his predecessors in the years immediately following the Second World War have agreed with that statement?

[Alex Rodriguez]

This is a kind of essential part, I would say, of German identity. I think what we've seen particularly clearly since the 7th of October, so since the Hamas murderous attacks on Israel, what we've seen is that the memory and acknowledgement of the Holocaust has more complicated consequences and workings than people had previously presumed. So I think many people worked with the assumption if we confront the past and acknowledge the Holocaust and include this in teaching and have many memorial sites and school visits to concentration camps and so forth, then problems of antisemitism and racism will go away. And that thinking was based, I would argue, on a false assumption that memory translates into action in everyday life. Because what happened after the 7th of October attacks was you had, on the one hand, a steady increase in antisemitic attacks and incidents in Germany to an unprecedented number. And at the same time you had a broadly silent public that did not protest or that did not show solidarity with Jewish citizens in their midst. And this really confused and troubled politicians and commentators because it seemed to run counter to the idea that Germany had had a successful memory politics. Now, historically speaking, or speaking as historian rather, I would say, you know, if we look around as memory politics, it's still very remarkable what Germany has done. The error is to assume that memory politics can be a substitute for civic action, so the one doesn't automatically follow from the other. So you can't just turn to memory politics and hope that it will resolve antisemitism. As a historian, the level of antisemitism that we've seen since 7th of October is not entirely surprising to me. If you go back into the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, you have steady figures of antisemitism, you have right wing extremism and right wing terrorism. So it's always been there. It's not that it's gone away. And I think the error was to assume that a dominant memory culture would automatically keep the lid on a reservoir of antisemitism. The reservoir is much deeper and it comes up again and again and requires something in addition to memory politics.

[Frank Trentmann]

Another major part of your book focuses on Germany's attitude towards the environment, which is a growing concern for humanity today. Where did this national obsession with the natural world come from?

[Alex Rodriguez]

The Romantics would be the quick answer. So you have, you know, you have, you have a very strong and deeply entrenched Romantic tradition and culture. So just think of, you know, poets like Eichendorf or others, the forest, the German forest. So not any forest, but the German forest as a central position in people's memory. And that comes out in the 1980s when you have this national paranoia about the dying forest, which is quite unique in. I mean, the trees aren't that different across the border to France, but you didn't have anything like it there. Which led the Chancellor Helmut Kohl to give a very interesting answer, which was a bit short on logic, but I think expressed a widespread opinion. He said, of course, the French aren't so agitated about the dying forest, but that's because the forest isn't as dear to their heart as it is to that of Germans. So nature is very, very important. So there is in German culture, alongside the fascination with fast cars and motorways, there's also an anti materialist, anti modernist strand in German culture, where big cities, the bustle of commercial life are seen as corrupting the soul. And so forests and lakes and rivers are a space to retreat and recharge your identity. So that's the nature background. What's important is that this nature cult serves as a bridgehead to environmentalism. Environmentalism isn't, you know, primarily about a toad or a particular bird. Birds. I think the bird societies have the biggest membership in of any club or association in Germany. But environment is something bigger and it can be abstract and it is global, as with climate change. So I think this fascination with nature was very important, but it then was taken to an environmental level via the anti nuclear movement, out of which emerged the Green Party. And what is very interesting, I looked at in the research, I looked at the writings of many young people who participated in protest camps and who became interested in what we now call renewable technologies. So early experiments with solar and things like, or wind power and things like that. And what I thought was fascinating was that many, many social scientists and also historians have written about the 20th century as a paradigm shift. So you have people who talk about nature, say ostriches dying out or so, and then in the 1950s and 1960s we get the environment and people take a more global view in which physical flows and dynamics become much more important. But if you look, as I did in the 1970s and 1980s, at green or environmental or anti nuclear social movements and individuals, they don't have this distinction because they do both. I should add one footnote, if I may, because this strong sense of being friends of nature and friends of the environment is very widespread in Germany and it can cover up just how destructive Germans are to the environment. And so it's important, I think, to point out that Germans on average produce more CO2 emissions than the average European. Germans also have more cars and they drive their cars more and they love domestic comfort. So they have ever bigger flats heated to ever higher levels and mainly with gas, not with renewable technologies. So the environmentalism and the nature cult can easily obscure or cover up just how damaging the lifestyles of Germans can be. So many Germans want to have it both ways. Feel good, but also have a good life.

[Frank Trentmann]

I think that's probably quite a universal feeling. Finally, Frank, to what extent do you think the Germans have reinvented themselves since the Second World War?

[Alex Rodriguez]

Well, I very much hope that I've shown that they've done this, but it's not been a straight line. And in the process of reinvention many conflicts and tensions and antagonisms have been produced. So we're not dealing with a story of From Darkness to Light. And hence the book is called out of the Darkness. But it leaves it open really to where this journey is going. And what I try to show in each chapter is the zigzag route that led Germans to the present, and that journey includes problems and oversights as well as achievements.

[Danny Bird]

That was Frank Trentman, whose book out of the the Germans 1942-2022 is out now published by Alan Lane. And if you're curious to find out more about Germany in the post World War II era, then we also spoke to Daniel Cowling about the challenges facing the British occupiers of the shattered nation from 1945 to 1949. You can find the link in this episode.

[Alex Rodriguez]

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