Just Whose Liberation was Begun on June 6? (Were the Germans victims too?)

The International Herald Tribune ^ | June 4, 2004 | John Vinocur

[quidnunc]

When Germany joins the Allies on the beaches of Normandy this week, it will mark not only a new phase in the country's reconciliation with the West, but also its growing political and historical desire to meld D-Day with the idea of German liberation from Hitler as the final act of World War II.

The use of the word "liberation" is more than an incidental question of euphemisitic diction because it goes to present-day Germans' view of their own reality. As much as Germany's presence for the first time alongside the Allies in a D-Day commemoration on Sunday reflects the country's democratic rebirth, its gradual institutionalization of the word "liberation" may be less comfortable.

Specifically, there is basic evidence that it is historically inaccurate. And there are good arguments that the idea of Germany's liberation, left without qualifications, caveats, and counter-arguments, fuzzes over both its defeat, and the distinction between victims and oppressors. Perhaps inadvertently, it creates in some eyes a measure of moral equivalency that blurs one of history's most devastating and important verdicts. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has expressed his gratitude for being able to take part in the ceremonies, said in an interview with The New York Times that the occasion was "important" to him "so as to make clear the meaning of D-Day, namely the liberation from National Socialism, which was not only the liberation of Europe, but also the liberation of Germany, or the beginning of the liberation."

More than details are at issue. If the idea of Germany's liberation, or its start, is superimposed on the period from June 6, 1944, to the Nazi capitulation, then it involves 11 months when German armies fought the Allies with what military historians have described as extraordinary fury, when American, British and Soviet forces suffered scores of thousands of casualties, when no trace of a broad German uprising against Hitler occurred, and when hundreds of thousands of Jews all over Europe continued to be sent to their deaths in Nazi extermination camps — a last convoy leaving Paris on Aug. 17, eight days before the city's occupiers were defeated.

For people who are uncomfortable with the word, liberation's use in Germany is not low revisionism, but seemingly a desire to fit the country's gradual postwar democratization into an easy-to-swallow concept that began in Normandy.

-snip-

[Steven W.]

It's often forgotten that today's Germany is a combination of the two east / west sides. The east was first under Hitler, then under the thumb of Stalin and his stooges in Berlin. They've been propagandized about the evils of the US and the west for 80 years and thus no wonder people in Germany have no sense of history nor any sense of moral relatism or decency when 1/2 the people were totally brainwashed and 1/2 of the other 1/2 (1/4) are liberal extremists. Remember that when you see them trying to rewrite history & the next time you see them protesting Bush or the US

[Squawk 8888]

It was a liberation, but not in the sense that they are using the term. The defeat taught the German people that Nazism and aggression was a dead end and freed them from the delusion that servitude to the state would create a better life.

[Mister Baredog]

It was a liberation, but not in the sense that they are using the term.

You're right.

More like what we're doing in Iraq.(Which THEY would NEVER call a liberation.)

[RightWhale]

There used to be a series of Nations in Chains stamps. Every country that was under Nazi domination had its own stamp. They were 3 cent stamps or so, maybe 2 cents. There were a lot of stamps in the entire collection, and D-Day was to liberate all those countries even though it didn't work out that way exactly.

[Righty1]

Yes, except for the fact that almost every german male who mattered had sworn one holy/blood oath or another to Hitler. This is just another round of revisionist BS! It also is another way to devalue the victory as men clearly wouldn't fight liberators to their last round or breath. Who can blame kids for being clueless about history? Last night I had it out with a liberal Ph.D. shrink from UM who thought that immigration was a wonderful thing. When I asked her if the Goths entered the Roman Empire as pitiful immigrants or conquerors she was totally befuddled. She also didn't even grasp that Detroit was destroyed by internal migration post WW 2.
The Savage also had Ahnorld nailed from day 1.

[Grzegorz 246]

"They've been propagandized about the evils of the US and the west for 80 years and thus no wonder people in Germany have no sense of history nor any sense of moral relatism or decency when 1/2 the people were totally brainwashed and 1/2 of the other 1/2 (1/4) are liberal extremists."

They have been "propagandized" for 57 years (1933-90).
Population of West Germany was about 60 million, East Germany about 17-18 million.
Anyway it isn't any explain.