October 15, 2003

?

Posted by Ted

There’s a jaw-dropping line in today’s Anne Applebaum column in the Washington Post:

“According to another opinion poll, more than a third of the Germans now think of themselves as “victims” of the Second World War — just like the Jews.”

Applebaum might be correctly representing the results of a real poll question, but I’m amazed. I’d be especially amazed if the question asked Germans to compare their WWII-related victimization to the victimization of the Jews. I don’t know what question was asked, and I was unable to find a corroborating story by Googling. There are some very smart people reading this blog. Does anyone know anything about this?

UPDATE: I emailed Anne Applebaum about this, and she was kind enough to email back. She says that the source was the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, and that the question was “Do you think Germans were victims of the war just like Poles and Jews?” 36% of Germans said yes. She doesn’t have the newspaper article in front of her, but she’s having it faxed to her tomorrow. I can’t read Polish, so I’ll never be able to find it on the Rzeczpospolita site.

In comments, pg links to this story, which is almost certainly the same thing. 57% of Poles said yes. I don’t know what to think of this.

Posted on October 15, 2003 08:03 PM UTC
Comments

I love how the poll isn’t referenced in any way - “another opinion poll”. Very slick. Considering how the RWAP has picked this up, it’s hard not to think about breaking open another M-argument can.

Posted by JC · October 15, 2003 08:57 PM

It was another Applebaum “Why doesn’t Eurpore follow Bush?” column. Her big pieces of evidnece are unsourced surveys. Thos stupid Germns! Why 20% think the US was involed in some way! When 70% of Americans can easily tell you it was Saddam!

Posted by Rob · October 15, 2003 09:00 PM

I don’t suppose that one of the books popular in Germany that includes a description of Dresden’s fire-bombing is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five?

Here’s the survey, although this presents it with a different emphasis.

Posted by PG · October 15, 2003 09:15 PM

For those not following the link, if this is the poll to which Applebaum refers, she misrepresented its meaning.

From the Observer:
“The photographs show exiles, pathetic bundles of belongings strapped to their backs or clutched in their arms, in grainy black and white trudging through Europe to an unknown future.
New laws meant that, because of their ethnic origins, these people had to abandon their homes and any possessions they could not carry and leave a country where they suddenly had no place.
“But this is not the infamous Nazi ethnic cleansing of Jews, Poles or Russians: these were Germans - some of the 15 million expelled from European countries following the defeat of the Third Reich.”

It ain’t the Holocaust, and I doubt that any German would argue that he suffered like Anne Frank did. But it’s certainly worth re-examining.

Posted by PG · October 15, 2003 09:18 PM

Conveniently, only “victims” is a quote, so the ‘fact’ is pure editorializing.

My completely unsubstantiated guess is that it went something like “Do you feel you are a victim of WWII?” rather than “Do you feel you are a victim of WWII just like the Jews?”

Posted by sidereal · October 15, 2003 09:21 PM

If you look at that whole paragraph, I think it’s pretty clear that the “just like the Jews” is Applebaum’s own interpolation. Note the “ just like the Holocaust museum” a couple of sentences later. I see her point, but it’s very misleadingly written.

Posted by ogged · October 15, 2003 09:26 PM

I have a feeling that the sentiment is: “Do you think Germans were victims of the Nazis?”

There’s a bit of historical ignorance there - the people of Germany were at least somewhat complicit in those crimes - but I think it’s the question, not the core sentiment, that forces the respondent to seem so dissmissive of the fates of the Jews.

Of course the people of Germany were exploited by the Nazis, in the same way as the people of Russia were exploited by Stalin, and of Iraq by Saddam. It’s not crazy that they might believe that they were victims of the Nazis.

(It’s also not crazy to confuse ‘vicitm’ with ‘sufferer’. And yes, the Germans sure did suffer in WWII.)

The simple question “Were the Germans victims of the Nazis?” would address that point. “Were the Germans vicitms of the events surrounding WWII?” would be a bit more obscure, but still get at it. “Were the Germans vicitms of WWII?” is hard to figure out, but I expect a lot of people would follow nevertheless.

But why add “just like the Poles and Jews?” to the end? This question is confusing for many reasons. A couple:

1) There are two questions glued together. Which question is the respondent answering: “Were the Germans vicitms of WWII?” or “Were the Germans just like the Poles and the Jews?” ?

Those two questions are quite different. Some people will answer the first, some will answer the second.

2) Even those who answer the second are really facing two questions: “Are the Germans like the Poles?” and “Are the Germans like the Jews?”

Is it the Poles or the Jews? While the Poles were clearly mistreated, I think we all agree that the treatment of the Jews rests in a totally different category of crime. An analogy between the suffering of the German people as a result of WWII (bombing of Dresden, Stalin marching through the East, etc.) and the suffering of the Poles is at least not prima facie ridiculous. The question is a set-up: if you think that the Germans suffered similarly to the Poles, but not similarly to the Jews, how would you answer?

No matter how you would answer, can you imagine that some people would answer yes, if not given a chance to clarify?

Of course, as soon as you answer yes, Anne Applebaum’s coming flying down the pipe, claiming that the ‘like the… jews’ part was the only relevant piece of the question, and since you answered yes because of the other pieces, you’re an anti-seminte. Or something.

Anyways. There are 3 questions in one here:
1) Were the Germans vicitms in (read: sufferers of) WWII?
2) Were the Germans in WWII like the Poles in WWII?
3) Were the Germans in WWII like the Jews in WWII?

A reasonable (Sure, wrong. Fine. But reasonable.) person could answer yes to the first two, and no to the third.

But if you give the reasonable “two thirds of a yes”, then Anne thinks you’re aiming for the Fifth Reich, since to Anne, the final third is the only one worth analysing.

Posted by Andrew Edwards · October 15, 2003 10:47 PM

This sounds like one of those polls like, “Do you think it’s possible that the Holocaust didn’t happen?” — a question which, for most listeners, is a question about the epistemological meaning of the word “possible” rather than a question about the Holocaust in particular. Germans are obviously aware that it wasn’t a goal of the Nazi regime to exterminate the German ethnic group.

Posted by alkali · October 15, 2003 11:08 PM

A lot of Germans believe that they were not old enough or politically powerful (or astute) enough to feel responsible for the behavior of German leadership during WWII.

Are American taxpayers victims of George W Bush’s policies? Yes. In the same way that Iraqi civilians are? No.

The word “victim” is the problem.

Posted by skimble · October 15, 2003 11:45 PM

“Are American taxpayers victims of George W Bush’s policies? Yes.”

Yes, victims of lower taxes. Oh, the humanity.

Posted by anderson · October 16, 2003 12:01 AM

Anderson — thank you for your powerful and original contribution to our discussion.

You need to get in touch with AOL right now, because they’re rejecting your email.

Posted by Zizka · October 16, 2003 12:17 AM

some fact: there is a rather odious, far right and reactionary group of Germans who were expelled after WWII and are still lobbying to get their land back. Conservatives pander to them occasionally, but almost everyone else hopes they’ll just die out.

Anyway, there’s the question of a common centre, which would commemorate both Polish and German suffering during/after the war.

The Poles OTOH still have in effect the Benes-decrees which made the expulsion possible. They point to the fifth column nature of the Germans in their midst. However, their continued refusal to withdraw the Benes-decrees and thus admit that the expulsion was wrong is a bit troubling as well IMO.

Check this link for a decent summary http://www.warsawvoice.pl/old/v516/News07.html

Posted by markus · October 16, 2003 12:20 AM

Otherwise Appelbaum is full of shit.
The poll (Bush behind 9-11) she mentions came out long before the media picked the stuff up and debunked it (which you couldn’t tell from her writing).
The poll itself was a two question phone poll with the first question asking whether people think they got the whole truth about 9-11 from the media (asked before the 9-11 report was out) and second deliberatly worded to get a juicy result. Details here:
http://brmic.blogspot.com/2003_07_20_brmic_archive.html#105903902626051528 (yes, I have that handy, and if I got a dollar for every time this shit got recycled in German or
American media I’d be rich)

Posted by markus · October 16, 2003 12:27 AM

zizka, that’s because the email address was wrong. Sorry.

This German blogger says Anne has hit the nail on the head. How sad. Our “allies” have gone absolutely mad.

Posted by anderson · October 16, 2003 12:42 AM

anderson, could you find someone more umh, neutral? Like someone who doesn’t think LGF is the best weblog? Any moderate conservative will do.

Posted by markus · October 16, 2003 12:58 AM

It strikes me that there are three possibilities. 1) Germans and Poles are whitewashing their history to such an extent that they simply believe that Nazism was forced on them by some vaguely defined but pure evil force. 2) The wording was ambiguous enough that a substantial portion of the population thought that the question meant “Were SOME germans victims of the nazis like poles and jews?” or some much less stringent variant. Obviously some Germans were victims of the Nazis, as some Germans were Jews (and homosexuals, and Communists, etc). 3) There is the chance that the Polish is being seriously mistranslated. (3) and (2) are obviously somewhat related, but I wonder if we really should draw any strong conclusions from this.

Posted by Paul Orwin · October 16, 2003 01:31 AM

I’ve spammed CT sections before, so I thought I might do it again
first off, thanks to all those that have not bought the Apfelbaum piece wholesale.
Second, the high support for the victim answer probably is due to (a) Nazi tyranny (b) bombing of Dresden and the like, © the entire eastern part of Germany living under socialist/communist rule (d) the plain and simple fact that life wasn’t easy in Germany after WWII.
That is, of course assuming the question was not in comparison to the Jews, that would be inexcusable. If the Poles were offered for comparison that would still be bad, but there is a point to saying yes from a nationalist perspective, especially since the suffering of the Polish people is rarely mentioned in history classes, which focus on the ascension to power (how could it happen?) and the Holocaust.
Final note concerning the question of victimhood/ suffering. It is certainly the case that almost all Germans suffered in/from WWII. Almost all of that suffering was well deserved. The poll does however only address the first part, the suffering. I know no German who thinks the Germans didn’t suffer for WWII. I also know no German who thinks a great injustice was done to Germans after WWII. Simple injustice is difficult, the separation into east and west Germany was/is considered unnecessarily hard by a lot of people and the current generation (up to 50years) is somewhat impatient when it comes to understanding their responsibility for crimes their parents committed. So it’s hard to tell what asking for “any injustice” or “injustice” would yield. I tend to believe people would answer in ways similar to the “suffering” (without comparison) question.
… next Anti-Amerikanism and Neo-Nazis

Posted by markus · October 16, 2003 01:46 AM

I wonder if any of the previous posters in this thread will apologize for their character assassination of Applebaum now that her source has been corroborated. I doubt it.

Posted by Micha Ghertner · October 16, 2003 01:47 AM

LOL! Markus, Your Neutrality, spin on! Hilarious.

Posted by hans ze beeman · October 16, 2003 01:51 AM

…and Markus, do some fact-checking, will ya? Poland has no Benes decrees, never had. It’s the Czechs. Sheesh.

For all who are interested in how most Germans really act and feel, read this piece. It is amazing how people like Markus et al. spin on and on to hide this, and are brazen enough to call this “neutrality”. German media have turned into an al-Jazeera like incestuous pool of anti-americanism, for all who don’t believe this look here, David is a king of German media watchdog.

Germany’s media is practically on par with the French.

Posted by hans ze beeman · October 16, 2003 01:59 AM

This is not surprising. The Germans have now spent two generations being strenuously taught that Nazism was inauthentic. The flip side of that argument is that the German people—all of them except the tiny, tiny handful who somehow took over the whole country—suffered from all the harm and devastation that had to be inflicted on their country in order to evict that tiny, tiny, unrepresentative clique from power.

Nazism WAS an authentic expression of a significant segment of German society, else it could never have taken power. This is a perfect illustration of what happens when you let people off the hook. The fashionable line, “We love the XXX people, but we hate their inauthentic and unrepresentative government, made up of a vanishingly small handful of deeply evil men who have inexplicably hijacked the destiny of an entire nation”, is invariably false and fatuous.

Posted by Frank Wilhoit · October 16, 2003 02:07 AM

@ Hans:
- thanks for the correction, I was going from memory, but you’re right, I should have checked.
- Second, I do not and have not claimed neutrality. I do however believe I have a better claim to neutrality than you, YMMV.

Posted by markus · October 16, 2003 02:39 AM

Second, I do not and have not claimed neutrality. I do however believe I have a better claim to neutrality than you, YMMV.

Markus, neutrality is impossible, and you know that. I don’t want to drift into sophisms, but no, you are not neutral at all. The most dangerous ones are those who claim greater neutrality than others but are partisans themselves. The fact that you don’t like what I say doesn’t make me less “neutral” than you.

Neutrality is not only impossible but at times dangerous; in fact, neutrality often implies choosing sides.

Posted by hans ze beeman · October 16, 2003 03:14 AM

to continue on what I originally wanted to spam the comments with:
does Germany have a Neo-Nazi problem?
According to this recent CSM news article and this overview the answer is yes. The neo-fascists have been very clever and successful in recruiting young people in the former GDR, where unemployment in a few places reaches 50 percent (mean for former GDR: 18 percent). However, Neo-Nazi attacks are still frontpage news (so the public is paying attention) and Neo-fascist parties are again loosing influence, that is they’re falling below the 5 percent hurdle in elections again. From personal experience I’d say there is no longer a major problem except for the usual fringe that apparently just won’t die. I’d say things were worse around 8 years ago, but then again I don’t live in east Germany so I might underestimate the problem. J. Rosenthal thinks the problem is larger (Policy Review) and he has some very good points.

does Germany have an anti-Americanism problem?
Short answer, basically yes.
Longer answer: yes, but. For one, the animus towards Bush and his policy is rather intense and I’d say it accounts for two-thirds of anti-American remarks, poll-results etc. However, that leaves about one-third of genuine anti-American feelings (out of the total of about 50 percent (my guess) who have these in some form or other, including vague dislike), which are not the result of equating the President with the country. Evidence for this is usually the enormous interest in Michael Moore’s books*, and what gets shouted at protests. As stated, I’d say that “genuine third” (of about 50%) is about correct. Squaring this with the tremendous level of goodwill, support and commiseration after 9-11 is tricky. I’d say the most important factor is that politically the center in Germany is about were the Democratic party in the US is. Republican opinions on taxes and the welfare state are more or less fringe in Germany (apologies for the gross over-generalisations). The differences are far smaller when it comes to “legislation of morality”, though for instance civil unions are possible in Germany. Anyway, the consequence of this IMO is that the US seems ruled by potentially dangerous people when conservatives are in power, and seen as ruled by loons when radical conservatives are in power. Next in line among the “root causes” of anti-Americanism is the stereotype of the “dumb American” reinforced by e.g. reports of the widespread belief in creationism. The sources below suggest other causes (and argue and explain them better). Genealogy of a-A by J. Ceaser (Public Interest), short article by W. Pfaff (Int. Herald Tribune), Timothy G. Ash on Anti-Europeanism, P. R. Range on a-A versus anti-Bush (New Democrats online), G. Frankel on the move of a-A to the mainstream (WaPo) and R. A. Berman traces a-A to perceptions of war (Hoover Digest)

  • there is no comparable right wing punditry in Germany, hence reading Moore does not even make sense as a “response”/”counter”
Posted by markus · October 16, 2003 04:09 AM

Maybe I’m a bit of a cynic, but I suspect that with proper phrasing you can get about 20% of random respondents to a poll to agree with just about any damn fool thing, whether they are Americans, Germans or moon men.

By the way, according to the Polling Report, 24% of Americans believe in witches. Okay, maybe they were counting self-identified Wiccans. I’m actually surprised that the number professing to believe in ghosts is as low as 34%; I would have guessed seventy or eighty.

Posted by Matt McIrvin · October 16, 2003 04:13 AM

The spin on the poll is not Applebaum’s - it did ask what she implied. More surprising was the fact that Poles tended to agree with the statement as well.
Markus - you say that no German thinks that a great injustice was done to the Germans after WWII - I would have to respectfully disagree. If you talk to expellees, their descendants, or most non expellee people on the right of the political spectrum the response tends to be that the expulsion was a horrible unjustifiable crime, albeit an understandable one considering the circumstances. Back in the fifties, most Germans, right or left, generally thought that the Germans were greater victims than the Poles, and many would have put them on par with the Jews (Die Zeit, not exactly a radical right wing paper, in its early years often made the comparison.)
On the Benes decrees - obviously Poland doesn’t have them, it does have the equivalent. The problem with repealing them is more a practical than ideological issue - it opens up the possibility of Germans claiming lost property which includes a third or so of Poland. The Poles have suggested at times that the decrees be repealed as part of a formal agreement with the Germans whereby the German government simultaneously renounces any property claims on behalf of its citizens. However, that could open up the German government to compensation claims from its own citizens.
In general the view of Polish politicians and intellectuals on the expulsions falls into three camps. The first is simple - the bastards deserved it. Then there is the view that it was a horrible crime, unjustifiable in retrospect, but a logical consequence of the war.
Finally, the most common opinion is that the expulsions were an evil act, but a necessary one. That yes the expulsions targetted innocent civilians and those civilians deserve an apology from the Poles, and deserve to have their past remembered in their former towns. However, this view argues that Poles had to receive some compensation for the loss of territories to the SU and that in the post WWII context the presence of Germans in Poland was an impossibility. Following this view, Polish politicians have formally expressed their regrets to the German expellees, most notably in a speech to the Budestag and Bundesrat by the then Foreign Minister Bartoszewski a few years ago. This view was first articulated decades ago in an open letter by the Polish episcopate to their German counterparts in 1965. Referring to the events of WWII and its aftermath they wrote ‘We forgive and ask for forgiveness.’ At the time most Poles were outraged. These days most have a very positive view of the Open Letter

Posted by Marek · October 16, 2003 06:35 AM

@marek
you’re right about the expellees and their descendants but these are a tiny fringe. however I would disagree about conservatives/people on the right in general. It’s hard to say exactly why, since admittedly leading conservatives still attend expellee meetings, but I believe the press no longer accepts the Sudeten German rhetoric. OTOH, maybe I do no longer get enraged enough when the idiots are on parade again in the news because of their annual meeting. Maybe it’s simply that I know those expellees who want their land back can wait till kingdom come, no German politician will actually do anything on their behalf. They’re just to small a minority, a nice extra base to motivate before elections, but not worth the trouble of getting active on their behalf. What support there is for them among conservatives I’ve spoken to usually amounts to vague statements like “yes, well they’ve got some point” or “something should be done for them” but most conservatives I’ve spoke to agree they’re nuts.
As to the fifties, I can’t say, I wasn’t there.
Concerning the three views, thanks for the clarification, I did indeed over-generalise that.Sorry. As this article suggests it may in fact be the case that the debate is dominated by the extreme positions on both sides.

Posted by markus · October 16, 2003 07:24 AM

As far as the question of the expellees, isn’t there a distinction to be made between “people who think they should get their land back,” obviously a tiny fringe, at this point, and “people who think the expulsions were unjust,” a much larger group?

I’d also note that the Germans have beat themselves up over the Holocaust and Nazism in general far more than most other countries have done - see, for instance, Austria, which elected a former Nazi war criminal president (I couldn’t imagine this happening in the Federal Republic), or Japan, which has never come to terms with the horrible things it did in WWII. And numerous German historians have gone to great lengths to present the extent to which lots and lots of Germans, and not just a tiny contingent of Nazis, were responsible for both the Nazi coming to power and the atrocities committed by the Nazis, although this has tended to focus on “structural” explanations rather than actually assessing moral responsibility on individual Germans.

Anyway, the German response to Nazism is pretty impressive, especially when you compare it to the Austrian - I imagine a much higher percentage of Austrians would see Austria (or Austrians) as a “victim” of WWII like the Jews or the Poles - hell, that was the official Austrian mythology after the war - Austria as Hitler’s first victim, rather than as his most willing accomplice.

Posted by John · October 16, 2003 08:04 AM

A further point - doesn’t it say rather a lot that more Poles than Germans think/thought Germans to be victims of the war? I mean, that’s totally insane…

And I’d add that I’m still pretty dubious that the question is as Applebaum characterizes it in either her article or her email…we’ll see.

Posted by John · October 16, 2003 08:07 AM

I think the question can be parsed two ways:

1) Were there German victims like there were Polish and Jewish victims?

2) Were the Germans victims on the same level as the Polish and Jews.

Now to answer yes to question 2) would be absurb, though I’m sure some would be willing to do so (especially those who doesn’t belive in the Holocaust). To answer yes to 1) on the other hand, would be quite accurate.

Posted by Kristjan Wager · October 16, 2003 08:15 AM

It’s funny to see different people pick different quotes from the same article. I found most of what she wrote rather mediocre, except her conclusions which are - surprisingly - excellent:

“Germany is reassessing its place in Europe, its role in the world, its postwar subordination to the United States.”

“Germans, or at least some of them, no longer want to apologize for the 20th century.”

“Germans, or at least some of them, no longer want to accept the political leadership of the United States.”

This is a fundamental shift that will determine a lot of thing in the future.

Posted by Chris K · October 16, 2003 11:52 AM

This particular controversy aside (which seems to me to take collective guilt and collective victimhood far too much for granted), Appelbaum misses the real engine at work in places like the Frankfurt Book Fair: celebrity tell-alls like Dieter Bohlen’s latest book have gained an unprecedented level of importance in German publishing. The upshot is an increasingly non-political, non-intellectual public sphere and a winner-take-all mentality in the publishing world. Far from anti-American, the main trends in German publishing (and reading) are towards the creation of a distinctly non-American consumer culture, a point far too subtle for this columnist.

Posted by schnauze · October 16, 2003 03:26 PM

To be fair, I think that we have to recognize that Germans suffered at a much higher rate than Jews. That is, very many of the Germans lived in Germany (or surrounding countries) and so paid a price for WWII. However, very many of the coeval Jews lived outside of Europe and suffered only sympathetically. Though sympathetic suffering may well be a very real suffering, I think that there is a difference there.

Posted by CajunCav · October 16, 2003 03:46 PM

I’m seriously at loss at what to say in response to your comment cajuncav. Your comment is ignorant and disgusting, in fact so much so that words fail me.

Posted by markus · October 16, 2003 04:50 PM

Markus: I certainly apologize if I have offended and disgusted. I am certainly open to being corrected, especially if my comment was so far outside the norm as to elicit such a strong response.

I realize that you are at a loss for words, but I would really appreciate a response.

Posted by CajunCav · October 16, 2003 05:34 PM

I’ll take a stab at it, cajuncav… first off, you incorrectly conflate the percentage of each population that suffered with the severity of that suffering. Second, you make the assertion without any actual evidence of the level of suffering experienced by the Germans that is not purely anecdotal (whereas, body tolls in say Babi Yar are fairly verifiable). Third, you don’t distinguish between the (a)moral basis of the Third Reich and innocuousness of the Jewish population. Fourth, you fail to distinguish between “Jews” as a religious group and Germans as a nationality — who cares about American Jews? You’re talking about populations that have suffered, unless you’re going to count people of Germanic ancestry across the world as well. I suspect that that would very much dilute your percentage basis of Germans that suffered. And are you going to count the German Jews twice, or remove them from your count of suffering Germans? I could go on, but I’ll leave it at that and hope you’re being faecetious.

Posted by Geoff · October 16, 2003 07:58 PM

Geoff: You offer several good points. If I may respond, partly in explanation and partly in defense (mostly out of concern that I’ve now been described as ignorant, disgusting, and facetious):

1. I am not conflating the percentage suffering with the severity of suffering. I may have been unclear, but in talking about “rates”, I meant only percentage suffering. Without having read (sufficiently) the discussion that came before my comment, I merely wanted to offer a reason why a certain percentage of German people responded that they had suffered in WWII. Thus, in talking about rates of suffering, I considered the issue to be binary.

This is, of course, a simplification. However, like many simplifications, I think that it serves a point. Here, it offers an explanation for what seems to be a bizarre survey datum.

2. You are absolutely correct that I assert German suffering without evidence. However, I am sure that there is plenty of evidence out there describing the cost to both Germany and individual Germans (both citizen/residents and those who claim German heritage) as a result of WWII. In fact, I would almost say that it is uncontroversial to claim that WWII was a bad experience for the average German, even those who did not bear the direct brunt of the Holocaust.

And, again, I was purposefully reducing suffering to a binary condition — either a person did suffer or they didn’t.

3. I purposefully did not distinquish between the Third Reich/Germans and the Jews on a moral basis. Fault has no role in the existent of suffering, only perhaps in determining its legitimacy. I claim neither that the Jews didn’t suffer nor that the Jews were at fault. Further, I am not making any claim as to any absence of fault on the part of Germany, the residents of Germany, or those of german heritage. Instead, again, I am just looking at who suffered.

Importantly, I want to note that suffering is an integral part of most modern theories of criminal justice. The criminal, who is adjudicated to be at fault, is made to suffer to exact social justice or to discourage other crimes (to provide only a limited list of the uses of suffering in modern criminal justice). To say that 35 years of properly-imposed imprisonment is not suffering seems to defy the human condition.

Now, I do want to be clear: the issue of fault is important. To impose suffering is often considered socially acceptable where it is imposed on one who is culpable, and rarely otherwise. Hence, one could perhaps look at this survey and say, yes, the Germans suffered at a high rate; however, that is an acceptable cost given the crime of the nation. I didn’t want to get into that issue at all — I just wanted to remark on the cause of the statistic itself.

4. I did fail to properly define Jews and Germans. Fair enough. However, I didn’t really think that such a full exercise was necessary to make the point I was attempting to urge. I think that no matter how you define the terms, my point still tends to support what I take the original survey to report: that WWII had a negative impact on those people surveyed (namely residents of Germany).

Whether that clarifies or is an attempt at rebuttal, I cannot tell. However, I think that I have at least made it clear that I am neither a) facetious nor b) merely trying to rile everyone up. I may still be ignorant, though I am always looking to be corrected.

Posted by CajunCav · October 16, 2003 09:42 PM

I think that Kristjan Wager made most of my point with a greater deal of clarity not long before I appeared.

Posted by CajunCav · October 16, 2003 09:45 PM

Cajuncav’s post proves Applebaum’s point. As a matter of coarse, several of the other post do the same thing. When did we get to the point that an effort to systematicly exterminate a segement of the human race could be justified by arguing over the definition of a few words?

Posted by james · October 16, 2003 09:48 PM

To be clear (and probably prolix), I was in no way attempting to justice or excuse the Holocaust or to reduce any account of the suffering it created.

Posted by CajunCav · October 16, 2003 10:08 PM

There are a couple of things going on here (OK, more than a couple, but I’ll only address a couple):

One is that the original question is absurd. Anyone who knows WWII history knows that virtually all German people suffered during the war. There was privation, bombing, etc. Culpability (they were asking for it) is beside the point - at least in this simplistic question. I would imagine that every German has been raised with (true) tales of Oma eating one moldy potato per week, or some such. As someone said, it’s a binary question. Did Oma suffer? Obviously.

Ah, but did she suffer like the Jews? Of course not. Unless Oma was a Jehova’s Witness, a leftist, a Social Democrat…. Everyone knows the famous quote about “I didn’t speak up when they came for…” Well, part of the point is that the Jews were only one of the groups that the Nazis came for. I’m not denying or in any way minimizing the Holocaust, just raising the (universally acknowledged) fact that the Nazis killed a couple million non-Jews, many of whom would be described as Germans.

And then there’s the fact that the Poles are in the question, right beside the Jews. There’s been a little back and forth here on this, but I think it’s central. Most of the people up in arms here about the German answer here would surely find an equation of the Polish and Jewish WWII experiences to be absurd, yet when that absurdity is central to the question, it’s accepted in damning the Germans. An average German was almost as likely to suffer during (and after!) WWII as an average Pole; or rather, was likely to suffer similar things - bombing, military confiscation, hunger.

Looking back, it seems that andrew evans covered this ground pretty well, but I guess I added this because his post didn’t seem to make much of a dent. But I do want to emphasize a point made by some other posters - some of this is a result of the idea that the Nazis were the bad guys, and the Germans were OK. Unlike the Japanese, German culture has never officially ignored collective or individual guilt. But the reality is that, for Germany to rejoin the civilized world, people had to turn a bit of a blind eye to participation by everyday Gemrans in WWII atrocities. Hell, we’ve just seen how Schwarzenegger’s father’s Nazi past was whitewashed - and in some sense, rightly so. The guy was a cop, and of course he’d represent the State - that’s what cops do. Maybe he was a bit over-enthusiastic about it, but he wasn’t manning a guard tower in Buchenwald, so he (and his son) got a pass. No need to hide your head, or denounce your family at every turn. It’s oane way for a society to move on.

Maybe a Truth and Justice Commission - in a addition to Nuremburg - would have been worthwhile, but I think that in a country as massively defeated as Germany was, it would be almost redundant. Arguably, German suffering during and after WWII was just desserts, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t suffering nonetheless.

Posted by JRoth · October 17, 2003 12:23 AM

It’s worth noting that the single largest contingent of Jews who were murdered by the Nazi regime and their helpers were Polish Jews.

Posted by Doug · October 17, 2003 08:33 AM

If that’s an accurate translation of the question that was asked, it was a stupid question. The Jews were not victims of the war. Jews were victims of a vicious Nazi regime. Nazi victimization of the Jews began in Germany long before the war. And, although the Holocaust began during the war, it was generally unrelated to the war, and may have occurred whether or not the war occurred.

The question is stupid in another way, as well. What does it mean to be a “victim”? It is unquestionable that more than a few Germans did suffer as a result of the war and during its immediate aftermath. In a way that might not have occurred had the war not occurred. Does that make them a “victim” of the war? Some might say yes, others no. I am not sure that either answer is unreasonable.

Posted by raj · October 17, 2003 12:19 PM

“Do you think Germans were victims of the war just like Poles and Jews?”

There are stupid questions, and then there are really stupid questions. Agreeing that (some) Germans were victims of the war can be interpreted in many ways — many of the Jews killed were Germans, the Nazi’s efforts to redefine nationhood notwithstanding. Germans were both perpetrators and victims, depending on who was involved. This need not mean regardless of Applebaum’s wish to do so than 1/3 of Germans equate the suffering of Germans with that of the Jews.

Posted by Seb · October 17, 2003 02:13 PM

Lies, damn lies and polls.

Posted by Chris K · October 17, 2003 08:09 PM

I would point out that most Germans alive today probably weren’t 18 in 1936.

Posted by taak · October 18, 2003 12:59 AM

Hitchens had a quite interesting article in the Atlantic on the Wartime Toll on Germany which amounts to a IMO quite balanced investigation into the cause for and against speaking of German suffering during the war.

Posted by markus · October 18, 2003 03:05 PM

The problems with Applebaum’s dispatches from Europe (for a collection do a search for Applebaum’s articles in Slate’s “Foreigners” category) are manifold, just a few points:

As someone upthread pointed out there is a latent undertone of “Why don’t those Europeans just follow Bush?” in almost all of her columns. Deep inside she seems to think that the US model of society in general and the policies of the Bush administration in particular are not only superior in ideological terms (which would leave the matter open to debate), but that the European concepts of the welfare state and multilateralism in foreign affairs are hopelessly anachronistic - ideas that have outlived their usefulness and got swallowed by the quagmire of history (which is simply condescending). She seems incapable of grasping the idea that European nations might just want to take a different course, that they might have have a different model in mind for both their own societies and world affairs in general.
Since she can’t break out of her ideological bubble, she has the tendency to focus on happenings in Europe that suit her viewpoint and to spin them her way, downplaying or just ignoring facts and important details that don’t suit her needs. This might be common procedure for a columnist sitting at a desk in New York, but it is certainly unacceptable for a foreign correspondent who should try to explain complex issues in foreign countries in an objective fashion to readers at home.
The trouble with Applebaum is that she fashions herself as both a columnist and a foreign correspondent. Thus while she pretends to have the inside view of what’s going on in Europe, she tends to misrepresent and overly simplify the debates going on there, in order to get the punch line she needs for her column. She constantly refers to the US as “we” and to the Europeans as “them”, thus invoking the image of an undercover agent behind enemy lines. Her patronizing attitude is simply annoying after a while.
When I first read an Applebaum column I thought, hey, this might be interesting, she’s smart, well-traveled, eloquent and seems to be interested ineuropean affairs. Now I tend to think: what a waste - if you want to know about Europe read the Economist (not that they don’t have an agenda of their own, but they are pretty objective most of the time).

Posted by novakant · October 19, 2003 09:41 PM

Novakent wrote (regarding Anne Applebaum):

Deep inside she seems to think that the US model of society in general and the policies of the Bush administration in particular are not only superior in ideological terms (which would leave the matter open to debate), but that the European concepts of the welfare state and multilateralism in foreign affairs are hopelessly anachronistic - ideas that have outlived their usefulness and got swallowed by the quagmire of history (which is simply condescending).

If that is what she truly believes (rather than Novakent’s interpretation of her beliefs) then she is correct. However she mentioned nothing about the European nanny states in her column and it was not part of her article on what she perceives as a social shift in German attitudes.

She seems incapable of grasping the idea that European nations might just want to take a different course, that they might have have a different model in mind for both their own societies and world affairs in general.

Many of us in the United States thought the same thing when our new president took office and how pre-9/11 (before he really even made any major foreign policy changes) he was treated rather shabbily with snide cracks about “the bible, barbeque, and baseball” from euro trash know-nothings as well as the never-ending harangues about capital punishment, disingenuous comments about Kyoto (you know, the treaty that nobody really wanted implemented and our own Senate made clear was DOA before Bush even took office), and the usual phony accusations of American unilateralism.

Posted by Thorley Winston · October 21, 2003 03:05 PM

I don’t get this - why was the poll only in a Polish newspaper instead of a German one? does that mean the question was asked to Poles, not to Germans? then how can one use it to prove what Germans think??

Posted by CT · October 22, 2003 03:22 PM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.