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Reviving the German Reich in Saxony?

Lorna Thomas - 4/22/2009

20th April is the anniversary of Hitler's birth. On Monday evening 20th April 2009, Israel observed the annual Holocaust commemoration day. 20th April 2009 was also the beginning of the United Nations anti-racism conference “The Durban Review Conference or “Durban II” held in Geneva. The preparatory document and negotiations were described as filled with "aggressive and anti-Semitic statements" and concerns were expressed that there would be a continuation of the anti-Semitic rhetoric associated with the first conference held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

Several nations boycotted the conference including Israel, the US, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. Other diplomats including the UK ambassador to the UN in Geneva walked out during the speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who called Israel the "most cruel and racist regime." Ahmadinejad has referred to the Holocaust as a myth.

President Shimon Peres issued a statement on Monday in which he said: "I feel deeply hurt and ashamed that on the eve of a day of commemoration for the Holocaust, a racist conference is opening in Geneva with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the keynote speaker." Israel's President expressed outrage that "a man that calls to wipe Israel off of the map, a man who denies the Holocaust" was the guest of honor at what was presented as a human rights conference.

While Germany boycotted the conference, there are worrying signs of rising anti-Semitism in Germany as well as in Europe. This is particularly of concern in a year of multiple elections in Germany – in addition to European elections, there are Presidential, state elections including in Saxony and national elections.

In Nazi Germany prior to WWII, anti-Semitism was an early warning of the horrors to come.
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February 2009 marked the 64th anniversary of the fire-bombing of Dresden by Allied planes between 13-15th February, 1945.
While a larger counter-demonstration took place, one of the biggest far-right demonstrations in Germany in decades occurred when 6,000 anti-immigrant, skinhead and neo-Nazis demonstrated in Saxony's capital in a “mourning march.”

According to a report on Bloomberg, Hajo Funke, an expert on neo-Nazis at the Free University in Berlin said,“They’re trying to link the victims of Dresden with the victims of Auschwitz.” He said that “They represent a call for reviving the German Reich, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.” (“Skinheads, Neo-Nazis Draw Fury at Dresden 1945 ‘Mourning March,” Bloomberg, Patrick Donahue, 14 February, 2009)

Extremist groups have portrayed Dresden as experiencing a “Holocaust of bombs,” greatly inflating the numbers killed by claiming hundreds of thousands died in the raid. A study commissioned by the city showed in a preliminary report that 25 000 civilians were killed. In linking the victims of Dresden with Auschwitz, Nazi Germany is portrayed as the “victim” of aggression rather than the initiator.

(It is of note that prior to WWII, Hitler agreed to help Spain's General Franco's Nationalist regime against Republican resistance (which included Communists and Socialists) in the ancient village of Guernica, an epicentre of Basque culture. On 26 April, 1937, the village suffered devastation when German planes bombed it and used incendiary devices causing a firestorm in the central plaza. Pilots strafed civilians attempting to escape.

London Times journalist George Steer wrote at the time:“The bombardment of this open town far behind the lines occupied precisely three hours and a quarter, during which a powerful fleet of aeroplanes consisting of three types of German types, Junkers and Heinkel bombers, did not cease unloading on the town bombs weighing from 1,000 lbs. downwards and, it is calculated, more than 3,000 two-pounder aluminium incendiary projectiles. The fighters, meanwhile, plunged low from above the centre of the town to machinegun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields.” “George Steer and Guernica,” Preston, Paul. History Today 57 (2007)

The Nazi bombing of the undefended town comprised mostly of women and children was the first aerial destruction of a civilian center.
During his war crimes trial at Nuremburg, Herman Goering told the tribunal: "The Spanish Civil War gave me an opportunity to put my young air force to the test, and a means for my men to gain experience.")

Over the years, whilst acknowledging the human suffering that did occur in Dresden, some have warned about the danger of equating Auschwitz with Dresden and ignoring the fact that as a result of Germany's aggression under Hitler's leadership, Europe was reduced to “ruin and ashes” in the previous 6 years.

In an article in Spiegel Online in 2005 Stefan Fritz, who ministered in the rebuilt Frauenkirche in Dresden until he was transferred in 2006, noted that “those who speak of Dresden's suffering also must not deny Germany's guilt” and that “Dresden was not an innocent city, it was a Nazi city like all the others.” http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,339833,00.html

Pope Benedict XVI's proposed rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson caused an uproar. Williamson, during a Swedish television interview said “the historical evidence is strongly against - hugely against - 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.” “I believe there were no gas chambers,”.

In Nazi Germany, the suffering started with targeting certain groups who did not conform to Aryan ideals or ideologies, including the mentally and physically disabled, Communists and Socialists, Jews, gypsies, Christians.

The Jewish Virtual Library states that from January 1934 enforced sterilization of 300,000 to 400,000 people, mostly Germans, was carried out on the basis of feeblemindedness, schizophrenia or epilepsy. The secret euthanasia of patients in mental asylums and other institutions was carried out in Germany and Austria, initially by lethal injection and then gassing, during "Operation T4.”

70,273 deaths of which 5,000 were Jews were caused by gassing at the six "euthanasia" centers between January 1940 and August 1941. Responding to pressures including by a handful of church leaders, Hitler ordered a halt to Operation T-4 on August 24, 1941. Gas chambers were dismantled and shipped to extermination camps in Poland to be rebuilt in late 1941 and 1942 and used for the "final solution” to the “Jewish question." see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/disabled.html

The Pope's statement condemning Holocaust denial prompted criticism from German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying it did “not go far enough.” Mrs Merkel, daughter of a Protestant pastor, grew up in East Germany. With the increase of neo-Nazism and xenophobia in Europe, including Germany and Russia, the Chancellor has in the past expressed concern over growing extremist attacks and has appealed to Europe's “soul of tolerance.”

The effort to ban the NPD in 2003 failed and there were renewed calls in 2007 for it to be banned following an attack on eight Indians in Mugeln, Saxony.

The NPD has held seats in Saxony's state legislature since 2004. In 2008 Spiegel Online reported that “the neo-Nazi party NPD now has representatives in every county council in the eastern German state of Saxony.” A 2009 article in the Telegraph described how members relish the idea of “a new Holocaust against the Jews.”

“Uwe Luthardt was a senior member of the NPD but quit to inform on the party which Germany tried unsuccessfully to ban several years ago.

“He told of weapons stores and how members greet each other with "Heil Hitler" salutes, sing the banned songs of the Third Reich and relish the idea of a new Holocaust against the Jews.

“Last year neo-Nazi attacks in Germany reached an all-time high and authorities are battling to stop youngsters from being attracted to the politics of the right – particularly now that Germany is in a deep recession and jobs are being lost by the thousands every day.”
“Neo-Nazis plotting 'Fourth Reich' in Germany” Telegraph, Allan Hall, 26 Feb 2009 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/4839116/Neo-Nazis-plotting-Fourth-Reich-in-Germany.html

The NPD is led by Udo Voigt who went on trial in March 2009, charged with defamation and racial incitement over a pamphlet circulated during the 2006 World Cup targeting national player Patrick Owomoyela, son of a German mother and Nigerian father.

2009 will mark 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down. Saxony played an important role in its fall and that of the East German government. The Peaceful Revolution was a series of peaceful political protests against the authoritarian East German government of the German Democratic Republic, beginning on 4 September, 1989 at the Church of Saint Nicholas, in Leipzig, Saxony.

2009, a year of elections in Germany, includes electing a new German President in May. European Parliament elections take place on 7 June, with several of the country's states holding elections (including Saxony on 30 August) and national general elections scheduled for September 27.

After the elections of 2009, German and European politics could again emerge with a very different face and focus.