Surrender

Seeing the Gaza conflict through German eyes

[Image: Chancellor Angela Merkel at the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings.]

1945. Germany suffered total and absolute defeat on the grandest of scales. Whereas most modern conflicts conclude with messy treaties and unresolved tensions, World War II ended emphatically. With a dead leader in an underground bunker. 

The destruction was enormous. The civilian death count was intolerable. And the nation had been brought to its knees. A world power no more. But the defeat was more than physical. It existed too at the level of ideas. For Nazism’s fall achieved that which no event previous had managed: making racism unfashionable. Antisemitism, social darwinism, racial differentiation, white supremacy: all became ideas that the chattering classes could no longer tolerate. At least not in such an obviously overt way as previously. There was a sea-change in the public perspective.

So how do Germans view this fateful year?  As defeat? As humiliation? Do they seek revenge and to rise again at the hands of a “strong leader”?

Opinions differ of course. But the overwhelming mainstream perspective is that Germany was liberated by the Allies. Not a defeat, but liberation. Not a humiliation,but liberation. Freedom from the Nazi terror.

A key turning point came in 1985, 40 years after the war’s conclusion, when West German President Richard von Weizsaecker described the fall of Hitler as Germany’s “day of liberation”. Angela Merkel famously called D-Day a “unique, unprecedented military operation that eventually brought us in Germany the liberation from National Socialism.” And these thoughts were similarly echoed by Das Bild which marked the D-Day events of 2019 with the headline “The world celebrates its liberators.”

As the events in Gaza play out in real time we struggle to view the situation with the eyes of a detached German statesman looking on from a safe distance of 40 years hence. It is clear. War is hell. Civilian deaths are horrific. The displacement of both Palestinians in Gaza and Israelis along the southern and northern borders induces tears. We all want it to end. But how? With an allied ceasefire? With a Hamas surrender? Or with a dead leader in an underground…….tunnel?

We all seek the liberation of the Palestinians. But from whom? It may be that in 40 years, the Palestinians of Gaza see themselves as liberated from the Islamist regime of Hamas and from the empire of pan-Arabism. Perhaps they will celebrate under the headline “The world celebrates its liberators”. Perhaps they will live in a small nation of Singapore-like success and Western human rights. Perhaps they will be free where it most matters: in the realm of ideas.

Today the Germans and the Jews are friends. And Germany proudly takes its place among the allied powers. All it took was a decisive defeat. And above all a change of perspective.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/england-ap-top-news-germany-world-war-ii-france-f128260072014a18be92725638274758

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