Almost 11 years ago (my wife was pregnant with my eldest son, Noah) my father and I took a bicycle trip through southern Wisconsin. On our second day, we briefly met another cyclist. He was a man in his early seventies who took note of us because we were speaking German.
"I was a gunner on a fighter-plane that hit targets in Germany," he told us. "Still have an injury from it. One of those damn German FLAKs hit the bottom of my plane. The projectile went through the metal and right into my left foot."
He went on for a while, complaining about his injury and those "damn Germans". My father listened quietly. When he finally opened his mouth I expected him to say something diplomatic, something along the lines of "yes, it was a terrible time" or "I'm sorry about your injury." I was not prepared for what he did say:
"When you were flying above those cities in Northern Germany, I was a little boy. I was one of those 'damn Germans.' I remember a particular day when the air-raid sirenes had gone off again. The first planes began dropping bombs. This time the bombs didn't simply destroy things, they set things and people on fire. I remember those burning figures. Running down the street. Towards the water. Jumping in. Desperately trying to extinguish the fire that had enveloped them. But it wouldn't go out." Here he started to sob. He turned away and walked behind a weather shelter nearby. The man looked shocked and dumbfounded. I quickly bid him farewell and went to find my father. He was still upset. Shaking. I had never seen him like this before.
My father later admitted to me he had never, never intended on saying any of what had come out that day. In fact, he felt certain he couldn't have said any of this other than in this very situation. Deeply buried in his unconscious, repressed by my father who never wanted to see these images again, they came surging up anyway when he had to face the heretofore faceless perpetrator of so much pain and chaos.
My father was, of course, not the only one who suffered. Many more Germans suffered, many more Germans suffered more. It is has only been rather recent that Germans have begun to feel a sense of permission to look at and process their own pain and trauma that accompanied those air-raids. The number of civilians who died in those air-raids lies somewhere in the millions. Hundreds of thousands of them children.
The ruthlessness with which the allies attempted to root-out all Germans and all things German comes to light in these attacks. The terms NAZI and German had become interchangeable. Not unlike, perhaps, now the terms Muslim and terrorist have become interchangeable.
It is with this background in mind, then, that I received with particular shock the following short reports from my sons.
Jacob, my middle son, came home and told me that his best friend--truly a very nice boy--had told him that he, Jacob, had "Hitler-blood" in his veins. When my oldest, Noah, heard this he remarked that a boy from another fifth-grade class regularly taunts him by asking are you a NAZI or are you Irish (Noah has red hair)?
It would be easy, too easy, to ascribe these comments to what I consider to be the general public ignorance among many Americans of how Germans have processed their own involvement and responsibility for the effects of National Socialism. Ignorance can be fought. Teaching could help, running workshops could help, speaking more openly about these things could help. Perhaps it will. And, of course, the comments by those classmates weren't completely off-base. By being German my sons, like all other Germans born during or after the war, do share in a kind of post-war responsibility for and connectedness to what happened in Germany between 1933 and 1945. That of course doesn't make them NAZIs or part of the blood-line of Adolph Hitler. But it puts them into the position of having to account for how evil arose from inmidst their own people. This, I believe, is good training for anyone, for evil can arise from within any people or nation or religious denomination.
What's more disturbing to me about these incidents is the simplistic world-view that informs such thinking. This is a world-view that borders on a kind of magical dualism between good and evil. It is a world-view that, still, almost 75 years after the NAZIs came to power in the Weimar Republic, holds that they, those "damn German", are evil and we, proud Americans, are good. That belief, in and of itself (there is no other way to describe it) is NAZI propaganda at its best.
I am not defending Germans or Germany. Each German will have to speak for himself or herself. Hopefully, when it's all done, the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts and Germany will be recognized as a nation of people who prefer peace to any kind of warfare.
I am protecting my sons though. I'm protecting them from the poison of this kind of magical dualism, so alive in most expressions of patriotism in this country. Evil, I tell them, and good, are not bound to any particular religious creed, any particular national interest, culture, language or political system. And although a whole nation may seem to have fallen behind a president or dictator, they are not all evil. In fact most of them are not. I teach my boys that the potential for evil resides in all of us, as does the potential for good. We need to be aware of it every day in order to prevail over our more vile instincts. It is hard work. It is work that is best accomplished not by labeling others as evil (or good) but by honestly identifying the evil and good parts of one's own thinking and existing.
"I was a gunner on a fighter-plane that hit targets in Germany," he told us. "Still have an injury from it. One of those damn German FLAKs hit the bottom of my plane. The projectile went through the metal and right into my left foot."
He went on for a while, complaining about his injury and those "damn Germans". My father listened quietly. When he finally opened his mouth I expected him to say something diplomatic, something along the lines of "yes, it was a terrible time" or "I'm sorry about your injury." I was not prepared for what he did say:
"When you were flying above those cities in Northern Germany, I was a little boy. I was one of those 'damn Germans.' I remember a particular day when the air-raid sirenes had gone off again. The first planes began dropping bombs. This time the bombs didn't simply destroy things, they set things and people on fire. I remember those burning figures. Running down the street. Towards the water. Jumping in. Desperately trying to extinguish the fire that had enveloped them. But it wouldn't go out." Here he started to sob. He turned away and walked behind a weather shelter nearby. The man looked shocked and dumbfounded. I quickly bid him farewell and went to find my father. He was still upset. Shaking. I had never seen him like this before.
My father later admitted to me he had never, never intended on saying any of what had come out that day. In fact, he felt certain he couldn't have said any of this other than in this very situation. Deeply buried in his unconscious, repressed by my father who never wanted to see these images again, they came surging up anyway when he had to face the heretofore faceless perpetrator of so much pain and chaos.
My father was, of course, not the only one who suffered. Many more Germans suffered, many more Germans suffered more. It is has only been rather recent that Germans have begun to feel a sense of permission to look at and process their own pain and trauma that accompanied those air-raids. The number of civilians who died in those air-raids lies somewhere in the millions. Hundreds of thousands of them children.
The ruthlessness with which the allies attempted to root-out all Germans and all things German comes to light in these attacks. The terms NAZI and German had become interchangeable. Not unlike, perhaps, now the terms Muslim and terrorist have become interchangeable.
It is with this background in mind, then, that I received with particular shock the following short reports from my sons.
Jacob, my middle son, came home and told me that his best friend--truly a very nice boy--had told him that he, Jacob, had "Hitler-blood" in his veins. When my oldest, Noah, heard this he remarked that a boy from another fifth-grade class regularly taunts him by asking are you a NAZI or are you Irish (Noah has red hair)?
It would be easy, too easy, to ascribe these comments to what I consider to be the general public ignorance among many Americans of how Germans have processed their own involvement and responsibility for the effects of National Socialism. Ignorance can be fought. Teaching could help, running workshops could help, speaking more openly about these things could help. Perhaps it will. And, of course, the comments by those classmates weren't completely off-base. By being German my sons, like all other Germans born during or after the war, do share in a kind of post-war responsibility for and connectedness to what happened in Germany between 1933 and 1945. That of course doesn't make them NAZIs or part of the blood-line of Adolph Hitler. But it puts them into the position of having to account for how evil arose from inmidst their own people. This, I believe, is good training for anyone, for evil can arise from within any people or nation or religious denomination.
What's more disturbing to me about these incidents is the simplistic world-view that informs such thinking. This is a world-view that borders on a kind of magical dualism between good and evil. It is a world-view that, still, almost 75 years after the NAZIs came to power in the Weimar Republic, holds that they, those "damn German", are evil and we, proud Americans, are good. That belief, in and of itself (there is no other way to describe it) is NAZI propaganda at its best.
I am not defending Germans or Germany. Each German will have to speak for himself or herself. Hopefully, when it's all done, the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts and Germany will be recognized as a nation of people who prefer peace to any kind of warfare.
I am protecting my sons though. I'm protecting them from the poison of this kind of magical dualism, so alive in most expressions of patriotism in this country. Evil, I tell them, and good, are not bound to any particular religious creed, any particular national interest, culture, language or political system. And although a whole nation may seem to have fallen behind a president or dictator, they are not all evil. In fact most of them are not. I teach my boys that the potential for evil resides in all of us, as does the potential for good. We need to be aware of it every day in order to prevail over our more vile instincts. It is hard work. It is work that is best accomplished not by labeling others as evil (or good) but by honestly identifying the evil and good parts of one's own thinking and existing.
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