Germans still grapple with WWII legacy

Fighting stereotypes
For many German, American and British veterans of the war, it took almost 40 years before they could face their former enemies at the beaches of Normandy and at other historic sites across Europe.

"I believe that both sides have taken too long to properly deal with the historic past," said Franz Gockel, 79, who was drafted into the German Wehrmacht at age 17 and was assigned to protect Omaha Beach in Normandy in 1943.

"Ever since I came out of an American POW camp, I have made reconciliation a primary goal of my life," said Gockel, who captured his wartime experience in a book called “The Gate To Hell.”

During the many D-Day anniversaries he attended, Gockel talked about his view of the deadly battle with his former foes. One of the American veterans he met during those get-togethers in Normandy is due to visit him in Germany. "Some real friendships have developed over the years," Gockel said proudly.

In the past weeks and months, Gockel has been closely following anniversary documentaries and specials, but says he was dismayed by some media reports.

"It makes me sad to see that stereotypes get used over and over again and even today, historic facts are simply ignored," Gockel said, referring to British newspaper headlines which  tried to portray the new German-born Pope Benedict XVI as a Nazi.

When the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected, Britain's Sun newspaper ran the front-page headline, "From Hitler Youth to Papa Ratzi,” while other British papers nicknamed Ratzinger the "Panzer Pope" or "God's Rottweiler.”

Ratzinger, whose very religious family was said to be anti-Nazi, joined the Hitler Youth in 1941. "At that time," Gockel said "membership in the group was compulsory for all 14-year-olds, you simply had no choice." 

Lost identity
As a growing number of Germans are now openly expressing fatigue over dwelling on their guilt-inducing past, media reports have been posing the question whether the Germans are beginning to see themselves as a "community of sufferers without a true national identity.”

As a matter of fact, any form of rising nationalism or patriotism has been deliberately suppressed in German society for the past 60 years.

The singing of the national anthem in German classrooms at the start of the day, for example, is non-existent. And, most Germans refrain from openly saying "proud to be a German" because Germany's neo-Nazi scene has hijacked the expression as a provocative slogan.

Public display of the German colors are rarely seen in this country and it seems that Germans only wave their black, red and gold flag during large sports events.

Instead, every German high-school student has to take mandatory history lessons on the Holocaust and Germany's dark Nazi past.

"In my generation, we lived under the impression that the term patriotism was poisoned during Nazi times," former president Richard von Weizsaecker, who experienced the war, told Germany's Berliner Zeitung.

"German history, unlike American or French history, did not allow the growing of patriotism in a natural way," said von Weizsaecker.

Taking pride
Yet, most of the country's new leaders, who are among a vast majority of Germans born after 1945, are beginning to lose their fear of displaying national pride, without being accused of ignoring the country's historic past.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was delighted to be the first German leader to receive an official invitation to the 60th anniversary of the Allied Invasion in Normandy last year.

And, when German President Horst Koehler took office in 2004, his first words were — to the surprise of many — "I love our country.”

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