Germany Redeemed. Memory of World War II and the Alternative für Deutschland

Prominent members of the far right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) have questioned the hard fought consensus on the past in Germany. While their provocations certainly reach a new level, this paper traces mainstream apologetic and redemptive narratives since the 1990ies that involuntarily provided a fertile ground for this rhetoric.

Alexander Gauland’s call for Germans to be “proud of the achievements of German soldiers in both World Wars” stands in stark contrast to the notion that ordinary German soldiers participated in heinous crimes in Eastern Europe, which the exhibition Crimes of the Wehrmacht brought into public view in the 1990ies. Björn Höcke even targeted Holocaust memory directly stating that the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was a “memorial of shame”. Common themes of these remarks are the alleged misrepresentation of the war generation’s involvement in crimes and the downplaying of their achievements in rebuilding Germany, while contemporary Germans suffer under a supposedly oppressive Holocaust memory. Even though public representations of the Wehrmacht have not failed to acknowledge its participation in war crimes and genocide and Holocaust memory is ubiquitous in Germany, apologetic and redemptive narratives also feature prominently to make them palatable for German audiences. The AfD builds on these narratives to question not only the need to acknowledge the participation of ordinary Germans in the war crimes, but even Holocaust memory in general. The popular provocations of the AfD should give us pause to avoid apologia and redemption in media and political discourses on the past.