Germany is weaponizing WWII memory against Russia
Excluding Moscow’s representatives from commemorations of the defeat of the Nazis shows a problem with elementary logic and basic decency

Eighty years ago, Germany suffered its worst self-induced military – as well as moral, political, cultural, you name it – catastrophe ever.

First, Nazi Germany led the global fascist challenge that we call World War II. Then, Germany was not merely defeated but crushed by the combined efforts of, in order of importance, the Soviet Union, the US, and UK, to name only those powers that really mattered decisively for the outcome of the war in Europe. This Allied victory in Europe is celebrated in May. In the West, the commemorations peak on the 8th and in Russia, one day later.

In Asia, things were different. World War II started earlier – in July 1937, not September 1939, and ended later – in August, not May, 1945. Regarding the war in Europe, the West has always, with varying intensity, sought to diminish the preponderant role of the Soviet Union – and within the latter, of Russia.

Concerning the war in Asia, the West’s main target of this weaponized forgetfulness has been China, rightly labeled “the forgotten ally” by historian Rana Mitter. China, like the Soviet Union and now Russia, has always dared challenge Western hegemony and especially US ‘primacy’. And, as with Russia and the former Soviet Union, it is this geopolitical independence that has led the West to deny the Chinese people’s real and massive World War II contribution and sacrifices, which were enormous (the death toll alone, to quote only one figure, is estimated at 12-20 million).

But for now, back to the European part of the war. There, in historical reality, it was the Soviet Union that did the most – by far – to destroy Nazi Germany. And that is a simple, even quantifiable historical fact. Merely a decade ago, it was occasionally admitted even in Western mainstream media, such as America’s Washington Post and Britain’s Independent.

A few figures suffice to sketch just how predominant the Soviet share in the victory over Nazism was: Over the course of the war, in all its theaters, 17 to 18 million Germans served in the Nazi forces (including the Wehrmacht and the smaller but especially important and vicious Waffen-SS).

At least 4 million German soldiers were killed in the fight against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945 alone. Estimates indicate that at least as many were injured, probably more; around 3 million became POWs.

The upshot of this is simple: A massive chunk, some historians estimate up to 80%, of the total German fighting manpower of World War II – not only those who invaded the Soviet Union – was eliminated on what the Germans called the Eastern Front. Without going into easily available details, the picture is similar when we focus not on men but materiel.

Ask, for instance, Google’s Gemini AI in Deep Research mode, and it will sum it up thus: “It is evident that the Eastern Front absorbed the vast majority of Germany’s total tank losses throughout the war.” It turns out that the failure of Germany’s touted Leopard tank in the Ukraine conflict has a long tradition reaching back to Nazi Germany’s Panthers and Tigers: Russia, neutering German cats since 1941.

Put simply, as with Sweden’s Gustav XII and France’s Napoleon, it was Russia and the Soviet Union that broke Hitler’s back. And at enormous cost and sacrifice: Current, solid figures put Soviet losses (military and civilian combined) at 26-27 million. (Compare, for instance, with the US: Military casualties, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, just over 292,000; civilian losses were negligible, even if every individual death is, of course, tragic.)

And now it is Germany – of all places – that has marred the run-up to this year’s May anniversary with an embarrassingly ugly scandal. Its essence is a German government attempt to crudely instrumentalize the commemorations to make them serve the propaganda war that has been part of the West’s proxy war in Ukraine, while accusing Russia of doing just that. In Germany, more and more often, every accusation is a confession, as they say about Israeli propaganda.

While similar initiatives have occurred for years, this year, the German Foreign Office – still mismanaged by Annalena ‘360-Degrees-of-Russophobia’ Baerbock – has escalated the pettiness by circulating a so-called Handreichung – officially, a sort of advice; unofficially, nasty arm-twisting – to insist that neither Russian nor Belarusian representatives should be invited to commemoration events and that, if they dare show up anyhow, they should be kicked out.

The barbaric call to, in essence, kick out well-behaved diplomats as if they were brawlers at a pub, is encoded as a reference to ‘house rules’ to be enforced. But this is a shamelessly primitive euphemism, about as Teutonically klutzy as when the German authorities used to disappear their opponents into ‘protective custody’.

The German mainstream media have mostly, once again, supported this harebrained and bigoted attempt to stick it to the Russians, as is fashionable again in the new-old Zeitenwende Germany of massive re-armament and ‘war fitness’ (Kriegstuechtigkeit – a term Nazi-infowarrior-in-chief Joseph Goebbels also used). As always, Ukrainian representatives have done their best to misuse their always willingly available German media platforms to confirm Germans in their errors.

The German parliament has followed the Foreign Office and demonstratively excluded Russian and Belarusian diplomats from its commemorations. At least some of the heads of commemoration sites and museums are obeying the Foreign Office’s advice, or perhaps pursuing the same policy out of their own provincial dogmatism. Christian Wagner, who is responsible for sites in Thuringia, has explicitly barred Russian and Belarusian diplomats. Likewise, the head of commemoration sites in Brandenburg, Axel Drecoll, has boasted of disinviting the Russian ambassadorand of being ready to evict him – in cooperation with the ‘security forces’ – if he tries to attend.

The good news is that there is resistance as well. Around the town of Seelow – a region with special importance because of the immense 1945 Battle of the Seelow Heights – local politicians, including from Sarah Wagenknecht’s leftwing BSW, the centrist SPD, and also the mainstream-conservative CDU party, dared show themselves “astonished” by the Foreign Office’s “absurd” ideas.

When Russian Ambassador Sergey Nechayev did attend a commemoration event, no one asked him to leave and – surprise, surprise – nothing terrible or scandalous happened. That’s because Russians, unlike quite a few Germans, it seems, still know how to behave with decency.

To the credit of many other Germans, in Seelow, the ambassador was welcomed by a crowd showing their support and respect. Nechayev also took part in commemorations in Torgau, where Soviet and US troops famously met toward the end of the war, and later, at the site of the former camp of Sachsenhausen, which was liberated by the Red Army in April 1945. There, as well, the hysterical fantasies of Germany’s Foreign Office proved simply irrelevant.

In the Berliner Zeitung, songwriter and author Hans-Eckardt Wenzel sharply criticized the policy of weaponizing the memory of World War II against Russia. In particular, he took Axel Drecoll to task, challenging him, in effect, to stop his attempts at rewriting history.

The German Foreign Office, meanwhile, has shown cold feet. It has begun to equivocate in a comically dishonest and self-revealing manner. When challenged about his ministry’s gratuitous initiative against Russian and Belarusian representatives, its spokesman, Sebastian Fischer, outdid his usual stonewalling: The Foreign Office’s circular, he said, is not a prohibition because the individual memorial sites and museums retain the right to decide whether to follow it or not.

Yes, sure, and we know from Hollywood that the Pirate Code is not really legally binding but more like, you know, sort of a recommendation. Russia has long pointed out that Western elites have become so habitually underhanded, so addicted to sophistry and casuistry that they are no longer ‘agreement-capable’. Thank you for selflessly illustrating, Mr. Fischer from the Foreign Office, that this collapse of a minimum of good faith holds true not only in their behavior abroad but at home as well.

In reality, it is obvious that – despite Fischer’s transparent weaseling – the Foreign Office issued its directive to exert political and public-opinion pressure and do its worst to compel other institutions. To now discover that no one really meant to give orders is a cheap cop-out. But let’s be fair, for Germany, it’s at least a new one: From ‘I was just following orders’ to ‘We never really meant to give any.’ And they say Germans have learned nothing from their nasty past!

In the same press conference, Fischer also failed to answer a crucial question: His ministry has argued that Russian and Belarusian representatives should be kept away and even kicked out if they dare show up in order to prevent any nefarious political instrumentalization.

Yet, when reminded that similar concerns have been voiced for years now and asked to provide concrete examples of anything of the kind actually happening, Fischer drew an embarrassing blank. He mumbled something vague about some St. George’s ribbons – and that was it, all he could come up with. This from a strangely high-ranking spokesman for a country that has never really had an issue with quite a few of its new Ukrainian friends displaying stuff that is by any reasonable reckoning much worse, namely Nazi-style – and often just straightforward-Nazi – symbols. Talk about instrumentalizing the memory of World War II!

It was left to a member of the German parliament from the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) to speak some plain truth: Steffen Kotre pointed out that it is, actually, Germany’s “ideological policy” that “is instrumentalizing history.” For those out to “clobber the Russians ideologically,” the real history of World War II does not even matter. Exactly!

It is not a pretty picture: The German authorities have revealed, once more, just how small-minded, historically illiterate, and fanatically Russophobic they are. The same politicians who have never failed to support Israel’s routine instrumentalization of the German crime of the Holocaust to cover for Israel’s own brutal crimes of apartheid and genocide against the Palestinians, have shown that they see Russia as a legitimate target of what can only be called memory warfare by dirty tricks.

Of all countries, it is Russia, the one that – objectively, quantifiably – did the most to rid the world of the Nazism that Germans made, served, and fought for, which some Germans now feel they have to censure and offend demonstratively. Germany’s elites have serious problem not merely with memory but with elementary logic and basic decency.

https://www.rt.com/news/616642-germany-ww2-memory-russia/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sharply criticized Berlin for designating Alternative for Germany (AfD), the country’s most popular party according to recent polling, as “extremist.” Such actions have nothing to do with democracy, he has warned.

“Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition,”America’s top diplomat wrote on X on Friday. “That’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise.”

Earlier in the day, the German domestic security service (BfV) announced the decision to officially designate AfD a “confirmed extremist entity.” This legal status allows the BfV to deploy surveillance and intelligence measures to monitor the party’s activities without restriction.

Explaining the move, the agency cited “the extremist nature of the entire party, which disregards human dignity.” It pointed to the party’s “prevailing understanding of the people based on ethnicity and descent,”which it said was “incompatible with the democratic basic order.” The AfD has long been known for its harsh anti-immigration stance.

“What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD… but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes,” Rubio argued, calling on Berlin to “reverse its course.” The right-wing party has been enjoying steady support from Washington ever since US President Donald Trump entered the White House for his second term.

US Vice President J.D. Vance strongly criticized politicians who shun parties such as the AfD at the Munich Security Conference in February. US-based billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk has repeatedly openly expressed support for the party. In January, ahead of the German parliamentary vote, he hosted a livestream on X with AfD co-leader and then chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel.

The party came in second during the February election, behind the center-right Christian Democrats, which ruled out any coalitions with the AfD. Recent polls show the two parties being neck-and-neck, with one survey published by Forsa Institute putting AfD one percent point ahead of their center-right rivals.

https://www.rt.com/news/616676-germany-tyranny-disguise-rubio/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

US Vice President J.D. Vance has compared the German government’s treatment of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to rebuilding the Berlin Wall.

On Friday, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, classified the anti-immigration AfD as an “extremist” organization, citing “xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic, and anti-Muslim statements made by leading party officials.” The label enables police to closely monitor the party’s activities.

“The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it,”Vance wrote on X.

“The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt – not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment,” he added.

The party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, accused the government of attempting to quell dissent. “Since the AfD is the strongest party in polls now, they want to suppress the opposition & freedom of speech,” she wrote on X.

AfD was founded in 2013 as a backlash to Germany’s handling of the eurozone debt crisis. It has since shifted focus to demanding tighter immigration and asylum laws and opposing the “woke agenda.” The party also criticizes NATO and has staged protests against sending weapons to Ukraine.

AfD finished second in the federal elections in February, winning 152 seats in the 630-seat Bundestag. Last month, it topped opinion polls for the first time, with 26% support. The party is especially popular in the economically underdeveloped regions of former East Germany. AfD has also been embroiled in controversy, as some members have had links to far-right and neo-Nazi groups or used slogans associated with Nazi Germany.

Major German parties have refused to cooperate or form coalitions with AfD under the so-called “firewall” principle. Vance criticized efforts to isolate the party during his speech at the Munich Security Conference in February. “Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t,” the US vice president said.

The Berlin Wall was a concrete barrier built by East Germany in 1961 to stop its citizens from fleeing to West Berlin. It became a powerful symbol of the Cold War and remained in place until it was torn down in 1989, leading to German reunification.

https://www.rt.com/news/616677-vance-germany-berlin-wall/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.