Return of the Gestapo
The trial in Germany of a man accused of murdering two policemen 60
years ago marks a major step forward in the rehabilitation of the Nazi era.
Rob Knight reports from Frankfurt
On 9 August 1931 the German Communist Party reached a new low when it joined
with the Nazis in a referendum against the Social Democratic government
of Prussia. On the same day in the Prussian capital of Berlin, two policemen,
Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenk, were shot dead by persons unknown. At the time,
the killings were seen as revenge for the police murder of a young worker,
Fritz Auge, the previous day. In those increasingly violent and uncontrolled
times the murder of two policemen was not a headline event, and nothing
came of the police investigations.
However, after the Nazis took power they reopened the investigation as part
of a general anti-communist witch-hunt. The two dead policemen were hailed
as heroes and a statue erected to them in Horst-Wessel Strasse. In 1934,
using evidence and confessions extracted from witnesses with the usual Gestapo
methods of threats and torture, a group of 25 Communists, including one
Erich Mielke, were charged with the murder. Mielke had by this time fled
to Moscow and was consequently tried in his absence. The court had no difficulty
in finding most of the defendants guilty. Three were sentenced to death,
one of whom was executed.
In 1947 the authorities tried to reopen the trial, as part of a review of
legal cases under the Nazis. But the Soviets, who at that time shared control
of Berlin, refused to cooperate and nothing came of it. No more was heard
of the case until after German reunification, when all the old files became
available again to the West. On 10 February this year the case was reopened,
with the defendant, Erich Mielke, in court for the first time.
Such an obsession with a 60-year old murder case seems bizarre, until you
know that Erich Mielke was for 32 years head of the Stasi secret police
in East Germany. The German government wants to bring leading members of
the old East German government (GDR) to book for crimes committed against
their own people. This is an extremely complex legal process, given that
the GDR was an internationally recognised state, and there is no generally
accepted legal framework for it. After all, if every government leader was
to be held legally responsible for repressive acts committed under him or
her the world's jails would be full of politicians. The German state is
arguing that, because of this legal problem, it wants to use the old criminal
charges against Mielke to make him pay for his later crimes.
In reality, the Mielke retrial has more to do with the dark shadow that
Nazism casts over Germany's past than it does with the legacy of Stalinism.
Mielke is being tried using exactly the same charges and evidence that were
brought against him by the Nazis. Just to emphasise the continuity even
more, his case is being tried not only in the same court but in the same
room as it was in 1934. The message from the state prosecution, backed up
by editorial comments from the German press, is explicit. The German establishment
is saying that the Nazi legal process was legitimate and normal. It is the
clearest example yet of how far the German authorities are prepared to go
in rewriting the past.
Legacy of the past
Rewriting the past is an urgent necessity for Germany's leaders. They know
that all the world, including the German people, have not forgotten Nazi
atrocities. While Germany was recovering from its defeat in the Second World
War the Nazi past was not too great a burden. Germany concentrated on rebuilding
its economy and did not aspire to play any great role in world politics.
But now the world has changed dramatically and Germany has once more been
thrust on to the world stage as a leading actor. The gradual erosion of
US power, coupled with the weakness of other European powers, is making
Germany the most influential nation in Europe.
Germany has difficulties in exercising this new-found power because of the
legacy of the past. Every attempt to develop its foreign policy is met by
dark comments from its rivals about German assertiveness. At home as well,
the German establishment faces difficulties. It has yet to create a consensus
among its own people for a more aggressive intervention in the outside world.
In the eighties, leading German historians and politicians began to discuss
the necessity for coming to terms with the past, as a prerequisite for a
resurgent Germany. Since reunification this attempt to settle accounts with
the past has passed from the realm of discussion to the world of practical
politics. Recent articles in Living Marxism have noted how Germany
has promoted Croatian independence in order to legitimise retrospectively
both the pro-Nazi wartime Croatian government, and the role of Nazi Germany
in the region. But this was an indirect apology for Nazism. Although the
implications were clear enough, nobody spelled them out fully.
The Mielke trial is something else. It is an indication of how far things
have changed that such an explicit endorsement of the Nazi regime can be
made without provoking any protest. Ten years ago it would not have been
possible for anybody to endorse Gestapo methods of evidence collection in
this way. Those, such as Mielke's own lawyer, who have argued that Nazi
evidence is tainted have now seen their arguments dismissed out of hand.
Indeed the response of the press this time around was to question the lawyer's
right, as an ex-GDR lawyer, even to participate in the new Germany's legal
processes. Under pressure he has since resigned.
The Mielke trial is also being used to legitimise the past in another way.
Some sections of the German press have been commenting on the absurdity
of charging Mielke for this old crime while ignoring his record in the GDR.
The right-wing Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has said that
it is as ridiculous to try Mielke for this old crime as it would have been
to charge Goering after the war with something he did in 1920, rather than
what he did during the Nazi reign. By directly comparing the Nazis with
the Stalinists, the FAZ is relativising Nazism; Goering was no worse than
Mielke, Hitler was no worse than Stalin, Nazi Germany was no worse than
the Soviet Union.
No more guilt
This has long been a favourite theme of the right. The conclusion it draws
is that Nazism was to be regretted, but then so was Stalinism, and there
is no reason why Germany should feel any more or less guilty than many other
countries for what happened in the past. So when one newspaper headed its
trial report with the senile Mielke's question 'Is it not over yet?', the
message was very clear. The past, whether Nazi or Stalinist, is over and
should be forgotten. Germany should be allowed to get on with its business
of becoming a major world power without having continually to look over
its shoulder or apologise for what it is doing.
When it was announced recently that a statue was being erected in London
to Britain's RAF leader 'Bomber' Harris, the German press drew attention
to the fact that he was responsible for the deaths of 600 000 German civilians,
and dubbed him 'Butcher' Harris. The message was that other countries have
their war criminals as well - a far cry from the acceptance of 'national
guilt' which until quite recently characterised Germany's attitude to the
war. Just to drive the point home, one paper compared the raising of the
Harris statue with Kohl and Reagan's controversial visit to the SS graves
at Bitburg in 1985.
There are other examples of how Germany is now legitimising the Nazi period.
It is insisting that the 1938 treaty with Czechoslovakia, signed by the
Czechs under threat of Nazi invasion and under extreme pressure from Britain
and France to capitulate to Nazi demands, is legally valid. This would mean
that the property rights of Sudeten Germans who used to live in Czechoslovakia,
which were guaranteed under the Treaty, should be upheld. No doubt there
is much more rewriting of history to come.
The creation of a new identity untainted by the past is an urgent necessity
for the rulers of the new expansionary Germany. The old anti-communism which
was the ideological cement binding West German society together can no longer
operate because of the collapse of Stalinism. In addition, the rise in economic
strength typical of Germany since the war is threatened by the effects of
recession. To ensure social cohesion and a sense of purpose in society,
the German establishment needs to discover a new ideological framework to
replace anti-communism. The emergence of a more overt German nationalism
is a product of these pressures.
Of course, the process of historical revision is not straightforward. There
are many in Germany who view it with discomfort and dislike. It is also
true that by constantly reinterpreting the past the authorities risk sacrificing
the consensus which has stabilised German society since the war. At the
moment, while everything seems to be going their way, Germany's leaders
are prepared to take risks. But, in the future, they may regret that they
had to break so decisively with the certainties of the past.
Reproduced from Living Marxism issue 42, April 1992