Judt: The Past is Another Country
Three arguments: (1) “the special character of the wartime experience in
continental Europe, and the ways in which the memory of that experience was
distorted, sublimated, and appropriated, bequeathed to the postwar era an identity
that was fundamentally false, dependent upon the erection of an unnatural and
unsustainable frontier between past and present in European public memory. (2)
“the ways in which the official versions of the war and postwar era have unraveled
in recent years are indicative of unresolved problems which lie at the center of the
present continental crisis”, (3) there are new “myths and mis-memories” at play
post 1990.
The reality: “most of occupied Europe either collaborated with the occupying forces
(a minority) or accepted with resignation and equanimity the presence and
activities of the German forces (a majority)” (85).
The myth: “The first [myth] was the universally-acknowledged claim that
responsibility for the war, its sufferings and its crimes, lay with the Germans” (87).
“The presence of concentration camps in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and even France
could thus readily be forgotten, or simply ascribed to the occupying power, with
attention diverted from the fact that many of these camps were staffed by nonGermans and…had been established and in operation before the German occupation
began” (87).
He also makes the point that the Nuremburg trials limited the scope of guilt for the
war to a select group of Nazis, thus helping those like the Soviets, who “wished to
avoid any discussion of broader moral and judicial questions which might draw
attention to the Soviet Union’s own practices before and during the war” (ibid)
He also mentions that in 1948 over half a million former Nazis received amnesty in
Austria, “a process that would have been all but unthinkable in 1948” (88).
Ethnic expulsion: At the end of page 88 and beginning of 89, he discusses post-war
forced relocations/expulsions of Germans. “Beyond its significance for postwar
German domestic politics (which were considerable), this process had a marked
impact upon the states whence these Germans came. Poland and Hungary (as well
as Western Germany itself) now become ethnically homogenous states as never
before. Others felt free to indulge in further exercises in ethnic purification”. But
Europe did not have misgivings about this. “On the contrary: a clear and quick
distinction was made between the sorts of collective violence and punishment
visited on these lands by German war criminals, and the mass, racially motivated
purges represented by these expulsions and undertaken by freely-elected or newlyliberated national authorities” (89).
Two memories: “that of things done to ‘us’ by Germans in the war, and the rather
different recollection of things (however similar) done by ‘us’ to ‘others’ after the
war…Two moral vocabularies, two sorts of reasoning, two different parts. In this
circumstance, the uncomfortably confusing recollection of things done by us to
others during the war (i.e. under German auspices) got conveniently lost” (89).
Resistance Myth: “to be innocent a nation had to have resisted, and to have done so
in its overwhelming majority, a claim that was perforce made and pedagogically
enforced all over Europe” (89-90).
He asks why genuine resisters acquiesced in the myth. Two reasons. “In the first
case, it was necessary somehow to restore a minimal level of cohesion to civil
society and to reestablish the authority and legitimacy of the state” (90). Secondly,
he says the communists “could hope to capitalize on their war record by claiming to
have spoken for the nation in its time of trial” (91).They also took advantage of the
idea of their being a few traitors in order to purge their opponents (91).
Punishment: He says most of the retributive attacks (antifascist executions, etc.)
took place before the axis countries were liberated, and so unofficially. Officially, the
process was “half-hearted”. “In Austria, 130,000 persons were investigated for war
crimes; of these 23,000 were tried, 13,600 found guilty, 43 sentenced to death….and
30 actually executed” (93). “In both France and Austria…the emphasis was clearly
placed upon the need to reduce to the minimum the number of convictable and
convicted persons, reserve for this select few a sort of symbolic and representative
function as criminals and traitors, and leave the rest of the social fabric untouched”
(ibid).
1948 Myths: He argues that because there were no post war peace treaties officially
ending and framing the war, memories became confused when it transitioned in 4849 to concern over the division of Germany and the shaping of the Cold War order
(95). He then turns to talk about the “foundation myths” of “Europe” and the project
of Europe, which began from 1948. HE discusses the country-specific myths of the
new Europe to the middle of page 97.
To page 108 he gives a variety of examples of problematic national memories /
myths. Then he turns to modern myths.
Social Function of Taboo: “In return for the myth of an ethically-respectable past
and an impeccably untainted identification with a reborn Europe, we have been
spared the sorts of language and attitudes which so polluted and degraded the
public realm between the wars” – an argument in favor of taboos. The problem:
“These constraints are now loosened” (108). And “[a]t a time when Euro-chat has
turned to the happy topic of disappearing customs borders, the frontiers of memory
remain solidly in place” (112).
Note: There are a lot of specific examples in the paper, which I have not listed here.
It is always good to know examples, since they illustrate the point, and since you can
include them in arguments you make in your papers, depending on the topic.