"All Good Things Come in Threes" or Do They?

At the emergence of the post war period, Germany was left in ruin.  Piles of rubble were filling the major cities and the country itself was left in ashes.  The Germans themselves were weary of the Russians campaign against them in addition to the weariness associated with the Nazi regime's war efforts.  Much of what hung in the balance for Germany's future was a struture of government and with the demise of the Third Reich, what would emerge in its place and how would everyday Germans cope with this change? And yet, in the wake of post war Germany, what would be this new direction that Germany would take?  Especially with most Germans feeling wary of politics in general, it truly became a day to day "sheer fight for physical survival" (Fulbrook 117).  It was indeed a chance for Germany to start with a new beginning and all eyes were fixed to see what may happen next.

Germany stood divided by occupation zones and in each of these zones, certain groups formed in this shifting political climate, most of which emerged in the Soviet zone.  From the SMAD to the CDU to KPD, each of these groups had a "politcal agenda" so to speak.  The KPD, especially, sought to assume positions in the local government and "often subscribed to a humanistic version of communism which differed considerably from the Stalinist variant propagated by Moscow faction" (Fulbrook 119).  In Gehler's Three Germanies, he asserts that the KPD was the first party to show "the way to setting up an anti-Fascist, democratic regime, and a parliamentary democratic republic with all the democratic rights and freedoms for the people" (17).  Despite all these political parties, it was still important to remember that despite political structure, it was still a country with individual people who were sorting out what to make of this aftermath of the war.



Despite all of their feelings towards Germany, the Allies sought to help install some form of a political structure to help position Germany more in a state of reconstruction.  And more than anything, it was not the needs of a government, but the basic needs of the German people such as food, lodging, transportation and communication that the Allies saw as a greater priority in the stabilzation of this war torn country.  And in place of Nazism, the Allied powers also sought to try and remove what had become a way of life by being saturated in Nazism for nearly a decade.

As this process continued to take place, "it was generally accepted that in some way, Germany must be cleansed of Nazis, that those guilty of sustaining Nazi rule must be punished, and that it was essential, if future peace, was to be secured, that Germans should be convinced of the errors of the Nazi views and persuaded to assent to more democratic and peacful values" (122).  The Allied powers were faced with this responsibility and sought to try and remove Germany from these evils that they were responsible for, but at the same time, how did they wrestle with this notion of widely removing this way of thinking from an entire country?  How could you get individuals to simply forget and turn towards a separate way of thinking?

 

And so in the wake of the end of the 1940s, Germany was faced with several concerns about its future.  From 1949, with the creation of East and West Germany to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, these two separate republics were marked by two separate government approaches.  The first was the formation of a liberal democracy in the West with a contrasting democratic centralism in the East.  For people in West Germany, they found themselves able to rid their pasts and with the rapid growth in this republic, look towards establishing a future. 

 

 

As Germany waited through the early years of these new republics with their separate leadership and formation of political structures, the Berlin wall was finally erected in 1961.  According to Gehler, "the building of the Wall helped to stem the tidde of the threatened exodus from the GDR, led to its stabilization and at the same time marked the end of Adenauer's 'policy of strength', which turned to be a policy of German weakness and Western refusal of active German policy." (114).  This division to the city was brought with East and West Germany "coming to terms" with the barbed wire fences that spearated these gates; however, the symbol also was a form of propaganda that was used to assert a "victory of Socialism over Imperialism" (115).  But as history continued, it another 28 years before these two opposing sides confronted each other.

 

In the decades that followed, Gehler details the political structure that took place fueling German history.  In many ways, Germany continued to propel in their "cyclic pattern" of what some may call failure.  It is not until the end of the Cold War in 1989, that the Berlin Wall is finally torn down and it begins the process of unification.  Indeed, there is hope for Germany and even today, this country continues to rebuild itself.

 

 

Discussion Questions

1) What is it about the country of Germany that propels itself into a cycle of failure? It seems that after denazification, that it would remove itself and try to establish a simpler form of government to radically contrast the Nazi regime that had existed for a little over a decade, but instead, it goes for a more radial approach?  Was this the idea of everyone having a stick in the fire?

2) How does denazification still show itself in modern 21st century Germany? Is it still prominent in Germany and other countries? Or has it since gone away with the unification of the country?

3) With the emergence of KPD and other political parties, how was the political climate affected by the sheer number of political parties that started in post war Germany?

4) Keeping the focus on unification of the country, how does Germany begin to rebuild itself on an individual level?  What testimony is there to everyday life throughout the restoration and rebuilding of Germany?

5) What did the Allied powers (British and American) do to help the unification of Germnay? How did their "rescue" efforts seek to bring healing to the country as a whole?

 

References:

Fulbrook, Mary. A History of Germany: 1918-2008 The Divided Nation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2009. Print.

Gehler, Michael. Three Germanies: West Germany, East Germany, and the Berlin Republic. London: Reaktion Books, Ltd., 2011. Print.