Never again!

Two simple words. Yet very complex.
And they don’t mean the same thing for everyone.

I recently had the opportunity to hear Prof. Dr. Michael Wolffsohn speak about the differences between Germans and Jews today. He presented a few very simple, very black and white statements. Not everyone agreed on what he said. That’s the thing with simple black and white statements. But, those statements gave me some food for thought.

I want to pick just one of the statements for now.

He said that the Jewish people and and the Germans learned one important lesson from what happened during World War II.

Never again!

The Germans learned to “Never again be the perpetrators!”
The Jewish people learned to “Never again be the victims!”

Why are the Germans so hesitant when it comes to help their allies in military conflicts?

Never again be the perpetrators.
As a German, I grew up with this “mantra”. History classes in school spent a lot of time on German wrongdoing during the two World Wars. Especially the horrible things we did to the Jewish people (and not only to them). We visited former concentration camps more than once. The Diary of Anne Frank is mandatory reading material for every German pupil. Our parents and grandparents told us that “we”, the Germans, had done terrible things during the war (if they talked about that time at all).

Ask me about German guilt and I can tell you that I do feel guilty, even though I am a member of the “Third Generation” after the war.

When I grew up, I learned that the “Bundeswehr”, the German armed forces, is there only to defend our country. That it does not have first strike ability and that it will never again have this. I learned that military service for the German armed forces would be a waste of time. That I would do better to do social service.

Fast forward to the year 1999: Kosovo Conflict
I can well remember the discussions that raged through Germany. Should Germany “participate” in a war? Should we be part of the KFOR troups? Is this really a humanitarian mission, or are we going to be “warmongers”? It was a tough battle that the politicians had to fight, before the first German soldier could help in the Kosovo Conflict. And it cost the politicians a lot of voters.
The general public in Germany thinks of “modern” Germany as a “pacifist state”. We do not engage in military conflicts any more. We have learned this from the past.

Fast forward to the year 2001
We all remember the horrors of September 11.
Since 2001 Germany is part of the “War on Terror”. The German armed forces are supporting the ISAF in Afghanistan and the NATO in the Mediterranean Sea. They are also in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates and in other places. BUT to come this far there were huge discussions again. It went even thus far, that the German Chancellor had to ask for a vote of confidence.
Again it was this German mindset of “we cannot be involved in any sort of military conflicts”.

Never again is deeply engrained in the German mind. And it will probably take some more time until we understand that supporting our allies is a good thing.