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rfmcdonaldA recent article in The New York Times, Nicholas Kulish's "Facing German Suffering, and Not Looking Away", examines the recent discovery of a mass grave of ethnic German civilians in the Polish city of Malbork and its implications on the perception of the Second World War.
Giles MacDonogh's After the Reich details the sustained indifference of the Western Allies and the Soviets to the suffering of German civilians--one French opinion poll revealed that something like 85% of the poll hoped that the Soviets would be sufficiently rigourous with the German population in the areas they occupied, for instance--and the general extreme hostility of people in formerly German-occupied countries justifed most anything. My review of Sidonia Dedina's The Liquidator highlighted how the sufferings of Czechs under a Nazi occupation that was relatively benign compared to what went on in Poland combined with historical suspicions of the of Germans led to the rapid expulsion of 95%+ of Czechoslovakia's ethnic German population. This was typical across central Europe. Even in the Netherlands, there existed a non-trivial movement in the Netherlands to annex swathes of northwestern Germany and expel the people who wouldn't fit in.
Does anyone have any thoughts as to how these mass deaths of Germans will fit into the popular perception of the Second World War in future generations? I suspect that people will cleave to the thesis of Niall Ferguson's The War of the World, that the world wars of the early 20th century can best be seen as a massive catastrophic spasm that produced victims on all sides.
Until then, Malbork was the German town of Marienburg, and the authorities believe the dead men, women and children buried together here were inhabitants of the city, along with refugees from places farther east, such as Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, fleeing the devastating Soviet counterattack that would eventually capture Berlin. Several dozen of the skulls have bullet holes, which prompted speculation of a massacre when the first bodies were found last October, whereas now the talk centers on cold, hunger and most of all typhus, which was rampant at the time.
Europe has more than its share of mass graves, a reflection of the extraordinary scale of violence of the previous century. But throughout the Continent the public is far more used to Germans as perpetrators rather than victims, and perhaps nowhere is that more true than in Germany itself.
Yet there are signs in the former German territories such as Malbork that an understanding of the human suffering, in particular of civilians, is beginning to gain traction, balancing slightly the long-held grudge of collective guilt toward the German aggressors who began the war.
“We cannot be indifferent to what has happened here,” said Radoslaw Gajc, 30, a native of Malbork and a city worker who right now is assigned to removing the bodies. “It’s clearly very important, and we approach it with great seriousness and respect,” he said, adding that he had lately been studying up on the end stages of the war.
“It’s something that has really led to a lot of interest in the Polish public, and even a lot of compassion for the people who died,” said Fritz Kirchmeier, spokesman for the German War Graves Commission, who traveled with a colleague to Malbork to discuss with city officials on Thursday plans either to move the bodies to an existing graveyard or to build a resting place in town. The German war graves authority in November began to bury German soldiers killed in World War II in a graveyard in the town of Cheb in the Czech Republic.
[. . .]
After World War II more than 12 million ethnic Germans, and by some estimates up to 16.5 million, were uprooted across central and Eastern Europe, and more than 2 million are believed to have died or been killed in the often violent process. The mass grave here was dutifully reported in the German news media, but in the usual muted fashion, because discussions of German suffering provoke strong responses among the victims of Hitler’s aggression and smack of revanchism to a public sensitive to the complex web of memory and guilt.
[. . .]
The mass grave in Malbork came to light purely by accident, as construction crews were preparing the site for a planned luxury hotel. The construction is part of a larger plan to redevelop the area, including building a new modern fountain, complete with music and lights, that has workers tearing up the streets downtown just a stone’s throw from the grave.
Indeed, the bodies were not hidden in a forest or farmer’s field far outside of town, but right there in the historic center, directly in front of one of the largest tourist attractions in Poland. At first, workers found only about 70 skeletons, which were then interred in a local cemetery. Then a rainstorm washed away more of the soil, revealing several additional bones, including another skull. A systematic search for remains began, and as of this week just over 1,900 had been found.
Because the dead were buried naked — with two small pairs of eyeglasses the only personal effects found among all the bodies in the grave — it is unlikely that the exact identities of the victims will ever be known. But the local archaeologist in charge of the site, Zbigniew Sawicki, said in an interview that they were all but certain that the bodies were those of Germans.
Giles MacDonogh's After the Reich details the sustained indifference of the Western Allies and the Soviets to the suffering of German civilians--one French opinion poll revealed that something like 85% of the poll hoped that the Soviets would be sufficiently rigourous with the German population in the areas they occupied, for instance--and the general extreme hostility of people in formerly German-occupied countries justifed most anything. My review of Sidonia Dedina's The Liquidator highlighted how the sufferings of Czechs under a Nazi occupation that was relatively benign compared to what went on in Poland combined with historical suspicions of the of Germans led to the rapid expulsion of 95%+ of Czechoslovakia's ethnic German population. This was typical across central Europe. Even in the Netherlands, there existed a non-trivial movement in the Netherlands to annex swathes of northwestern Germany and expel the people who wouldn't fit in.
Does anyone have any thoughts as to how these mass deaths of Germans will fit into the popular perception of the Second World War in future generations? I suspect that people will cleave to the thesis of Niall Ferguson's The War of the World, that the world wars of the early 20th century can best be seen as a massive catastrophic spasm that produced victims on all sides.
