Germany is Held Together by Scaffolding

The trip has finished. As Jeremy Cronig said in his Topography of Terror Site Report, all roads led to Berlin. A general theme of our adventure was that for some reason, nearly every monument, museum, or landmark, was covered in scaffolding. Berlin’s scaffolding was, however, a little more symbolic than most; Berlin is a city rebuilt with a reconstructed image. The Allies leveled the city by the Nazi surrender, and in the decades since Germany has worked tirelessly to present itself as a nation which remembers its past and will not repeat it.

As we walked through Berlin I kept wishing to see the same sort of grand architecture seen in Paris or London, and then I had to remind myself whose fault it is that all of those buildings were destroyed. Our hotel was near the site of Berlin’s prewar train station, Anhalter Bahnhof, which now only survives as a single wall of the former entrance, the only piece which survived American bombing. Its replacement, Hauptbahnhof, is a beautifully modern building, similar to Pottsdamer Platz, where, after reunification, architects flocked from around the world to reconstruct Berlin’s commercial heart. This structural modernization, and all the scaffolding it entails, is representative of today’s Berlin. That same modernization can also be seen in the way Berlin presents its own history.

Our first museum visit was to the German Historical Museum, which gave and honest and transparent presentation of Germany’s role in WWII and the Holocaust. This museum was not shy; it openly displayed Nazi artifacts, anti-semitic propaganda posters, and photographic evidence of the holocaust. When describing the interwar period and the rise of the Nazi party, the museum tried to explain the origins of Germany’s rampant antisemitism, but never to justify it. This trend was followed at the Topography of Terror, a museum built on the site of the headquarters of the SS, the Gestapo, and the Reich Security Main Office. The museum demonstrates how the Holocaust was administered. It names names, shows faces, and directs visitors towards the basement prison and torture cells. These museums do not try to hide, nor separate themselves from their past but to show that Germany has grown past the Nazi era.

This idea was most featured in the rebuilt Reichstag. Originally constructed by the German Empire, the building now is an almost entirely modern building inside a historic façade. The building fell out of use after the 1933 fire and was further damaged by the Soviet invasion of Berlin in 1945. It remained unused until reunification, when it was reopened as the new home for the Bundestag in 1999. The modern Reichstag is a completely symbolic building, its austere interior was designed to prevent distraction, its many windows represent the parliament’s transparency, and the parliamentary chamber was designed such that no politician will ever sit above their constituent. There are, however, a few preserved sections of the interior: places where Soviet soldiers graffitied the walls after taking the building in 1945. The Reichstag was reconstructed to imply that Germany is a modern democracy which remembers its past.

Scaffolding is often placed to maintain, but Berlin is a city which has gone through a metamorphosis. The scaffolding on Notre Dame in Paris or Big Ben in London was there to keep those monuments the same they’ve always been, despite time. Berlin’s scaffolding is close to the opposite. Berlin was a city that had to change, it was known to the world as the capital of Nazi Germany, and then as a divided city which represented the Cold War. Since reunification, Berlin has renovated itself to become a modern European capital city, who willingly recognizes its past. Instead of being an excuse for power to be consolidated, the modern Reichstag serves as a symbol that never again will Germany lose its democratic way. Berlin still has room to grow, many museums point out who committed the Holocaust, but shy away from the consequences beyond the Nuremburg trials, or how the German people let it all happen. Luckily, there is plenty of scaffolding to go around.

There is Nothing to be Proud Of

There is Nothing to be Proud Of

On our first day in Krakow, we toured two of the three main camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. That was neither a happy nor a fun day, but it was one of which I am glad to have been a part of. We stood and toured through barracks, offices, and a gas chamber, all which existed solely to aide in the killing of over one million people, the majority being Hungarian Jews. Today, these same facilities are a museum to teach about the atrocities committed there, and to warn against their recurrence.

It was surreal to walk between the offices at Auschwitz-1 and to see an I-beam gallow on your left with a kitchen right behind it. Auschwitz-Birkenau existed, only seventy-three years ago, as a death factory. Factories produce goods and farms produce food, but at Auschwitz, thousands of SS soldiers worked to produce death, with any manufactured goods, stolen possessions, or profit,  as the byproduct. It was bizarre to see such a place in today’s world, where the only goal was to eradicate as many other human lives as efficiently as possible. Such a place does not need to exist.

I was further confused while looking at where the Final Solution was carried out, and because that experience makes it even more inconceivable that people still choose to identify with Nazi ideology today. I saw many artifacts of destruction, more than I could list, at Auschwitz but not a single one could have helped me understand why there are such people as “Neo-Nazis.” Nothing I saw could explain why people around the world could know that a place like Auschwitz exists and still choose to rally or march in its favor.

Auschwitz was so moving because it was so personal. The tour took our group passed the long hallways full of confiscated shoes, luggage, and cookware; the Jews were told they would be resettled, so many brought home goods to start a new life. It was easy to compare a piece of myself to all of those things, whether it was the shoes that I was walking in, the luggage that I purchased for this trip, or the plates that I bought to furnish my first apartment. What’s more, buying new shoes and moving out are nearly universal experiences, which anyone could quickly identify with. The Auschwitz museum made me feel the weight of every one of those 1.2 million lives, and their experiences, which were snuffed out for hate’s sake.

Putting myself in the victims’ shoes made it even more incomprehensible to consider that some of these Neonazis are people I am also supposed to identify with. Nearly a year ago, protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, the “Unite the Right Rally” brought Nazi imagery and ideology out in full force in the American South. American men, my age or a little older, marched with tiki-torchers in the night, shouting Nazi slogans like “blood and soil,” and “the Jews will not replace us.” These people, my compatriots, proudly waved swastika flags and used the Nazi salute to protest some perceived threat to white nationalism, which frankly disgusts me.

Neonazism, white nationalism, and racial extremism have always been confusing to me, but they never offended me until touring Auschwitz. I realized that the holocaust had always been at a distance, in movies or textbooks, which kept me from truly understanding what it meant to be a Nazi supporter. I have seen the remnants of some of humanity’s worst acts against itself. I have seen the torture cells, and execution cells in Auschwitz 1, and the wood plank bunks where up to 10 emaciated bodies were forced into a space built for four in Birkenau. I have seen the scratches on the walls of the gas chamber gouged out by dying Jews whose last few minutes on this Earth were sheer terror. These are remnants of the Nazis; memorials to the men, women, and children who suffered, for no fault of their own, at the hands of truly hateful men. The holocaust produced only death and terror, nothing productive or to be proud of. I do not understand why, while these remnants exist, Neonazis exist, because there is nothing productive, or to be proud of, there.

Fifty-two Raised Eyebrows

52 Raised Eyebrows

This French leg of our journey felt like a sort of pilgrimage for me. I began learning French, and adjacently, French History, eight years ago in the 7th grade and have been fascinated since. Those years, combined with building my expertise on the origins of Vichy France this past semester, meant that the nine days of speaking French and learning how the French presented their own narrative should have been some of my favorite. Those nine days were incredible, if not also incredibly cynical. Touring museums like a historian means asking “why” often, and always being willing to raise an eyebrow when a plaque or display makes an especially proud claim. The French museums we toured raised a lot of eyebrows.

We began at the Caen memorial museum, which guides its visitors down a descending spiral hallway representing the downward spiral of the political climate leading up to the war. The symbolism was impressive, but the exhibit skips from the invasion of Poland to France’s capitulation, curiously omitting any explanation for France’s fall. Later, the museum’s only mention of the Vichy Government, France’s constitutional governing body between 1940-1944, was relegated to two small displays, only summarizing that they existed. This was especially striking, because it came right before an entire room, with a much higher budget, dedicated to the Resistance. These were all presented in French, English, and German, which was not a consistency throughout the museum.

Our group was lucky enough to have a few who could read French, which was helpful when we came across the few displays left untranslated for some reason. The reason raised all fifty-two eyebrows on our trip, because the Caen Memorial Museum presented different stories away from anglophone eyes. The biggest was a claim about the Allies’ superfluousness in liberation, because, according to the museum, the French were able to, and did, liberate themselves. This pattern repeated itself on a much bigger scale at Les Invalides in Paris.

France’s national military museum describes a history nothing short of valiant, heroic, and any other similar adjective which hadn’t been used too recently. Like the Caen museum, Vichy received a single section of displays out of the three floors concerned with WWII. None of the displays discuss Vichy’s politics, origins, or goals, but they did feature three cases of Petain memorabilia that compared his worship to Hitler. These displays were unironically surrounded by two other floors of ephemera worshiping DeGaulle. Les Invalides also, luckily in English this time, made some questionable claims about France’s participation. Namely that the French forces inflicted a staggering 160,000 casualties during the 1940 battle for France, forgetting to mention they suffered over one million, and that the Maginot Line “never capitulated,” because the Germans simply went around it. A full summary of these dubious displays would be longer than the entirety of this post, but suffice to say we found many more.

None of this is to say that I feel like my dreams of visiting Paris were dashed. I can honestly say that every day in France helped me to grow as a historian. Whether we were at the German, American, or British cemeteries to appreciate their symbolism and those buried there, or visiting Saint-Mère-Eglise, a vital town to U.S. D-Day paratroopers that has become a theme-park of a museum, I learned how to become a more responsible history consumer. I realized I’ve never been to the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. while touring Les Invalides. Seeing their national museum made me ask, how many of these same questions or raised eyebrows would I have at home?

The War Happened Here

The War Happened Here                                                                                Stephen Hayden

The “Good War” was kind to the United States. Although it took, famished, and taxed its sons and daughters, the war remained at a distance. Rations limited civilians, and Pearl Harbor was a shocking day, which still lives in infamy, but for the most part, Americans never witnessed the war. The Second World War was much less kind to the United Kingdom, which the monuments and museums across London display for all to see. Our group visited the Churchill War Rooms, Bletchley Park, and the Imperial War Museum, as well as a number of other small monuments, which all demonstrated that in the U.K., WWII was very much a “people’s war.”

At the Churchill War Rooms, we explored the bunkers constructed in the heart of London as the nerve center of British High Command during the Blitz. At any point a bomb could have destroyed the bunkers, but Churchill would often stand atop the building to watch the bombs fall on London because he knew civilians bore the heaviest burden of the bombing. From the War Rooms we walked across St. James Park to the Bomber Command Memorial, built around the 7 bronze statues of a bomber crew holding their gear, haggard after a long mission. This monument honors lives lost during, and as a result of, the R.A.F’s bombing missions, through an inscription reading “This Monument Also Commemorates Those of All Nations who Lost Their Lives in the Bombing.” These memorials all depict Londoners’ close proximity to dropping bombs or being bombed themselves. The Blitz left an indelible mark on the British national identity incomparable to anything in American history. There is an immediately visible scar on the British national identity, worn proudly, inflicted by the Blitz. Americans might remember a lean or troubled time, but never were we physically battered like London.

A visit to the Imperial War Museum (IWM) furthers this idea. The ephemera of the “Peoples’ War” demonstrates that no one was free from responsibility or fear during the Blitz. On display was a Morrison Shelter, a small steel and mesh cage intended to provide safety in the event of a collapsed house during the Blitz. This artifact reminded me of a conversation with a Blitz survivor, Mr. Michael Hanscomb, aged 92. Our guest’s story of helping his father and neighbor to dig out bomb shelters in their back yard made it clear that every Londoner became a part of the war. Standing next to a hanging V1 and V2 rocket in the IWM, I felt humbled as an American to think that these rockets, and all their destructive might, had been aimed at the neighborhood where I was standing. It was sobering to recall Mr. Hanscomb’s story about watching “doodlebugs” (V1 rockets) flying over London as I looked at the sizable payload they carried and imagined the effect of their landings on ordinary British civilians.

We have learned how the disproportionate civilian involvement and cost separated WWII from any prior. Those discussions were meaningful, but it is more moving to stand where the bombs dropped, listen to survivors, and see how London, today, expresses itself as a city that has been under siege. I was rendered speechless that while Americans were in the war, the war happened here.