Author: husk.18

Discussing WWII from the German Perspective

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I was unsure of what Germany would be like not only in its historical presentation of WWII, but also in its language and culture in comparison to the United States. What I first noticed upon arrival in Berlin was how many people were fluent in English. It seems harder to find someone in the United States who is fluent in two or more languages, especially if they have lived in the United States their whole lives. Germans are also more straightforward, evident in interactions I had with them and also in the way they present their history. When we went to the German Historical Museum, which is the national museum for German history, the designers of the museum laid out very plainly how Hitler took control of Germany. As the museum weaves through the years before, during, and after WWII, it is much more factual than emotional. The German Historical Museum was also very different than other places we have visited because there was a stronger focus on what happened prior to the start of the war and after the war ended rather than actually during it. In the United States and in the other countries we visited as a class, there is more of an emphasis on the events in the war. Due to this focus within the German Historical Museum, I gained more detailed knowledge as a historian about how Germany as a country views and understands their own history before 1939 and after 1945. In most of the places we went in Berlin, the people who design the museums do not shy away or make excuses for the events of WWII and the deaths of millions of people at the hands of the Nazis. Even in the Topography of Terror Museum, which showcases how the Nazis executed their plans during their control, it provokes reactions but shares the information with little emotion, only to tell what actually happened. In one instance, a picture of laughing Nazi men and women had a caption that said they took a break from murdering people at one of the concentration camps to take the photo. The Topography of Terror Museum also had many photos that I had never seen before in classes I have taken about WWII, mostly the photos of lower-ranking Nazi men and women. This museum was very matter-of-fact in the way they acknowledge the roles of Germans in carrying out the murders of millions of people, identifying them clearly through their use of pictures and text to convey the history.

I was also unaware by how much Germany, particularly Berlin, ingrains WWII and its aftermath into their culture. In the United States, there are obviously memorials, museums, and statues commemorating WWII, but not to the same extent as there are in Berlin, and especially not to the same extent in looking at the aftermath. One of the biggest examples in Berlin of how culturally significant the war is in Berlin would be the markers and remnants of the Berlin Wall. Another example of how WWII still affects Germany is in the Reichstag Building. The Reichstag Building is where the German Parliament meets. On our tour of the building, our guide talked often of the efforts made to make everyone happy and equally represented, from the design of the building itself to the setup of the German Parliament. As a class we learned how WWII still affected the culture of the government. The guide explained that the president is now more like a figurehead and has a smaller role in the government. The Germans have organized their government to insure as much as they can that no one person will gain as much power as Hitler did again.

Issues in Poland

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My time in Krakow allowed me to see that Poland itself has a unique historical narrative because two totalitarian regimes occupied the nation in the span of a few years. I tried to look at how they tell their history now through the sites we visited. In our class this past semester, we discussed current events in each of the four countries for the program. In Poland’s case, our topics of discussion circled around its government’s recent laws that prohibit people from saying or implying that Poland collaborated with the Nazis. I almost was looking for changes that indicated that they had manipulated their narrative in response to the law. However, nothing has changed drastically yet in terms of this law. Auschwitz-Birkenau and Oskar Schindler’s old factory, which functions as the exhibition showcasing Krakow under Nazi rule, helped explain Poland’s national character currently, particularly with their version of WWII.

At Auschwitz and Birkenau, the museum regulates tours with their own hired guides, rather than allowing us to have a tour run by our own translator. The tour was also timed, demonstrating their control of how they share the history of both camps. Viewing both of the concentration camps was overwhelming, because much of it remains as it was when the Soviets liberated them in January 1945. This sameness was especially apparent at Birkenau, where there are still just chimneys from where buildings once stood before the Nazis tried to destroy them, and there are still railroad tracks going through the main entrance. Another interesting aspect of both places was the way they tell Jewish and Polish history. They make a conscious distinction between all Jews and Poles, rarely using the phrase Polish Jews. This distinction indicated to me a nationalistic viewpoint for the Poles, in which they want to remind visitors to these museums of the persecution of Poles, such as Polish political prisoners. It was odd that they did not denote Jews who were also Poles specifically, but I believe it was to clarify why Nazis sent them to Auschwitz. The guides often talked about the Poles themselves, showing that a huge part of their personal narrative was how Nazi occupation affected the entire Polish population.

The distinction between Poles and Jews was not so clear in Oskar Schindler’s old enamel factory. There, it was about all of the Poles and how they had to handle the Nazi occupation.  Oskar Schindler was part of the Nazi party and employed about 1,200 Jews in his enamel factory, saving their lives in the process. In the old factory, they have placed a museum devoted to life in Krakow in WWII. It was most beneficial to see the exhibition “Krakow under Nazi Occupation” because it offered a closer insight into the people of Krakow’s occupation by the Nazis, not something that you would be taught in a regular WWII class. In it, they share photos, documents, and personal stories that I had never seen before of what it was like in Krakow during the war. Upon contextualizing the information within this museum to my wealth of knowledge of WWII, it was easier to understand Poland’s struggle to come to terms with what happened during the war. According to the museum, Polish Jews from Krakow were either outright killed or died immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. The numbers they gave for this fact do not include the murders of Jews from other Polish towns and of other non-Jewish Poles who went to camps or died at the hands of the Nazis. Poles dealt with both Nazi and Soviet occupation and terror in a short span of time and rightfully so, view themselves as victims in those cases. However, in all the places our class visited while in Poland, there was no acceptance or admission to any type of collaboration. This lack of information shows that while the official Holocaust law is new, refusing to accept that at least some Poles collaborated with the Nazis is not simply a contemporary issue that the nation is only facing now.

Challenging the American Understanding of WWII

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My experience in France challenged some of the knowledge I had going into the study abroad program. It often conflicted with American perspectives of the events of WWII, while it also offered opportunities to see the physical sites where WWII events took place for the first time. The first place we went to was the Caen Memorial Museum, which related to my personal expertise report of the French civilian perspective during the Allied liberation. Even before entering my first French museum, the idea that the French would shy away from discussing collaboration with the Nazis made me wonder what I was going to see or how bad it would be. Throughout the museum, the writing on the displays told the history from a biased French viewpoint. The creators of the Caen museum focused on the actions of Germany and Italy, devoting very little space to how France’s own political climate fell apart over the years from 1918 onward. I thought the wording was interesting on many of the displays, because they placed great emphasis on French innocence. They also did not mention much about the collaborationist aspect and described Germany’s 1940 takeover in a way that removed blame from France. For their displays on civilian and Allied interactions during the Battle of Normandy, I really tried to spend time looking at it to see how they would share that part of it. The writing indicated at one point that the French were more responsible for liberating towns on their own than we have interpreted or learned from our studies.

Another museum that helped explain the French perspective of WWII was Les Invalides, which is a military history museum that talked about the French history throughout various wars, ending with WWII. Les Invalides showed how the French remembered WWII in more detail than the Caen Memorial Museum and focused even less on the American efforts with the Allies. There was hardly any mention of wartime deportations and specifically the deportation of Jews. There was also only a small section on Vichy compared to the French Resistance, but was still more detailed than the Caen Memorial Museum was in this subject. Both Les Invalides and the Caen Memorial Museum forced me to question how Americans portray their own history and look at biases that are throughout it that I may have originally interpreted as solid facts. There were descriptions of French involvement in WWII that caused our class to discuss whether our own knowledge was actually correct. Ultimately, we tried to remove both American and French biases to internalize a more neutral version of WWII. For example, we wanted to determine more neutrally what kinds of roles the French had in their own liberation and in resistance to German occupation.

Outside of museum visits, it is important to acknowledge the work France has done to remember D-Day by preserving the beaches and memorializing those who lost their lives in the process. Visiting Utah Beach and Omaha Beach helped create concrete images in my mind of what the D-Day invasion was like. What really added to the experience of both beaches was Pointe du Hoc, where we were able to walk and crawl into old German bunkers and bomb craters. Instead of just reading about the war in written paragraphs on display boards, we got to see the physical representation of the war by standing on the beach and seeing the effects of the bombings.

The People that Define England’s Memory of World War II

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I was excited to go to London not only because I have always wanted to go there, but also I personally wanted to see how World War II affects England even today. The British pride themselves in the idea of the “People’s War” meaning that the average person influenced to the winning of the war just as the political and military leaders. Our study tour had the opportunity to see many memorials and museums, including the Bomber Command Memorial, the Churchill War Rooms and Winston Churchill Museum, Bletchley Park, and the Imperial War Museum, all of which stressed the idea of the “People’s War.” There were plenty of memorials that showcased this concept.

On our first day in London, we went to the Churchill War Rooms and Churchill Museum. The War Rooms were where Churchill and members of the British government, including civil servants, worked during the bombing of London by the German air force, the Luftwaffe, during the Blitz. Much of what had survived the Blitz was still there when the British decided to open the doors again many years later, so many of the maps and objects inside were authentic. Sets of audio recordings were available from people that worked within the War Rooms. Some of the highlighted accounts were of Churchill’s cook, secretaries who labored for long hours and sometimes slept next to their desks, and other stories that told of everyday people’s devotion for the Allied cause.

 

The next day, our class went to Bletchley Park, which is one of the best examples of the “People’s War.” Bletchley Park was where people came to work on cracking German, Japanese, and Italian intelligence codes from the Enigma machine. ULTRA, the name of the intelligence operation, was unmatched in aiding the military, offering information to the Allied forces in anticipation of Axis movements. Seeing examples of the Bombe machine, which helped crack Enigma, were incredible. Bletchley Park also commemorates Alan Turing, the Polish mathematicians, and other intelligent minds that found ways to improve the breaking of codes, especially as Enigma grew more complicated. By emphasizing civilian roles at Bletchley, the site explains how civilian women most commonly took upon the job to jot down intercepted transmissions with Morse code and put together the messages. The set-up of Bletchley Park, with its focus on Alan Turing and other employees, illustrates how average people contributed to the political and military efforts of WWII.

When we went to see the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park, it did not demonstrate the ideals of the “People’s War” in the same way as other places did. The memorial shows statues of airmen standing as they finish their job fighting off the Luftwaffe. It goes against the focus on civilian efforts in England’s war memory by emphasizing the role of the RAF. It seems England has determined to balance its memorialized subjects by having both civilian and military displays. Throughout London, there are statues and busts of Churchill almost everywhere, from Parliament Square to Bletchley Park. However, there are existing smaller memorials spread throughout London not involving key historical figures or the military. For example, my classmates and I stumbled upon a statue outside of St. Paul’s Cathedral commemorating the firefighters who fought blazes during the Blitz. Seeing all these types of memorials in London helped translate information from class into a stronger understanding of England’s view regarding civilians’ roles in WWII.