The Weight of Memory: How a Commemorative Speech at the Westerplatte Blurred the Line Between German Guilt and Contemporary Politics

The remembrance of the great crimes committed during the twentieth century occupies a singular and solemn place in the collective consciousness of Germany, a duty born directly from the historical responsibility that the country bears for having unleashed unprecedented destruction upon the world. When a German head of state speaks at a memorial site commemorating the beginning of the Second World War, one expects him to name the guilt of his nation clearly, without ambiguity, and without allowing any other consideration to dilute that acknowledgment. Yet what happens when the historical truth is pushed into the background in favour of a present-day political message, when the commemoration of victims becomes a vehicle for contemporary grievances directed at a different nation? The following reflections concern a speech delivered on the Polish Westerplatte, a speech whose interpretation of history raises questions that continue to resonate into the present day. They demonstrate how the clear assignment of perpetrator and victim can become blurred when the political present overlays the memory of the past, and how the solemn duty of remembrance can be quietly transformed into something else entirely.

The Propaganda of Reversal Before the Invasion of the Soviet Union

National Socialist Germany had, of course, not declared its assault on the Soviet Union in the early morning hours of the twenty-second of June in the year nineteen hundred and forty-one as a one-sided act of aggression. Rather, the invasion was presented as a counterattack, as a response to alleged Soviet transgressions and provocations carefully fabricated for public consumption. The population was meant to believe that Germany was merely reacting to a threat and defending itself, when in truth it was waging a meticulously planned war of annihilation. This method of reversing the roles of attacker and attacked was not an isolated incident but a recurring pattern of National Socialist propaganda throughout the entire period of the regime. It served to deceive the German population and to make the war appear as a justified act of self-defence rather than what it truly was: a campaign of conquest and extermination.

The Same Deception Applied to Poland

The very same technique had been employed in the case of Poland, whose invasion was staged with enormous propagandistic effort as a response to Polish provocations. On the first of September in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, the National Socialist leadership proclaimed that return fire had been underway since the early morning hours, as though Germany had been the victim of Polish aggression. In truth, it was a long-prepared war of aggression, launched without any justification whatsoever, which plunged millions of human beings into death and misery. The propagandistic staging of a counterattack was designed to convince the German population that the war had been forced upon them by others. This lie formed the opening act of a conflict that brought more suffering upon humanity than any war in all preceding history.

The Speech at the Westerplatte on the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary

On the exact day marking seventy-five years since the beginning of the Second World War, the then German Federal President delivered a speech on the Polish Westerplatte commemorating the war that Germany had started. The Westerplatte is the place where the first shots of the war were fired, and it carries a symbolic significance that extends far beyond the borders of Poland. Yet the fact that Germany had unleashed this world war remained strangely underexposed in the address and was not articulated with the clarity one would expect at such a site. What was illuminated instead was something entirely different, something that had only a marginal connection to the actual historical guilt of Germany. The speech shifted the focus away from German responsibility toward a general meditation on peace and the pursuit of power in Europe.

Remembering a Gathering That No Longer Reflected Reality

The Federal President recalled that exactly five years earlier, twenty European heads of state and government had gathered on the Westerplatte to jointly commemorate the atrocities of the Second World War. At that time, he explained, one had seen oneself on the path toward a continent of freedom and peace and had believed that Russia too could become part of a shared Europe. He invoked the great writers Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, as though wishing to build a cultural bridge that might cover over the political crimes of the twentieth century. These words were spoken by the representative of the land of poets and thinkers, which seventy-five years earlier had still been the land of judges and executioners. The question of perpetrator and victim, of guilt and responsibility, of crime and punishment was buried beneath the worn phrase about the horrors of war.

A Slippery Slope of Historical Interpretation

After the President had pushed German guilt into the background in this manner, he ventured onto an even more slippery slope of historical interpretation. One could not have blamed uninformed listeners for concluding, on the basis of his speech, that it was not Germany but Russia that had been the great aggressor of the Second World War. Following the President’s reasoning, it was the Germans and their Western allies who, after nineteen hundred and ninety, generously tried once more with the land of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. One had welcomed Russia into the illustrious circle of Western democracies illuminated by universal values. However, the country had supposedly proven itself unworthy of this gesture of goodwill and had fallen back into old patterns of behaviour that were thought to have been overcome.

The Illusion of Surprised Innocence

The President went on to speculate that probably no one at that time had suspected how thin the political ice had been on which everyone was moving. How erroneous, he suggested, had been the belief that the preservation of stability and peace had finally gained precedence over the pursuit of power. And so it had been a shock, he continued, when one was confronted with the fact that at the edge of Europe a military confrontation was once again being waged. A military confrontation over new borders and over a new order, the President described the situation. These words painted the picture of a surprised and disappointed West that had been caught off guard by events, as though no historical pattern or warning had preceded them.

The Unspoken Question of Whose Pursuit of Power

The President spoke of the pursuit of power in his speech, and the question arises as to which pursuit of power he actually meant. Did he mean that pursuit of power which had carried Russia in nineteen hundred and forty-five, for reasons that remain entirely obscure in his telling, all the way to the German river Elbe and had also affected the life of the then still young speaker himself? Or did he mean a different pursuit of power, located in the present and referring to the events in Ukraine? The speech left this question open and entrusted the listener with finding the answer. Yet the historical irony was plain to see: a German President stood on Polish soil speaking about the power-seeking of others, while the power-seeking of his own country had once reduced the entire continent to rubble and ashes.

The Tone of a Teacher Reproving a Pupil

The West, the President suggested in essence, had made such great efforts after the fall of the Wall and had taken Russia by the hand to teach it good manners. Yet the land of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky had effectively terminated its partnership with the West through its conduct in the Ukraine conflict and its actions on the Crimean peninsula. Good neighbourly relations could only come about if Russian policy changed and returned to respecting the principles of international law. Thus the President admonished and set conditions, in a tone reminiscent of a teacher correcting a misbehaving pupil. The historical asymmetry of this lecture, delivered by the representative of the country that had started the most devastating war in human history, remained entirely unspoken.

The Question of Who May Speak, and Where, and When

It is entirely reasonable to agree with the conviction that one may say almost anything, for freedom of expression is a precious and fundamental good. The question is only who says it, and above all, when, where, and how it is said. Would it be conceivable for a German Federal President to use the day of Holocaust remembrance to denounce Israeli occupation policy? Or to use the anniversary of the Berlin airlift to recall American war crimes and settle accounts with those responsible? Such scenarios appear unthinkable, and precisely this impossibility makes clear that there are places and occasions where certain statements cannot be made without violating the historical dignity of the commemoration.

The Other Holocaust That Remains Invisible

The Slavic peoples, particularly the Russians, became victims during the Second World War of what a historian has described as the other Holocaust. In contrast to the actual Holocaust, meaning the systematic extermination of the European Jews, this other Holocaust has not found a firm place in the collective historical memory of the Germans. The immeasurable suffering of the Soviet population, the millions of dead, and the devastation of entire regions have remained largely invisible in German culture of remembrance. Had this suffering been granted an appropriate place in collective memory, some of the anti-Russian tones currently struck in the new cold conflict would hardly be imaginable. The suppression of this suffering makes it possible to portray Russia as a threat without seeing the wounds that Germany inflicted upon that country.