The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria

by David Art

This book argues that Germans and Austrians have dealt with the Nazi past very differently--with important consequences for political culture and partisan politics. David Art analyzes how public debates about the "lessons of history" created a culture of contrition in Germany that prevented a resurgent far right from consolidating itself in German politics after unification. By contrast, public debates in Austria nourished a culture of victimization that provided a hospitable environment for the rise of right-wing populism. The volume is for those interested in the memory of Nazism and the Holocaust, the rise of European far right parties and contemporary German and Austrian politics.

Genres: Politics

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Matthew Obenritter · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the 8th of May, Germans commemorate the end of an era. On that day in 1945, Germany officially surrendered to the Allies marking the final end of the Second World War in Europe. The May 8th date is also commemorated throughout Germany as a reminder of the atrocities committed under the Nazi banner and is accordingly recognized as a national day of mourning. In Austria, the date is viewed primarily as a day of defeat among right wing politicians and supporters. While Nazi occupation ended and democratic liberation began for the Austrians on May 8th, not everyone views this day as worthy of commemoration. While certainly not the focus of his work, author David Art addresses how perception of this May 8th date among conservative and right-wing politicians, is but one among many indicators of political differentiation for both nations in his book, The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria.

David Art is a political science professor at College of the Holy Cross specializing in European politics, globalization, and international relations. He attacks the subject of right-wing movements passionately, since it is presently an area of focused research for him, and Art uses this book to demonstrate the historical importance of contextualizing a nation’s past, particularly one sated by far-right inclinations of the most extreme kind.

In his own words, Art’s book is an effort to “analyze the influence of the Nazi past on postwar German and Austrian politics,” (ix) just as the title presupposes. The book does much more than this however. Art’s publication is replete with discourse about how the political consequences of a National Socialist past are reflected through the contrition narrative in Germany, or the lack thereof in Austria. Art contends that the “lessons of history” openly communicated in public debates through the media coincided the manifestation of a culture of compunction in Germany, helping to mitigate any resurgence of right wing extremism. Likewise, Art demonstrates that through publicly held debates among media observers and the political elite alike, a marginalization of far-right political movements tempered any nascent National Socialist affinities. Art uses empirical and statistical data, as well as documentary evidence to make obvious that public debates in Austria cultivated a victimization culture, which created an atmosphere more conducive to right-wing sentiments, similarly failing to moderate anti-Semitism. Part social science discourse, part historical and documentary analysis, Art’s study is an exercise in academic methodology worthy of notice.

Simplistic in structure, the book is divided into seven chapters. Following a brief overview in the introduction, chapter 2 is directed at “historical memory” and the issues of normative and causal claims in politics. The matter of ideational change and influence is discussed by Art, and how elite discourse and policy making are impacted by the media. A great part of the third chapter, the largest in the book, is dedicated to the ‘contrition’ frame which proved predominant in German political and intellectual culture. Art asserts that the contrition frame was the “central lens” (51) through which national identity was viewed for the Germans. as Art makes clear, Bild Zetiung, among other publications, not to mention televised debate, all overlap neatly, promoting and promulgating the politically established ideal of contrition among Germans. Penitent memorialization became a part of this rueful narrative with a “ritualized language for publicly discussing the Nazi past.” (82) In this regard, Art implies a historical and political institutionalism. Those who deviated from the contrition frame experienced a cultural marginalization, proving politically and socially potent. Still, historians and politicians had a vested interest in trying to minimize the guilt carried from their association to a scarred past. Normalizing the Nazi legacy for Germans included separating past from future, although the two were eternally linked, a point which the social scientist Art unveil through his research.

Art’s description of historical and political ‘normalization’ is that the Nazi past should be allowed to “pass away,” (50) while Germans get back to the conventional business of their lives. Art’s elucidation of the debate and the political ramifications prove most useful in understanding how Germany dealt with their National Socialist past. For Germans who saw themselves victims of a system, the normalization frame appealed, while those who accepted shared responsibility found solace in the contrition frame. Art, demonstrating the breadth of the German contrition frame, reveals how the German intellectual struggled to contextualize their Nazi past with a debate over the exhibition, “Verbrechen der Wehrmacht” [Crimes of the German Army] (89). This official exhibit was hotly contested by German intellectuals, and similarly became politicized. For German politicians, walking the ‘contrition’ path could be accompanied by the discourse of normalization, but Art makes it clear that leaning too far in one direction could spell political suicide. Nonetheless, from the amount of effort Art applies to the historic saliency of contrition, with the emergence of national memorials to help cope with the Nazi past, it seems clear that the contrition frame proved fairly preeminent in Germany.

Notwithstanding early references to the idea of victimization and the Austrian perception of the Nazis, the matter of how the Austrians dealt with their past is only cursorily mentioned in the text until chapter 4, where Art’s exposition thereupon begins. Based on the widely misconstrued conception that Austria was Hitler’s first victim, and the fact that the Allies excused the Austrians out of political convenience, Austria was slow to accept responsibility for its past. Art communicates that Austria instead took on a victim mentality, claiming that, “the victim narrative was literally woven into the Austrian state symbol: the unchained eagle on the Second Republic’s flag represents Austria’s foreign occupation between 1938 and 1945” (105). Art discloses just how persuasive the Austrian newspaper, Kronen Zeitung was throughout the country, with its pervasive reach to a wide audience. Using numerous citations from Austrian writers, Art shows just how unrepentant the Austrian nation was for its prior crimes. Furthermore, through the election and continued support Austrians exhibited for their elected official Kurt Waldheim, a former Nazi, the Austrians demonstrated little sympathy for the victims of Nazism, and outright recalcitrance to those who challenged their leader on the international stage. History was history to the Austrians. Still, Art illuminates the Waldheim debate, contextualizing it accordingly as irrefutable evidence for what happens when the past is not addressed properly. Using recent historical examples, Art’s background as a social scientist really emerges in this chapter, as he utilizes diagrams, graphs, and plot-charts to reveal the relative distributions concerning victimization, contrition, and the like among the German and Austrian populace.

Transitioning back to the Germans, Art tackles right-wing populism in chapter 5, and illustrates just how success or failure arises through the acceptance and/or marginalization incurred by the media. Heavy utilization of interviews and newspaper citations are present in this chapter, but are all used to drive home how the collective efforts of the media, scholars, and politicians were directed against “historical revisionism and right-wing populism” (175). Meanwhile, the final chapter before the conclusion addresses the efforts underway within Austria to ‘tame the far-right,’ through the rise and consolidation of the politically salient FPÖ, a party who has made strides in coming to terms with Austria’s less than admirable Nazi heritage. Here, Art employs a wider range of opinions by citing a greater assemblage of academic journals and secondary sources in lieu of his reliance elsewhere on primary source information.

There is no mistaking the fundamental differences between the German and Austrian Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Austrians were able to avoid the matter and the truth far longer than the Germans, who contrarily experienced the concerted Allied denazification process, with a political history revealing the effects. The magnitude of “coming to terms with the past,” the book’s sine qua non, present for all to consider and not just for Germans and Austrians, is nearly camouflaged under the uncomfortable issue of the Holocaust. It is an inconvenient past, one which beckons a re-examination. Art’s manuscript makes known the reasons they have circumvented or seized their respective past.

Art’s text also speaks to the reading public and politician alike, since based on the evidence presented; structuring a nation’s future is highly contingent upon the framework of its past and how that past appears in both the public eye and in the academic community. My only complaint with the book was Art’s admitted omission of how East German perceptions fit into the picture, since reunification has certainly borne its share of influence on the Germans. Given the magnitude the topic has on the political and historical landscape of the Nazi past, this omission seems an unwelcome fact. Not that it blatantly detracts from Art’s work; it simply makes it less complete. Nonetheless, Art’s book is every bit necessary to understand the major political difference between Austria and Germany, and serves as a concise exposé over both nations’ political dynamics.