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Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust
Germans remember the Nazi past so that it may never happen again. But how has the abstract vow to remember translated into concrete action to prevent new genocides abroad?
As reports of mass killings in Bosnia spread in the middle of 1995, Germans faced a dilemma. Should the Federal Republic deploy its military to the Balkans to prevent a genocide, or would departing from postwar Germany’s pacifist tradition open the door to renewed militarism? In short, when Germans said “never again,” did they mean “never again Auschwitz” or “never again war”?
Looking beyond solemn statements and well-meant monuments, Andrew I. Port examines how the Nazi past shaped German responses to the genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda―and further, how these foreign atrocities recast Germans’ understanding of their own horrific history. In the late 1970s, the reign of the Khmer Rouge received relatively little attention from a firmly antiwar public that was just “discovering” the Holocaust. By the 1990s, the genocide of the Jews was squarely at the center of German identity, a tectonic shift that inspired greater involvement in Bosnia and, to a lesser extent, Rwanda. Germany’s increased willingness to use force in defense of others reflected the enthusiastic embrace of human rights by public officials and ordinary citizens. At the same time, conservatives welcomed the opportunity for a more active international role involving military might―to the chagrin of pacifists and progressives at home.
Making the lessons, limits, and liabilities of politics driven by memories of a troubled history harrowingly clear, Never Again is a story with deep resonance for any country confronting a dark past.
As reports of mass killings in Bosnia spread in the middle of 1995, Germans faced a dilemma. Should the Federal Republic deploy its military to the Balkans to prevent a genocide, or would departing from postwar Germany’s pacifist tradition open the door to renewed militarism? In short, when Germans said “never again,” did they mean “never again Auschwitz” or “never again war”?
Looking beyond solemn statements and well-meant monuments, Andrew I. Port examines how the Nazi past shaped German responses to the genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda―and further, how these foreign atrocities recast Germans’ understanding of their own horrific history. In the late 1970s, the reign of the Khmer Rouge received relatively little attention from a firmly antiwar public that was just “discovering” the Holocaust. By the 1990s, the genocide of the Jews was squarely at the center of German identity, a tectonic shift that inspired greater involvement in Bosnia and, to a lesser extent, Rwanda. Germany’s increased willingness to use force in defense of others reflected the enthusiastic embrace of human rights by public officials and ordinary citizens. At the same time, conservatives welcomed the opportunity for a more active international role involving military might―to the chagrin of pacifists and progressives at home.
Making the lessons, limits, and liabilities of politics driven by memories of a troubled history harrowingly clear, Never Again is a story with deep resonance for any country confronting a dark past.
416 pages, Hardcover
Published May 2, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 20, 2023
As one of the lucky few who got to read this book before it comes out, I can’t recommend it enough! I’m not a big nonfiction or history reader and tend to shy away from dry texts, but this book completely changed what I thought academia could be. It takes these big picture stories and statistics, and grounds them in the personal. The exploration of German reactions to genocides and their actions that followed reads like a narrative: you get to follow the personal stories of people who are in different ways and from different angles involved with this story; then watch how all the different perspectives are tied together with a bow to create a fascinating look at humanity at both its most cruel and its kindest. There’s something incredibly gripping about this book and the attempts to earn forgiveness for the unforgivable described within it.
August 16, 2023
Never Again
by Andrew I. Port
In my mind, the term “Never Again” was strictly meant to describe the Holocaust of WWII.
Port’s book discusses Germany and German individuals’ reactions to genocides that have happened in more recent times. It forces the reader to understand the broader meaning of “Never Again”. While it specifically discusses Germany and Germans, it should cause all of us to think that genocides should never occur and we must all act to prevent them.
In my mind, the term “Never Again” was strictly meant to describe the Holocaust of WWII.
Port’s book discusses Germany and German individuals’ reactions to genocides that have happened in more recent times. It forces the reader to understand the broader meaning of “Never Again”. While it specifically discusses Germany and Germans, it should cause all of us to think that genocides should never occur and we must all act to prevent them.
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August 8, 2023In his recent book, Dan Stone characterised the Holocaust as ‘unfinished history’, even in Germany, ‘the consummate country of contrition’. Does facing up to the past actually contest dangerous ideas in the present? Andrew Port’s new book focuses attention away from sentimental repentance and vacuous memorialisation to the matter of ‘real world’ German responses to postwar genocide.
In 1995, as news of the mass killings of Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces after the fall of Srebrenica reverberated across the international community, Joschka Fischer of the pacifist German Green Party summoned the spectre of genocide: ‘German history still counts as a weighty political argument for me in the present.’ Did Germans, as Fischer implied, have a special obligation not just to remember, but to act? In German, Vergangenheitsbewältigung means confronting the past, Vergangenheitsbewältigung der tat means doing so in deed. Port shows that many Germans responded to persecution ‘der tat’.
The wording employed in the Genocide Convention (1948) is notoriously cryptic, but it imposes a duty on states that have acceded to the Convention to ‘prevent and punish’ the international crime of genocide. For any acceding state, these duties are fraught with legalistic roadblocks – most notably, state sovereignty. For Germans, both before and after unification, the legal dilemmas of genocide became entangled with contradictory ethical and political currents. Did recognition of the Holocaust, a genocide perpetrated by Germans, as a shameful symbol of all genocides obligate Germans to shoulder a unique responsibility to act? But if action meant armed intervention, did this historic ‘mortgage’ clash with a concomitant revulsion for war making? Might recognition of genocides in Asia, Africa and southwest Europe diminish the supposedly unique status of the Holocaust? What genocide is not unique? Conversely, did a national preoccupation with the historical crimes of the Third Reich blunt the horrors perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge, Bosnian Serb militias and Hutu Interahamwe?
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Christopher Hale is the author of Deception: How the Nazis Tricked the Last Jews of Europe (The History Press, 2018).
In 1995, as news of the mass killings of Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces after the fall of Srebrenica reverberated across the international community, Joschka Fischer of the pacifist German Green Party summoned the spectre of genocide: ‘German history still counts as a weighty political argument for me in the present.’ Did Germans, as Fischer implied, have a special obligation not just to remember, but to act? In German, Vergangenheitsbewältigung means confronting the past, Vergangenheitsbewältigung der tat means doing so in deed. Port shows that many Germans responded to persecution ‘der tat’.
The wording employed in the Genocide Convention (1948) is notoriously cryptic, but it imposes a duty on states that have acceded to the Convention to ‘prevent and punish’ the international crime of genocide. For any acceding state, these duties are fraught with legalistic roadblocks – most notably, state sovereignty. For Germans, both before and after unification, the legal dilemmas of genocide became entangled with contradictory ethical and political currents. Did recognition of the Holocaust, a genocide perpetrated by Germans, as a shameful symbol of all genocides obligate Germans to shoulder a unique responsibility to act? But if action meant armed intervention, did this historic ‘mortgage’ clash with a concomitant revulsion for war making? Might recognition of genocides in Asia, Africa and southwest Europe diminish the supposedly unique status of the Holocaust? What genocide is not unique? Conversely, did a national preoccupation with the historical crimes of the Third Reich blunt the horrors perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge, Bosnian Serb militias and Hutu Interahamwe?
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Christopher Hale is the author of Deception: How the Nazis Tricked the Last Jews of Europe (The History Press, 2018).
October 28, 2023
I had the pleasure of hearing Professor Port speak at a book reading in Ann Arbor. He is charismatic and held the audience’s attention while sparking an interesting conversation with the audience. I was amazed to learn that Professor Port interviewed over 60 people for this book, weaving the results of these conversations into an amazing analysis. Never Again is an important study of how our history impacts our future. An important lesson for us all.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews