Once Again: Was Germany Defeated or Liberated on the 8th of May 1945?

Abstract

Liberation or defeat? In 2015, this question is no longer posed at the German ceremonies to commemorate the 8th of May, which in many parts of Europe is celebrated as being the end of the Second World War even though this war continued in East Asia until 9 September. Since 1985, when Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker gave a speech on the subject in the Bundestag, the liberation theory has been the predominant interpretation of political history in the Federal Republic of Germany, while at the same time acting as a pillar for its policy of taking on responsibility for the consequences of National Socialist, German rule over large areas of Europe. This also remained the case in the united Germany. While the GDR had already declared the 8th of May to be a public holiday in 1950, to mark the liberation from National Socialism, it had declined to also take responsibility for National Socialist Germany. In the Federal Republic, the liberation theory had to mature in a political learning process and with a change of generation.

The high degree of approval with which the speech was met in Germany and abroad was due to the impressive speech by von Weizsäcker, in which he movingly spoke of the suffering brought by National Socialist rule on numerous peoples and social groups, as well as the clear historical orientation in the Federal Republic and the entire German nation, in which the 8th of May was honoured as the day of liberation not only of other countries, but also of Germany, from National Socialist rule. However, in 1985, the speech was not only met with vehement criticism in the right-wing radical political camp, but also with rejection by the conservative wing of the CDU/CSU. In the praise given to the speech, the questionable political-psychological unburdening functions of some passages on entanglement and guilt are still being ignored 30 years later, which limit the degree of responsibility for the war of aggression and mass murder to just a few individuals. What is actually meant by the concept of “political guilt” still needs further clarification today.

The actual procedures surrounding the 8th of May should be distinguished from its historical and commemorative interpretation. The peoples who were subjugated and the prisoners in German concentration and prisoner-of-war camps, penitentiaries and prisons, as well as the forced labourers, could feel liberated. For millions of other Germans, however, the end of the war marked the beginning of many years as prisoners of war, of flight, expulsion, imprisonment and hunger, which frequently also led to death. To a large extent, however, the end of the war was greeted with relief. The troops who occupied Germany were there because they had wanted to defeat it; they had not come as liberators. The contradictory nature of events should not be deleted from the historical knowledge of the occurrences the led to the downfall of National Socialism and the German Reich.