Germany On Their Minds by Anne C. Schenderlein

Author:Anne C. Schenderlein [Schenderlein, Anne C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Jewish
ISBN: 9781789200065
Google: fz8nyAEACAAJ
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2020-01-15T01:06:47+00:00

What Should Be Done with Germany after the War?

In 1943–44, public discussions about what should be done with Germany after the war were widely held in America. The government had already begun to debate this question shortly after Pearl Harbor, when President Roosevelt set up an Advisory Committee on Post-War Foreign Policy under Secretary of State Cordell Hull.73 American intellectuals, too, ruminated on this issue and how Germany’s postwar treatment would influence the future of Europe and the entire world.74 The refugee community also engaged in these discussions, and regular articles about the postwar treatment of Germany appeared in Aufbau, pertaining particularly to questions of punishment and retribution for German crimes against Jews and others. When the American discussion began to delve into more concrete plans for Germany—whether it should be divided into different zones, occupied, demilitarized, etc.—Manfred George, as editor of Aufbau, published a statement delineating how he believed German Jews should participate in this.75 He deemed it important “that formerly German-speaking Jews look at this issue as Jews and not as Germans.”76 As Jewish refugees, they were becoming Americans and therefore ought to look at Germany only with an American eye, although some German Jews fancied themselves experts on the German people, he wrote. In George’s eyes, these Jews were misguided, and their opinions on the subject suspect, as they themselves had not been able to foresee the German peoples’ actions against their fellow Jewish citizens.

Despite George’s skepticism, Aufbau took part in the larger discussion and published all kinds of opinions on the future of Germany by both American and German-born contributors, as well as Jews and non-Jews. The editors justified this by arguing that while neither the paper itself nor its editors had a stake in Germany’s postwar future, it had to serve its journalistic function as one among many American newspapers engaging in the discussion, and cater to its audience of émigrés and immigrants. As a main news source for the German Jewish community, it understood itself as a “kind of ‘Clearing House of Opinions.’”77 The discussion about Germany’s future became the “most intense and longest” single debate to appear in Aufbau to that point, although refugee debates in the late 1930s about Americanization and Germanness prefigured it to some extent.78

Throughout this debate, George repeatedly argued that German Jewish refugees were immigrants who had severed their ties with their former home and did not want to return. Consequently, they must carefully consider how much interest they should even maintain in this discussion, let alone take part in it. As new Americans, their interest in Germany should be limited to that of Americans concerned about postwar peace in Europe, with no personal political ambitions for Germany.79 In this, George made a strong distinction between political refugees and Jewish refugee-immigrants to the United States: whereas political refugees’ keen interest in Germany and public suggestions on the nation’s future could be tied to their ability and possible desire to return there, Jewish refugees generally did not feel that way.

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