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One of the major stories of post-World War Two Europe is one on which European journalism has so far largely stayed silent—the long-term trauma suffered by the Germans themselves as they were bombed by the Allies, occupied by the Russians and betrayed by their own masters.
The silence is perhaps understandable. After all, it's long been easily argued that the Germans brought this on their own heads by allowing Hitler to wage war and unleash the Holocaust. And what, the argument has gone, is their suffering compared to the suffering that was inflicted in their name on others?
Of course, from the perspective of long-term psychological healing from trauma, that is not a tenable position. One individual's or indeed one nation's lived experience of extreme trauma is not lessened by the fact that others have been through their own hell—however terrible the injustices inflicted by one on their other.
So the Dart Centre in Europe has been pleased to be part of a tentative and still challenging new discussion that's allowing new generations openly to address the trauma of the Second World War in Germany on its own terms, and in particular to consider how the damage has echoed down through the generation of war children and war survivors who are now in their 60s and older.
In Britain, that discussion began in March 2005 with the screening of a personal TV documentary by veteran German war correspondent Thomas Reimer. Now it's been taken forward with the showing of two ground-breaking television reports chronicling the war's impact on a generation of war children, and on some two million women believed to have been raped by Soviet soldiers as Germany fell in 1945.
In their first report, Berlin-based television producers Karsten Deventer (Deventer.K@zdf.de) and Eva Schmitz (Schmitz-Guembel.E@zdf.de) told the story in particular of one woman from Eastern Germany who is now ready to speak out about how as a 16-year-old she was raped repeatedly by Russian soldiers, and about how that experience—shared by so many of her generation—had scarred her life.
The second documentary screened at the German embassy in London to an audience of journalists, students and trauma professionals gives a voice to several older Germans who speak of how their own lives have been diminished by their experience of terror and loss.
For more on the academic study of the experiences of the children of the Second World War, see Martin Parsons' website at the University of Reading in the UK. Also worth visiting is the website of German psychotherapist Peter Heinl, whose book Splintered Innocence tells story of trauma but also of healing.
The following is an edited version of Karsten Deventer's introduction to his and Eva Schmitz's films at the German Embassy screening on October 19, 2005 ...
Introduction
My colleague Eva Schmitz and I are truly delighted about the invitation to this evening on “Unresolved War Wounds”.
In my opinion it is still not self-evident that a British audience takes an interest in the long-term consequences suffered by German victims of the war.
On the other hand, you will quickly realise that traumatic wartime experiences, as we point out in our two films, touch upon the basic aspects of human life and easily transcend any national horizons.
Let me just begin with a brief reference to the programme that Eva and I work for. Frontal 21 is the most popular political magazine on German television. With our weekly broadcast we reach an estimated 3.5 to 4 million viewers. Topics range from the murky depths of party politics to everyday problems—for example “What can I do when the insurance doesn't pay?”—and on to basic societal questions.
Contemporary-history contributions which regularly deal with current debates within society or introduce new research findings on recent German history are among the trademarks of the programme. As a rule, in this field we are looking for stories with elements that may lead up to the present day.
At the beginning of 2005 we began to think about contributions that might mark the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. Eva and I very soon settled on the horrible reports of mass rapes of girls and women at the end of the war, first systematically analyzed only a few years ago by British historian Antony Beevor.
To our great surprise it turned out that this millionfold, horrible experience was in effect systematically suppressed in Germany for decades after the end of the war. So we became curious.
Then we met Mrs Eva-Maria Stege, who totally against the trend wanted, without restraint, to speak out on this topic. That is how the first of our two films came into being: “Raped women.”
"Raped women"
Eva Maria Stege suffered for all her life from the humiliations of her experience of rape. She had several diseases and underwent various therapies.
Today, she is nearly 80 years old and has a friend with whom she travels a lot, and from whom—as she says—she has learned to share tenderness. She has written a book about her experience. Of course, it could not been published in the times of the (Communist East) German Democratic Republic, where she lived.
But writing became part of her therapy. We admired her courage to return, together with us, to the place where she was raped by Red Army soldiers. It wasn't easy to accompany her agitation, her fears and her despair. But she made it—and now she says that she never again intends to talk about this part of her story.
We had different kinds of public feedback on our report. There were women who experienced the same fate and who were very touched by it. But there were many others who didn't want to accept that this time, we did not describe the crimes of the Nazis but pointed instead on German victims. One letter said:
"This film is clearly contrary to the facts, it is just wrong. It were not the Russians who committed uncounted war crimes. It was the Germans."
There's no doubt, we thought in response, that the war was criminal and caused by the Germans. But does this justify the rape of millions of women and children? No, we don't want to accept this logic, nor the cynical tone of another letter:
"Congratulations. Now, it is being named openly: the Russians didn't come as liberators but as rapists. How handsomely, in contrast, was the conduct of the German soldier in the Soviet Union. He did not rape the Russian women—he just hung and shot them."
There, you can see how difficult it is still, in Germany, to touch areas held under a certain taboo.
One historian told us: “Many women say that now, in old age, when they are alone and look back on their life, the trauma of events is returning in an even more intensive way.” That statement in our film was confirmed by many moving telephone calls and letters.
Again and again we heard: “We saw it, we were there, we were only children then but it is a burden to us, up to this very day.” Then it was clear to us: We had to stay with the subject.
During our research we hit upon a relatively new website: www.kriegskind.de, and through that we found Dr Peter Heinl, and indeed an international network of organizations devoted to the experience of war children—all of them involving people who have been dealing with this subject for a long time, but who so far seem to have only reached a limited circle of people.
After all, there are 15 million people in Germany alone who were born between 1930 and 1945—a whole generation. And at least one third of them have to some extent had traumatic war experiences.
One thing was completely new to us. In England a generation of war children has begun to speak out, too. They also are beginning to call for a public discussion of the suppressed burdens of the war. We wanted to know more about that.
And new questions arose: Does it make any sense to start therapy now, 60 years after the war? What would treating millions of people affected by these problems mean for the healthcare system? Are today's doctors sensitive enough in meeting these issues? What sort of European prospects could result from common experiences of war?
There are many questions, and of course our two magazine pieces were very short. We hope they have helped kindle a new debate.
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