March 26, 2025 • 76 mins
Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Frank Trentmann, professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London, to discuss his latest book, Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942–2022. They chat about how a nation whose past has been marked by mass murder, a people who cheered Adolf Hitler, reinvented themselves, and by how much.
Get the book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554959/out-of-the-darkness-by-frank-trentmann/
Show Notes:
Literary Review: David Blackbourn – “A Mercedes in Every Garage”
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-mercedes-in-every-garage
New York Review of Books: Timothy Garton Ash – “Big Germany, What Now?”
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/05/23/big-germany-what-now-timothy-garton-ash/
The New Statesman: Brendan Simms – “What it means to be German”
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2023/12/meaning-modern-germany-brenadan-simms
The Times: Oliver Moody – “Out of the Darkness by Frank Trentmann review — how Germans became good (and rather complacent)”
Times Literary Supplement: Ben Hutchinson – “New moral order”
The Wall Street Journal: Ian Brunskill – “‘Out of the Darkness’ Review: War Crimes and Remembrance”
The Washington Post: Bryn Stole – “An ambitious history of Germany interrogates the country’s moral makeover”
In The Tank broadcasts LIVE every Thursday at 12pm CT on on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Tune in to have your comments addressed live by the In The Tank Crew. Be sure to subscribe and never miss an episode. See you there!
Climate Change Roundtable is LIVE every Friday at 12pm CT on The Heartland Institute YouTube channel. Have a topic you want addressed? Join the live show and leave a comment for our panelists and we'll cover it during the live show!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tim Benson (00:03):
Everybody, and welcome to the Illiteracy
Podcast. I'm your host, TimBenson, a senior policy analyst
at the Heartland Institute, anational free market think tank.
We are in the episode 170something range of the podcast,
maybe even 180. Not really,never really sure what the
episode number is. But so we'vebeen around for a while now.
(00:24):
But for those of you just tuningin for the first time,
basically, what we do here onthe podcast is I invite an
author on to discuss a book oftheirs that's been newly
published or recently publishedon someone or some ideas, some
event, something, etc, etc, etc,that we think you guys would
like to hear a conversationabout. And then hopefully at the
end of the podcast, you go aheadand give the book a purchase and
(00:46):
give it a read. So if you likethis podcast, please consider
giving Illiteracy a five starreview at Apple Podcasts or
wherever you listen to this showand also by sharing with your
friends as that's the best wayto support programming like
this. And my guest today isDoctor. Frank Trentman, and
Doctor.
Trentman is the professor ofhistory at Birkbeck College, the
University of London, and alsoan associate at the Center for
(01:07):
Consumer Society Research inHelsinki. You may have seen his
work in Foreign Affairs, TheAtlantic, The Wall Street
Journal, The Washington Post,Time Magazine, The New Yorker,
The New York Review of Books,The Times Literary Supplement,
Literary Review, Tablet,Financial Times, The New
Republic, and The Guardian,among many, many others. And he
(01:28):
is the author of Empire of HowWe Became a World of Consumers
from the fifteenth Century tothe twenty first, free trade
nation, commerce, consumption,and civil society in modern
Britain, and lastly, Out of theDarkness, the Germans nineteen
forty two to 2022, which waspublished last February by Knopf
(01:48):
or Knopf, never sure. I've heardit pronounced both ways, so I'm
never sure which one it is, butso I'll do both. Anyway, and
that is the book we will bediscussing today.
So Doctor. Trentman, thank youso, so much for coming on the
podcast. I do appreciate it.
Frank Trentmann (02:02):
Yeah, very good to talk to you.
Tim Benson (02:04):
Well, thank you. So normal entry question for
everybody that comes on thepodcast and that's is, you know,
what made you want to write thisbook? What was the the genesis
of the project? I mean, you'reprimarily a historian of
consumer issues, no? So how didyou decide to take on this much
(02:28):
broader subject?
Frank Trentmann (02:32):
Yeah. No, I did, as you mentioned, I had
finished or I was in the finalstages of finishing the book
Empire of Things, which looks atour changing relationship to
possessions and how consumptionbecame so important to us really
over five hundred years. And onething that's a kind of red
(02:56):
thread running through that bookis morality and the ways in
which people's shopping andspending and buying or not
buying has always beenmoralized. So are you a good
person if you buy certain goodsor should you boycott them? What
(03:19):
does it do to you to lust afterlots of things?
So these were very big ethicalconcerns that divided and
polarized societies And it onlysoftened that morality in the
nineteenth and twentiethcentury. And people became a
(03:40):
little bit used to beingconsumers. So I've been working
on that. And we are in sort ofat the end of twenty fifteen.
And that was the time when theso called refugee crisis
happened in Syria and in Europe.
(04:01):
And Chancellor Angela Merkel isin power and decides that
Germany would welcome whatturned out to be in that year
almost 1,000,000 refugees. It'sa huge debate ever since really.
(04:22):
Sort of reading the Germannewspapers and working in London
and looking at the British andAmerican and other European
press, I suddenly noticed howthe topic of how Germany should
respond to this challenge washeavily cast in a moral frame.
(04:45):
So it was partly about therefugees, but it was also about,
you know, are we good people?Have we become good people?
Have we overcome finally thesort of guilt and sins of our
fathers. And this kind of moraldiscussion didn't really take
place in any other Europeancountry. So I sort of took a
(05:08):
note of that. And then I startedobserving how many other topics
in German society were alsoheavily moralised. So do you
recycle?
Do you sort your recycling? Thatwas an indication not just
whether you're helping theenvironment but whether you're a
virtuous person or not. Are youlooking after your aging parents
(05:33):
or putting them in a care home?Who looks after the children? Do
you save?
Are you a thrifty person? Or areyou an American style consumer?
All of these things had thesemoral overtones. So I thought,
(05:54):
Hey, I'm a historian. These areimportant questions.
Where does this come from? Howdid this develop? And so I then
started this book project and itled me back to the Second World
War.
Tim Benson (06:12):
As a historian of consumerism, do you know what
the morality is of buyingthousands and thousands of
books? Just off the top of yourhead.
Frank Trentmann (06:22):
Yeah. No. Well, the interesting thing is no, no.
I mean, the interesting thingabout this is that
Tim Benson (06:28):
Asking for a friend, by the way.
Frank Trentmann (06:30):
People moralize certain aspects of consumption.
There's always how other peopleconsume. That's a moral dilemma.
So the question you said I mean,I had a very senior historian, a
very eminent historian, whoreviewed my book, gave it very
positive review, and I ran intohim at some point and he said,
(06:52):
Wow, aren't you exaggerating?I'm not a big consumer.
And I said, Look, how many booksdo you have? 7,000? He said,
Yeah, but that's books. That'snot consumption. So, you know,
it continues to be
Tim Benson (07:10):
It's a debilitating habit is what it is.
Frank Trentmann (07:12):
Other people's style of consuming that gets
negative verdicts.
Tim Benson (07:21):
Yeah. Right. Alright. Well, we would so
basically, in the book so whatit means to be German after
Hitler and after the third Reichand the Holocaust is a is an
(07:43):
unavoidable question. But overthe last eighty years, Germany
has gone through a veryremarkable moral and material
regeneration from the end of thewar.
So how do the Germans seethemselves today? And does that
(08:04):
view match reality?
Frank Trentmann (08:08):
Well, that's the core questions which I'm
trying to get at in the book.And at the same time as I chart
this ever more intense sort ofmoral reorientation and
repositioning as being goodpeople, I point out that in
(08:29):
reality a lot of problems areoutsourced or swept under the
carpet. So you have a fair bitof hypocrisy trying to maintain
this moral standard. And you cansee this all the way to the
present. So the book, forlisteners, the book goes up to
the beginning of the Russianattack on Ukraine in 2022.
(08:56):
And it came out in winter twentytwenty three-twenty twenty four.
So a fair bit has happened inthese last two and a half years,
but the moral or the divide andthe ambivalence continues all
the way to the present. So ifyou just take Germany's position
(09:23):
in Europe, the population isdeeply divided over fundamental
questions. So some think thatsending weapons to Ukraine is
the right moral lesson to drawfrom the German past. Others see
it exactly the opposite.
And you have similar debatesabout Israel, about migration
(09:48):
and so forth. So Germany isreally in a tight spot. It
mainly has put itself in thistight spot where it has created
certain expectations of whatGermany should be like, both in
(10:09):
terms of material comfort, butalso moral position in the
world. And it finds it ever moredifficult to reconcile these.
And I think, I mean, that's sortof my personal view.
I think this will get harder nowbecause Germany is being pulled
(10:29):
into assuming greaterresponsibility in Europe
financially, but alsomilitarily. And it's been a bit
a country in denial. You know,you didn't need to. You could be
moral because you never had totake much responsibility. I
mean, militarily, Germany reliedentirely on NATO and
(10:53):
particularly on The UnitedStates.
Environmentally, Germany triedto be a sort of crusader for
environmentalism but ultimatelykept its coal industry going and
shut down nuclear, but you keepcoal going. So there are all
sorts of compromises that havebeen made. One should perhaps
(11:16):
point out, because it's ahistory book, so I don't just
look at the present, I try toput the present in this longer
perspective. It is quiteremarkable how much has changed
in Germany. So if you take justthe military side, these days
people look at Germany as sothis country doesn't have an
(11:40):
army, doesn't spend much fornational security.
It got sort of this idea thatthere would always be peace. In
the early 1970s, underChancellor Willy Brandt, Social
Democrat, Germany spent 3.5% ofits on the army. So the majority
(12:07):
of Germans went and did theirmilitary service in the army.
You had compulsory militaryservice. So you know, the way
Germany is now, Germany wasn'tin the seventies or sixties.
So we're dealing with changeover time.
Tim Benson (12:27):
Right. Before we get into all that stuff, I guess so
let me just ask you. So sort ofexplain to everybody what the
you know, what was the purposeof starting the narrative in
1942 instead of 1939 or 1933 oreven, you know, say 1945? Why
(12:55):
specifically the year 1942?
Frank Trentmann (12:57):
Yeah. So I start in the winter of 'forty
two-'forty three and the mainreason for that is that there
are three big developmentscoming together. I mean,
Holocaust is now underway and ontop of that you get in February
(13:20):
1943 the final defeat of theGerman army at Stalingrad, So
the Eastern Front is now incrisis. And then on top of that,
you have increasingly relentlessaerial bombing. So that gathers
speed as well.
So you have three things comingtogether. And as they're coming
(13:41):
together, more and more Germansare trying to make sense of a
situation that now looks to themever more uncertain. So the war
isn't lost at this point, butthere's the possibility it might
be lost. And that really shakespeople up and they start to ask
(14:03):
themselves questions which theydidn't or hadn't in the first
half of the Second World War.And so it's partly a, if you
want, a literary device so I canuse that period to open up to
readers how did people on theground experience this growing
(14:26):
pressure cooker?
How did they try to make senseof it? What sort of answers did
they reach? So it's partly that,but it's also that this period
shows how some people, not allpeople, but some people started
to reposition themselves. Sothey started to ask themselves
(14:51):
basic questions such as, youknow, why are we being bombed?
There must be a reason for that.
And so some people's answer is,well, this is probably payback
now for how we treated the Jews.We went too far. And we should
reconsider perhaps our attitudeto the Nazi regime in response
(15:15):
of that. On the other end of thespectrum, you have people for
whom this growing pressure isconfirmation that everything
Hitler and Goebbels have beensaying is absolutely right. So
they're seeing the bombing asevidence that the Americans and
(15:36):
Jews are trying to annihilatethe German nation.
So the response they take fromthis is not a retreat from Nazi
ideas, but to call for ever morerelentless acts of
(15:57):
extermination. So you can usethis period to sort of see how a
whole population is in flux,trying to make sense of these
changes. I mean, may sound alittle bit abstract to some
listeners. So let me give youone just one example of a school
teacher from Northern Germanywho was a fervent supporter of
(16:21):
the war effort in the first halfof the Second World War. So he
thinks Hitler is a genius, thegreatest military leader of all
time.
He volunteers to write secretintelligence reports on people
in his school and in his smalltown for the Nazi regime. His
(16:46):
son then joins the army and ismoved to the Eastern Front. And
so in December they still havesome letters from him and they
then sort of dry up and theyknow he's sort of near
Stalingrad. And so he listens tothe news on radio in which
(17:06):
slowly becomes clear this is areal catastrophe happening there
in Stalingrad, and he and hiswife start to worry. He keeps a
diary and you suddenly have inJanuaryFebruary 'forty three
that same man who was absolutelyconvinced of Hitler and the
German war effort askingquestions such as, I'm no longer
(17:31):
sure who the worst criminal onearth is.
Is it really Stalin or perhapsHitler? He's sort of angry as
Goebbels rails against the enemyand Jews. He says, you know,
this is really bad because heputs our boys who might be
(17:53):
prisoners of war in real danger.He then decides he's no longer
going to hoist the swastika, theNazi flag, out of his balcony.
He also takes off the partybadge and he stops writing.
He says, I'm not going to writeany more intelligence reports
(18:14):
for the regime and the flag isonly going to go up when my son
comes home, which doesn'thappen. So in this period, this
same man kind of repositionshimself towards the regime and
(18:35):
towards his own past. So whenthe war comes to an end, this
man has already persuadedhimself that he was never really
supporting the war effort. Healways had suspicions about
Hitler and so forth. And sothese kind of stories are very
important if we want tounderstand how a society where
(18:56):
the majority of Germans hadsupported Hitler and his regime
in 1939, how that same societymanaged to undergo
reconstruction.
So we don't have and that's whywe need to start in the middle
of the war because there is nosuch thing as the so called
(19:17):
'hour zero'. So 1945 is not aclean break where suddenly all
the Nazis have to be convertedor reinvent themselves. You have
already cracks appearing in theNazi community before the end of
the war. So this uncertainty andthe ambivalence and the sort of
(19:41):
people rewriting effectivelytheir own biography and their
own memories is very important.
Tim Benson (19:49):
Mhmm. And I think you said in the book, was it
something like was it half ofthe all the the the total German
battlefield casualties in thewar ended up taking place in the
final ten months. Is that right?
Frank Trentmann (20:03):
Absolutely. The final stages, I mean, the last
year particularly is absolutelybrutal and it has repercussions.
So, know, for some people, somepeople fighting, it actually is
a hardening experience. Beenfighting so long, that's all
they know. And they know that ifGermany loses, they're probably
(20:31):
gonna be they might be put ontrial or be in difficulty.
So they just toughen up and theykeep going. Others start
slipping away. So the number ofdeserters really shoots up in
very final stages. Yeah. No.
It's a it's a very brutal brutaltime of history.
Tim Benson (20:54):
Yeah. We could talk a lot more about the war itself,
but I wanna but you can just getbogged down in all the World War
two stuff. So I wanna moveforward a bit. So there's this
idea that the Germans, quote,unquote, retreated into silence
(21:17):
after the war. Is thatnecessarily true?
And, you write in the book thatthe the dominant language of
moral renewal after the war wascast in individual and spiritual
terms, not in political terms.And and it was mainly addressed
(21:43):
to the Germans themselves andnot their victims. Could you
talk a little about that for asec?
Frank Trentmann (21:48):
Yeah. So the common so the widely held view
of the immediate post war yearsis that Germans suppressed their
responsibility and their guilt.So they shut up and they went
into silence. And foreignvisitors and observers like
(22:13):
Hannah Arendt note that innineteen forty eight-forty nine.
They said they don't want totalk about it.
But that's actually amisconception and the evidence
is actually pointing more in theopposite direction. So the
Germans, including prisoners ofwar and their families, they
(22:38):
talk about the war. They don'tsee this as a problem. They
don't work with assumptions ofhuman rights. So they even
mention what we would nowconsider war crimes when talking
to each other.
The difference is they don'ttalk much about the victims of
(23:02):
Nazi violence. They talk aboutthemselves and that takes a
number of forms. So the initialform is actually you have
lectures in autumnwinternineteen forty five where famous
(23:22):
authors and so forth talk aboutguilt and they leave no doubt
that they think the Germannation is guilty. What then
happens is when they're tryingto explain how could, you know,
how could this land of poets andphilosophers have ended up
(23:46):
committing all these crimes? Howdo you explain that?
They don't then revert to whatwe might call historical causes.
So they don't look at politicalcauses. That's when they revert
to a sort of spiritual level,which is somehow in modern times
(24:07):
people got alienated from theirspiritual self and their minds
and actions were taken over.They were seduced by people like
Hitler, a kind of demonic forceswinning them over and then like
(24:29):
in witchcraft, they're sort ofbound. So it's not that they
pinpoint something particular inGerman history, it's more sort
of the spiritual atmosphere of aworld, a modern world gone mad
where people have lost theirmooring, they're just after
money or power or militarymight.
(24:50):
And the Germans were seduced bythat and that's the explanation.
But there is still talk ofguilt. That then changes in 1946
and after during denazification,because denazification works on
the premise that you have tofill in a form in which you
(25:10):
openly state, you know, joinedthe Nazi party in this year, was
active in this capacity and soforth. So the discussion of
moral guilt is now reallypersonal, because you can lose
your job or your home or befined or classified as a Nazi or
(25:36):
complicit in crimes. So indenazification, people step back
and they don't want to talkabout guilt And what now takes
over is the language of shame.
Now guilt is about something badyou do to another person, so
it's still focused onto what youdo to others. Shame is about
(26:02):
yourself. You know, you feelashamed how people look at you.
So it's self directed. So shamebecomes a very important way of
addressing something bad hashappened but ultimately becomes
directed towards the Germanpeople themselves and that then
(26:24):
gathers speed in the late 40sand 1950s because what we have
to remember is you have inGermany, you have 12,000,000 ex
police, those are the people
Tim Benson (26:39):
Yeah, massive numbers.
Frank Trentmann (26:40):
Ethnic Germans, ethnic Germans driven out of
Central And Eastern Europe. Sothey've lost their homeland,
their houses, their jobs. Youhave those. Then you have the
millions who've been bombed oftheir homes. Then you have all
the veterans and disabled peopleand so forth.
(27:01):
So you have enormous numbers ofpeople who didn't come out well
out of the war and they are nowthe main voice talking about
victims. Basically they'recompeting with each other. Who
can shout loudest? We're thevictims. We deserve help.
(27:21):
And in that chorus of voices,most of them German, the real
victims or the people we todayconsider as the real victims,
you know, Jews in the firstplace, but also political
prisoners, other victims of theNazis, you know, for religious
(27:43):
reasons or other orientations,they get marginalised. They get
shouted out basically. So thisfocus on their own victimhood is
quite important because it alsoties in with reconstruction.
You'd mentioned that we have inthis story, we have moral
(28:08):
reconstruction is entwined withmaterial reconstruction. And so
these people are partly asking,you know, look, been a victim.
I deserve help with housing or ajob if you're an exilee and so
(28:30):
forth. So these two stories arevery much entwined. One needs to
perhaps add two points. One isin West Germany, Adenauer, the
first chancellor of the FederalRepublic, he takes a big step
(28:52):
towards reconciliation withIsrael and he signs, by the
standards of this time, anunprecedented reparations
agreement with Israel and theJewish Claims Conference. This
was hugely unpopular.
So it was his government withthe support I mean some members
(29:15):
of his government boycotted thismove, so he needed opposition
party support to get it throughparliament, the majority of the
population think this is areally bad idea and excessive
and not right. So one way WestGerman society deals with the
(29:37):
question of guilt andresponsibility is you have a
division of labour. The statetakes over formally that
responsibility, but by doing so,it also lets individual citizens
off the hook. For most peoplewith Ardenau's policy, this
matter is now off the table, soyou don't any longer need to
(29:59):
worry about it and certainly youdon't need to have introspection
or ask yourself anymore aboutyour own role. That's West
Germany.
The country is divided, you havea socialist East Germany and
there the discussion of guiltand shame and rehabilitation
takes a completely differentroute because East Germany is
(30:23):
run by communists. Some of themhad been in concentration camps
themselves. They see themselvesas victims they were victims of
the Nazis and they seethemselves as historical
winners. So in theirunderstanding, they, the
communist resistance, togetherwith the Red Army, overthrew
(30:45):
this really bad fascist regime.So why should they be
responsible for anything?
They're not responsible. Theywere the victims themselves.
They don't owe anyone anythingexcept the Soviet Union with
reparation payments. So Jewsdon't get any attention or for
that matter any compensationfrom East Germany. So if you had
(31:09):
been a German Jew who lived EastOf The Elbe in what then became
the German Democratic Republic,the Socialist East, you had to
wait till 1990 to get somecompensation back because East
Germany just did not treat Jewsas worthy victims.
(31:35):
So in both societies, but fordifferent reasons, you have a
suppression or parceling out ofthe guilt question.
Tim Benson (31:45):
Mhmm. So was denazification a failure by
whatever metric you wanna applyto it, or did it actually, you
know, achieve some of its goals?
Frank Trentmann (32:03):
Well, denazification has a really bad
record. So most people point ormany people point out that you
have in West Germany, you havesome former Nazis in positions
of high office who aretolerated. You have in the 50s
(32:30):
particular, you have both inEast And West Germany amnesties
and hardly any trials anymore.So from that perspective, it
really failed. But if you lookat the early years, so 1946 to
'forty eight, when Germany wasoccupied, actually the numbers
(32:54):
are pretty impressive.
So you have several hundredthousand people in both the
American zone and also theSoviet zone who spent
considerable time prison, wholose their right to work in
their profession, who have topay compensation payments and so
(33:19):
forth. So for many people,immediately after the war,
denazification is seen as ahuge, huge threat and big dent
in their biographies. And Ithink it's important also to
sort of remember, I mean, andsometimes even historians forget
(33:42):
that, you know, it's one thingto look back on this experience
and know the outcome. But ifyou're caught up in 1946, 'forty
seven, 'forty eight, you don'tknow. You don't know that
denazification will come to anend.
So you have two years of yourlife which are lost. You don't
(34:07):
know when that's going to end.And when you come out of
denazification, many sort of midranking Nazis don't find their
footing back in society. So youhave cases where Nazi bigwigs
end up being salesmen for cheapliquor and their wife has to
(34:31):
work as a waitress in the localbar. And so for many people,
this is a real step down andhumiliating.
Some of them even lose civicrights, I think you say, so the
right to vote and things likethat. And they're being now
ignored. So denazificationwasn't perfect by all means.
(34:56):
There were many oversights,omissions, and mistakes. But it
also needs to be remembered thatmost people who'd been through
that experience now want to beleft alone and in peace.
There are hardly any people whohave any tastes left for fascist
(35:22):
or extremist politics. Sothey've learned to calm down, if
you want.
Tim Benson (35:29):
Yeah. I mean, at the very least, you know, the FRG or
or in and now Germany as aunited country once again, you
know, post 1990 has been a, youknow, stable functioning
democracy for, what is it now,almost eighty years. So at the
(35:55):
very least, like that, it workedto some degree where, know, it's
it's created a country that orhelped create a country that is,
you know, is a good neighbor andand stable and and all that sort
of thing.
Frank Trentmann (36:12):
Well, I mean, they could have done mean, I
just said I just and what yousay is right, but doesn't mean
they couldn't have done more.So, I mean, Adenauer had this
famous quote when people say,look, you know, you should just
have former Nazi judges on yourkind of on the payroll of your
(36:41):
government and not to speak ofthe foreign office and the
intelligence services, which areoverwhelmingly old Nazis in the
1950s. His response to that was,I mean, he came from Cologne and
so he sometimes liked to havethese Cologne sayings. And he
said, well, if the only waterthat you have is dirty water,
(37:06):
you have to make do with dirtywater. You don't throw out the
only water that you have.
That was sort of his line. If welook comparatively, you know, at
other European societies, thereare many societies that I think
Norway and The Netherlands wherecollaborators were punished much
(37:33):
more severely than in Germany.And they also became functioning
democracies and
Tim Benson (37:41):
strong
Frank Trentmann (37:40):
So, know, Adenauer, that was sort of a
self justifying aphorism putdown there. If he had wanted to,
you could have rebuilt theeconomy and and have put a few
(38:03):
more Nazis in jail. Thatwouldn't have been a problem, I
think.
Tim Benson (38:06):
Yeah. Plenty of Nazis to throw in jail. I mean,
I know, you know, punishment andin the immediate postwar,
decade, you know, punishment andthis the the quest for for
justice for the victims of thethird Reich wasn't as
(38:29):
enthusiastic as probably anybodywould like. You know, German
courts paid very littleattention to the murder of Jews
after the war, but that dideventually change. So how and
why did that confrontation withthe past begin to occur?
Frank Trentmann (38:49):
Yeah. No. Very important question. I mean,
classic answer you still get isvery short and simple and it's
1968. So many people say, well,it's in 1968 with the student
movement and the new socialmovements that a new generation
(39:12):
of Germans confronted theirparents and grandparents.
And that's then established muchgreater awareness and
remembrance of what at thatpoint of time became known as
the Holocaust. That's a bit toosimple really, and doesn't match
(39:35):
the facts. And it's also veryconvenient because the people
who maintain this story aremainly 68 themselves. So they
see themselves as the people whogot Germany moving on that
front. If go back to theimmediate post war years, I
(39:55):
mean, I was amazed in theresearch just how hotly debated
memory culture, as we call itnow, was.
So you have, on the one hand,you have all sorts of veteran
groups who want to insist thatonly Hitler, Himmler and the SS
(40:19):
were evil, but they in theregular army or even in the
Waffen SS were really goodsoldiers. So you have vocal
veteran defence of what they seeas a good war. But at the same
time, you have youth groups. Somid 1950s already, you have the
(40:46):
first sort of trips toconcentration camps such as
Bergen Belsen. And these arejazz orchestras who organise
trips to pay their respect tothe victims of Nazi crimes.
You have anti Semitism, but atthe same time you have local
(41:10):
schools volunteering to rebuilddesecrated local Jewish
cemeteries. You have anti warfilms, you have the Anne Frank
Diary becoming the bestseller inWest Germany and being put on
(41:33):
stage, you know, shows on over athousand stages in the late 50s.
So you have a lot going on. Soit's not that the war and war
crimes are sort of silenced andshut down and then suddenly in
1968 people wake up to it. Andthe complication is also on the
(41:59):
other end of the story becauseafter 1968 things die down again
a little bit.
So probably the biggest singleevent that raises awareness and
causes discussion and emotionalinvolvement the whole debate
(42:24):
about what had happened exactlyin the Second World War is the
American TV series Holocaust,which is shown in 1979. Single
TV program that attracted moretelephone calls, readers or
(42:45):
listeners, letters, publicdiscussion than anything else.
So it goes back and forth. So Ithink it's better to see it as a
shift in the relative positionof different voices than a kind
of simple story of there wasnothing and then there's finally
(43:05):
is more. So there's much moregoing on in the 50s and 60s than
many people recognize.
Tim Benson (43:14):
Mhmm. Bear with me here. You're gonna have to hear
my horrible pronunciation ofGerman words. But so the the the
economic miracle, what were thewere there any value changes
(43:34):
brought about by the? No.
Frank Trentmann (43:39):
The economic miracle is not bad, your
pronunciation. You're justmissing you're just missing one
s. It's.
Tim Benson (43:47):
Sorry.
Frank Trentmann (43:48):
Oh, yeah. No. It's alright.
Tim Benson (43:49):
In German, I I just I I can never get a handle on
it.
Frank Trentmann (43:53):
No. Was I mean, it was quite good. It was quite
good. Now, the economic miracleis really important both at the
time, but also since that time.So at the time, the economic
miracle allows you to integratethese 12,000,000 expellees I had
(44:16):
previously mentioned.
That's hugely important becausein the late 40s and early 1950s,
it's not clear how thesemillions will fit in to
Tim Benson (44:35):
the new I'm sorry to interrupt, was just saying, but
I mean, in the abstract,12,000,000 people is a lot of
people. So what is the actualpopulation Germany it's trying
to incorporate So
Frank Trentmann (44:49):
we're talking about 20 of the population. So
every fifth person is from anexpellee family. So they arrive,
you know, of them have a fewpossessions, but basically they
arrive without assets, withoutcapital, other than the few
(45:12):
possessions they have and theskills they have. And they
initially, they distributedmainly in the areas where they
arrive and for simple geographicreasons, that is the rural North
and the rural South. Now, inthese rural areas, there isn't
much work for them either.
(45:34):
So it's a real from a materialpoint of view, it's a very
difficult situation. But it'salso a difficult situation
politically because there isconsiderable debate among these
ex police what the future willor should look like. So some
(45:55):
people talk about revenge. Youknow, they think, okay, the war
was lost, but we're going toreclaim our homeland, which
means challenging the newborders agreed by the Allies
after 'forty five. So you have avery large potential group
(46:19):
that's threatening to domesticstability and international
stability.
And the economic miracle isreally vital for their
integration, they'rediscriminated against. Like most
refugees, I mean many peopledon't care that they're ethnic
(46:40):
Germans. They think they're justas strange and alien as people
from Poland or Czechs or otherpeople. So they discriminate
them and treat them very badly.The economic miracle gives them
a leg up and is hugely importantfor their own identity and sort
(47:04):
of pride in accomplishingsomething and restarting their
life, but it's also importantfor their status in society.
Suddenly, they're importantbecause they provide important
manpower in the economicmiracle. And the importance of
that you can see in the growingacceptance of the democratic
(47:27):
Federal Republic. So in theearly 50s, significant numbers
thought the best year when theyasked, what do you think are the
best years you and Germany havehad? Very few think the present.
Many more think the so calledpeace years under Hitler, so
(47:50):
1933 to 'thirty nine, and othersthink under the Emperor before
the First World War.
By the late 50s, so once theeconomic miracle is going,
sympathy with the Hitler yearshas completely gone down and
most people have you know, madedemocracy their new home. So
(48:14):
it's really, really importantthat growth period for absorbing
potential social conflict. Butthe economic miracle is also
quite important in the long runbecause even now most Germans in
the back of their mind I mean,if you're from West Germany and
(48:38):
as the German economy currentlyis in recession, now third year
is sort of stagnating, theeconomic miracle is the kind of
reference point which peoplehave in the back of their head.
This is how things should be. Ofcourse, as we
Tim Benson (48:56):
It's been here in The United States too. Mean,
it's people sort of have rosecolored glasses for the economy
of the 1950s and early 1960s,which is never going to return.
Just basically
Frank Trentmann (49:10):
No, no, But it's interesting how this is
relatively, I mean, historicallyspeaking, this was a short
period and a completelyexceptional period in history,
But it's become the sort ofyardstick. So the economic
miracle is also So I saideconomic miracle, it has these
(49:31):
positive effects. But in thelong term, actually, it has some
negative effects because itmeans people are having
expectations which arecompletely unrealistic now.
Tim Benson (49:44):
You brought it up a little bit. Are there any
Brevanschist feelings about theborders to the East, about east
Prussia? Is there I mean, isthere, you know, bubbling under
the the surface of Germansociety? Is there a a lot of I
mean, is that just basically, atthis point, you know, a fait
(50:04):
accompli and that's, you know,not really something anyone
really thinks about? Or is therestill some sort of longing for
the restoration of the, youknow, the the pre 1939 you know,
pre war pre World War twoborders of Germany.
Frank Trentmann (50:23):
Well, you had in the nineteen fifties, you had
organized parties for thedifferent ethnic, you know,
Sudeten, the people from theSudetenland and the Silesians
and also the East Prussians. Andin, you know, they for a brief
period they were in parliamentand they were one of the
(50:45):
coalition partners, Adenaar. Butwith the economic miracle that
then dies down and so theseparties go downhill, the sort of
cultural associations of theEast Prussians and Silesians,
they keep going. And when WillyBrandt commits to detente and
(51:11):
signs the so called EasternTreaties with Poland and the
Soviet Union recognising theborders, there's an outcry.
People think this is betrayaland fair enough, one should add,
both Brandt and ChristianDemocrats had always addressed
you know, these are hundreds ofthousands of people coming to
(51:33):
conferences and being addressedby politicians.
The politicians has always toldthem, look, we'll never we'll
never give up those territories.And then in 'sixty nine,
'seventy, you sign thesetreaties recognizing the
borders. So there's somepushback and some irritation,
but ultimately revanchismdoesn't have a big political
(51:58):
movement to support it. Sothere's some right wing
extremist groups still dream oftaking those lands back, but
they're marginal groups. And thepeople, the majority of the
people who had lost theirhomelands, they many of, I mean,
(52:23):
there's sort of studies chartinghow they accommodate themselves
with the situation.
And it sort of breaks downreally into three equal parts.
So, by the 1980s, '1 thirdthinks of West Germany as their
new homeland. That's theirhomeland. You have another third
(52:45):
who thinks in terms of like abit like a dual citizenship.
Think, I belong to West Germany,but somehow deep down my old
Eastern homeland still matters.
And then you have one third whoreally just nostalgic, but
they're not a political force.So this is an emotional
(53:05):
attachment which they finddifficult to let go, which is
understandable. But there's nobig political movement. And I
don't think now I don't thinkany of the parties, the most
extreme right, which a footnotethe co chair of the populist
(53:33):
alternative for Germany herfather was one of the ex police
and apparently never got overthat. So, he talks about that
but she doesn't she doesn't say,hey.
Let's let's take back Poland orso.
Tim Benson (53:48):
Right. Right. Right. Speaking of the the AFD, the
alternative for Deutschland orthe alternative for Germany, for
Americans who might not youknow, who probably don't follow
German politics very closely,I'm sure, you know, most
Americans don't. What to make ofthe AFD?
(54:08):
I mean, because I'm you know,they're they're branded a far
right party, you know, but thatseems to be when it comes to be
the European sort of center leftconsensus that sort of everybody
gets it seems like it's labeledif they're slightly slightly
(54:30):
right of center, they seem to belabeled a far right party. So
what do we make of the AFD? Isit an actual far right party? Is
it is it a is it a it a threatto German democracy? I mean,
what I mean, it just came in Imean, the party itself just came
in second rate in the the latestYeah.
(54:51):
Parliament significant the secoh, sorry. Go ahead.
Frank Trentmann (54:55):
Yeah. No, what you just said is interesting. I
mean, you said, well, comparedbasically, you said, compared to
what? Aren't there also similardevelopments in other European
countries? So how special arethey?
Tim Benson (55:10):
I mean, just like in America, would say, they're
almost kind of painted as like acrypto Nazi, you know, or like
just
Frank Trentmann (55:18):
They got 20% nationwide in the election on
the February 23, so a few weeksago. So 20% across the whole
country, but in the easternregions, they got 38%. And in
(55:41):
some cities and some towns inthe East, got 48%. And the first
point to make is that they'renow really established. It's not
some small splinter group or so.
They're there and I thinkthey're there to stay. The other
thing is what you said, well,let's put this a little bit in
(56:01):
European context. How extremeare they? There was an Austrian
the Austrians have their ownpopulist party which is very
big. And there was a joke inAustria saying, after the German
election, the Austrians said,What you call a move to the far
(56:23):
right in Germany, we call a moveto left because 20% isn't that
high.
It's much worse in Austria. Sothe IFTA who are they and what
do they represent? Well, theIFTA started not that long ago,
(56:46):
I mean compared to otherEuropean populist parties, only
started ten years ago or so, asa sort of professional middle
class circle of professors andeconomists and journalists who
were sceptical of AngelaMerkel's policies in the Euro
(57:10):
crisis and the financial crisisin the European Union. So it
really had an economic focus andwas making the demand that
policies shouldn't be moved upto the European level, but
monetary policy, the currencyshould be a national issue. So
(57:34):
get rid of the Euro, reintroducethe Deutsche Mark and have the
Bundesbank, the Central Bank incontrol and not Brussels.
So it was an anti European Unionmove. And then in the next few
years, these professors and someof them economic liberals, you
(57:59):
may want to call them, gotbooted out and more right wing
populist leaders took over andmade the party a mass movement.
And since then, it's movedfurther to the right. What does
(58:19):
that mean, further to the right?You have some leaders in the
East Eastern part of the countrywho've been officially defined
by the intelligence services andconstitutional court as having
(58:46):
right wing extremists' leaningsor beliefs.
Why? Because some of them wantto well, some of them in their
proposals, particularly whendealing with migration, would
break the constitutional rightsas defined in the basic law. So,
(59:12):
equality, respect forcitizenship and human rights,
some of the statements they madewould be a breach of those, and
so they've been labelled likethat. So those are people in the
East. In the West, I would sayyou have fewer of those right
wing extremists.
I mean, there I would moreclassify them as sort of
(59:33):
populists comparable topopulists in France or in
Britain or in Italy. So you havea mix. You have a real mix of
people and what unites them isthat they are anti
establishment. So, what they allbelieve in is that the
(59:53):
parliament is controlled bypolitical lobbies and the old
parties, the established partiesare using parliamentary
democracy to enrich themselvesor to help their constituencies.
So they want more plebiscites,things like that.
They're anti European Union, sothey want out of the European
(01:00:15):
Union, and they have a verystrong stand on the migration
issue. So some positionsbasically you have a spectrum.
You have a spectrum of viewsthat go from, let's call it,
sort of hard conservatism. Buton the other end of the
(01:00:38):
spectrum, have some Nazi fringesthere and constant legal
conflicts over people who'vealso been members of neo Nazi
parties or who are givingspeeches which are in defiance
(01:01:00):
of the constitution and thingslike that.
Tim Benson (01:01:02):
Right.
Frank Trentmann (01:01:02):
Now, what about the voters? So, I've talked
about the people running theparty, but ultimately they
matter because they have voters.And there are two things which
are interesting about thealternative for Germany. One is
they've won over a lot of voterswho used to vote Christian
(01:01:24):
Democrats or conservative peoplewho felt abandoned by Merkel. So
Merkel moves the ChristianDemocrit to the centre of the
political spectrum and leavesbehind at the fringes these
Conservative voters who don'tagree with her migration policy
(01:01:45):
in particular, who no longerhave a political home.
And the alternative for Germanysort of sucks them up. So that's
one important group. The otherimportant group is non voters.
So it's absolutely staggering. Imean, I've looked at the data in
the recent elections.
(01:02:07):
The RFD, which used to be asmall party, manages to attract
more non voters. So in the lastelection, the federal election,
they attracted as many nonvoters as all the other parties
together. So that's a sign ofhow alienated a sizable pool of
(01:02:32):
voters feel. And then the thirdgroup, which is important, is
the East. So, RFD has madeprogress in the West, but
there's a clear disproportionaterelationship between West
support in the West and supportin the East.
Tim Benson (01:02:48):
And when we say East, we mean like the old
borders of the inside the oldborders of the GDR.
Frank Trentmann (01:02:53):
That's right. That's right. So Saxony, Saxony
and Thuringia and Brandenburgand Mecklenburg, those areas,
you know, where they on averageget 38%, thirty nine %, which is
extraordinary. I mean, far, farmore than any other party. And
(01:03:20):
the reason there is thispolarization between the former
East and the former West and howeven now after, what, thirty
five years after reunification,you have growing not lessening,
but growing alienation.
(01:03:43):
Many Easterners feel ignored,discriminated against, and the
alternative for Germany is kindof their Eastern identity party
and their slogan in the electionwas the East is rising. So it
gives people the sense of youknow you vote for us, we give
you back your pride.
Tim Benson (01:04:05):
Do you have some I know we've gone over an hour
already, and that was about aslong as I wanted to keep you,
but do you have time to justanswer a couple more questions?
Frank Trentmann (01:04:13):
Yeah, just a few more.
Tim Benson (01:04:14):
Sure, So you've been touching on the migrant issue.
How much of the migrant issue isdriving or how much of German
politics is being driven by themigrant issue currently?
Frank Trentmann (01:04:30):
Most of it. Most of it. Most of it. I mean,
well, I mean, the election hashappened. So there are coalition
talks between the ChristianDemocrats and the Social
Democrats.
And they seem to have come tocertain agreement that suits
(01:04:51):
both sides about how to dealwith the migration issue. But,
you know, in the run up to theelection, sometimes you wouldn't
know that there is aninternational security crisis.
Sometimes you wouldn't even knowthat Germany is an economic
crisis because the migrationissue had completely taken over.
(01:05:13):
Mean, quite in many waysdisproportionate because
actually migration of thenumbers the numbers of migrants
had actually been falling. Sothere had been a steady fall but
it had been accompanied by someyou know brutal terror attacks.
So migration received a lot ofattention. The alternative for
(01:05:39):
Germany was pushing this issue,made it their own issue, and it
was then really becoming centerstage when Mertz, the person
likely to be the nextchancellor, Christian Democrat,
made it sort of his issue.Basically saying I mean, his
(01:06:01):
idea at that point was that youcan't ignore the issue. If you
want to contain the populists,you need to make migration your
own issue. That didn't reallywork.
I mean, he actually lost somevotes. I mean, it didn't make a
(01:06:23):
dent in the populists at all.And what it did, it sort of
reinforced the sense of thepopulist, 'Look, we've been
telling you this all this time.So we are right. You've been
taking far too long to wake upto this.' So, the IFD in a way
won the battle for publicdiscourse and public attention
(01:06:50):
because they actually did get tomake the migration issue this
central issue in politics.
Mhmm.
Tim Benson (01:07:00):
Now I know, like you said, this is the migrant issue
being the central issue. But youwrite in the book that it's over
the subject of war and peacemore than any other subject
where you can see the German thechanging conscience of the of
(01:07:23):
Germany or of the German people.So what has been the impact on
Germany, on German politics ofthe Russian invasion of Ukraine?
And, you know, what what is theprice, you know, the price of
Germany's post internationalrestraint, especially, you know,
(01:07:48):
post end of the Cold War andpost unification?
Frank Trentmann (01:07:52):
Well, it's a very concrete price. And I'll
just give you one example forthat point is that the initial
reaction of the Federal Republicto the Russian attack on Ukraine
was for the Chancellor Scholzthen to say, well, this is a new
(01:08:14):
we're now in a new era. We needto completely turn things
around. And he found a specialfund for the army. But when it
came to support for Ukraineitself, they dithered for a long
time.
So initially it was sort ofhelmets rather than tanks. It
(01:08:36):
took a very long time forGermany to commit more serious
weapons to it, and the reasonfor that was that Scholz was
really walking a tightropebecause public opinion was
deeply divided. So you had onthe one hand, half the
population think, oh we must doanything in our power to support
(01:08:59):
Ukraine and defend theirsovereignty. But the other half
was convinced, no, you shouldalways look for reconciliation
with Russia, and sending weaponswould be the very opposite
signal you should be sending, sono weapons. So he slowed things
down, Scholz.
(01:09:20):
In the end, they sent I think 12battle tanks. One reason why the
number was so small is thatafter 1990, they shrunk down the
army very They
Tim Benson (01:09:35):
don't have any tanks. That's the problem. Yeah.
Frank Trentmann (01:09:37):
So Germany used to have. When the Berlin Wall
came down
Tim Benson (01:09:43):
Thousands of tanks.
Frank Trentmann (01:09:44):
West Germany had something like 4,000 tanks
and East Germany had another2,000. Today, I think they have
300. So this is a very seriousdifference. And then they sent
the 12 tanks to Ukraine. And ofcourse, tanks like anything
else, particularly in wartime,things fall off or they get hit
(01:10:08):
and they need to be repaired.
So, months, hardly any of these12 tanks was still rolling
because there were no repairparts. So the German army is in
a very, very dire straits. Butthe population is divided and
again there's also aninteresting West East divide. So
(01:10:34):
sending weapons to Ukraine hasfar more support in the Western
part of the country than in theEastern part of the country. In
the Eastern part, even not justpopulists, but also Christian
Democrats want to reopenrelations with Russia.
They want Russian gas to flowagain across the Baltic. They
(01:11:01):
want the war to end by whatevermeans. Whereas the West, people
in the West are more inclined togive support to Ukraine. So the
divisions, the internaldivisions of the country also
play themselves out on theinternational stage. So it needs
to be seen.
Mean, Mertz has been veryoutspoken and persuaded his
(01:11:29):
party to boost defense byunprecedented amounts, but needs
to be seen whether he can takethe whole country with him
because there's a great deal ofsuspicion.
Tim Benson (01:11:42):
Yeah, okay. Alright. Well, there was a ton of other
stuff I would have loved to talkto you about, but like I said,
I've already kept you long, somy apologies. I'll just end it,
you know, with the normal exitquestion everybody on the show
gets, and that is, you know,what would you like the audience
(01:12:03):
to get out of this book? Or, youknow, what's the one thing you'd
want a reader to take away fromit having read it?
Frank Trentmann (01:12:12):
Well, I think the main thing I would like
readers to get out of it is thatthis longer historical
perspective really helps you tounderstand why Germany is so
conflicted and divided now. Youcan't understand it by just
looking at the presentsituation. The divisions we've
(01:12:33):
been talking about in thepodcast, they have historical
roots and so understanding howthese roots got formed is really
vital if you want to make senseof the way Germany is now and
its place in the world.
Tim Benson (01:12:51):
All right. Very good. Once again, the name of
the book is Out of the Darkness,The Germans, nineteen forty two
to 2022. Fantastic, fantasticbook. I have a lot of Germans on
here.
I I don't know if that's mypredilection or if it's just
(01:13:15):
there just are more Germanswriting books than other
nations, but I've had quite afew Germans on the podcast and
done quite a few books onGermany and German history. And
I'd have to say this book isit's truly, truly fantastic.
It's such a thorough look atthis period and where Germany
(01:13:44):
was and where Germany is goingand how Germany got to this
point. And as Doctor. Tremblantwrites in the book, after
decades of knowing what they areagainst, Germans need to figure
out what they are for headinginto the future.
But it's highly, highlyrecommended. Just look at this
(01:14:07):
last eighty years of Germancultural history, political
history, and you know, what itmeans to be German in the twenty
first century, what it meant tobe German after the fall of the
Third Reich, all those sorts ofthings. And you must have spent
(01:14:31):
you said you started the book in2015. So and it was published in
2023, I think, in Europe, atleast. It wasn't until 2024 over
here.
But eight years is a significantchunk of your life, and I'm sure
a lot of that was spent inarchives and taking through
letters and newspapers andmanuscripts and all sorts of
(01:14:54):
things. A ton of work went intothis. Once again, just can't
recommend it enough, name of thebook, Out of the Darkness, The
Germans, nineteen forty two to2022, the author, Doctor.
Trentman. Doctor.
Trentman, thank you so much forcoming on the podcast to discuss
the book with us. Like I saidearlier, thank you so much for
(01:15:16):
taking the massive amount oftime out of your life to get the
book put together and get thesucker published so we could all
enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Frank Trentmann (01:15:27):
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the
good questions. Good to talk toyou.
Tim Benson (01:15:31):
Oh, no problem. And again, if you like this podcast,
please consider leaving us afive star review and sharing
with your friends. And if, youhave any questions or comments
or any suggestions for booksyou'd like to see discussed on
the podcast, you can alwaysreach out to me. It's,
tbenson@heartland.org. That'stbens0n@heartland.org.
And for more information aboutthe Heartland Institute, you can
(01:15:53):
just go to heartland.org. And,well, we do have our, Twitter
account, whatever you wanna callit, for the podcast. You can
reach out to us there too. It'sunder at or
the@illbooksatillbooks. So,yeah, make sure you check that
out.
And, yeah, that's pretty muchit. So thanks for listening,
(01:16:15):
everyone. We'll see you guysnext time. Take care. Love you,
Robbie.
Love you, mom. Bye bye.
Everybody, and welcome to the Illiteracy
Podcast. I'm your host, TimBenson, a senior policy analyst
at the Heartland Institute, anational free market think tank.
We are in the episode 170something range of the podcast,
maybe even 180. Not really,never really sure what the
episode number is. But so we'vebeen around for a while now.
(00:24):
But for those of you just tuningin for the first time,
basically, what we do here onthe podcast is I invite an
author on to discuss a book oftheirs that's been newly
published or recently publishedon someone or some ideas, some
event, something, etc, etc, etc,that we think you guys would
like to hear a conversationabout. And then hopefully at the
end of the podcast, you go aheadand give the book a purchase and
(00:46):
give it a read. So if you likethis podcast, please consider
giving Illiteracy a five starreview at Apple Podcasts or
wherever you listen to this showand also by sharing with your
friends as that's the best wayto support programming like
this. And my guest today isDoctor. Frank Trentman, and
Doctor.
Trentman is the professor ofhistory at Birkbeck College, the
University of London, and alsoan associate at the Center for
(01:07):
Consumer Society Research inHelsinki. You may have seen his
work in Foreign Affairs, TheAtlantic, The Wall Street
Journal, The Washington Post,Time Magazine, The New Yorker,
The New York Review of Books,The Times Literary Supplement,
Literary Review, Tablet,Financial Times, The New
Republic, and The Guardian,among many, many others. And he
(01:28):
is the author of Empire of HowWe Became a World of Consumers
from the fifteenth Century tothe twenty first, free trade
nation, commerce, consumption,and civil society in modern
Britain, and lastly, Out of theDarkness, the Germans nineteen
forty two to 2022, which waspublished last February by Knopf
(01:48):
or Knopf, never sure. I've heardit pronounced both ways, so I'm
never sure which one it is, butso I'll do both. Anyway, and
that is the book we will bediscussing today.
So Doctor. Trentman, thank youso, so much for coming on the
podcast. I do appreciate it.
Frank Trentmann (02:02):
Yeah, very good to talk to you.
Tim Benson (02:04):
Well, thank you. So normal entry question for
everybody that comes on thepodcast and that's is, you know,
what made you want to write thisbook? What was the the genesis
of the project? I mean, you'reprimarily a historian of
consumer issues, no? So how didyou decide to take on this much
(02:28):
broader subject?
Frank Trentmann (02:32):
Yeah. No, I did, as you mentioned, I had
finished or I was in the finalstages of finishing the book
Empire of Things, which looks atour changing relationship to
possessions and how consumptionbecame so important to us really
over five hundred years. And onething that's a kind of red
(02:56):
thread running through that bookis morality and the ways in
which people's shopping andspending and buying or not
buying has always beenmoralized. So are you a good
person if you buy certain goodsor should you boycott them? What
(03:19):
does it do to you to lust afterlots of things?
So these were very big ethicalconcerns that divided and
polarized societies And it onlysoftened that morality in the
nineteenth and twentiethcentury. And people became a
(03:40):
little bit used to beingconsumers. So I've been working
on that. And we are in sort ofat the end of twenty fifteen.
And that was the time when theso called refugee crisis
happened in Syria and in Europe.
(04:01):
And Chancellor Angela Merkel isin power and decides that
Germany would welcome whatturned out to be in that year
almost 1,000,000 refugees. It'sa huge debate ever since really.
(04:22):
Sort of reading the Germannewspapers and working in London
and looking at the British andAmerican and other European
press, I suddenly noticed howthe topic of how Germany should
respond to this challenge washeavily cast in a moral frame.
(04:45):
So it was partly about therefugees, but it was also about,
you know, are we good people?Have we become good people?
Have we overcome finally thesort of guilt and sins of our
fathers. And this kind of moraldiscussion didn't really take
place in any other Europeancountry. So I sort of took a
(05:08):
note of that. And then I startedobserving how many other topics
in German society were alsoheavily moralised. So do you
recycle?
Do you sort your recycling? Thatwas an indication not just
whether you're helping theenvironment but whether you're a
virtuous person or not. Are youlooking after your aging parents
(05:33):
or putting them in a care home?Who looks after the children? Do
you save?
Are you a thrifty person? Or areyou an American style consumer?
All of these things had thesemoral overtones. So I thought,
(05:54):
Hey, I'm a historian. These areimportant questions.
Where does this come from? Howdid this develop? And so I then
started this book project and itled me back to the Second World
War.
Tim Benson (06:12):
As a historian of consumerism, do you know what
the morality is of buyingthousands and thousands of
books? Just off the top of yourhead.
Frank Trentmann (06:22):
Yeah. No. Well, the interesting thing is no, no.
I mean, the interesting thingabout this is that
Tim Benson (06:28):
Asking for a friend, by the way.
Frank Trentmann (06:30):
People moralize certain aspects of consumption.
There's always how other peopleconsume. That's a moral dilemma.
So the question you said I mean,I had a very senior historian, a
very eminent historian, whoreviewed my book, gave it very
positive review, and I ran intohim at some point and he said,
(06:52):
Wow, aren't you exaggerating?I'm not a big consumer.
And I said, Look, how many booksdo you have? 7,000? He said,
Yeah, but that's books. That'snot consumption. So, you know,
it continues to be
Tim Benson (07:10):
It's a debilitating habit is what it is.
Frank Trentmann (07:12):
Other people's style of consuming that gets
negative verdicts.
Tim Benson (07:21):
Yeah. Right. Alright. Well, we would so
basically, in the book so whatit means to be German after
Hitler and after the third Reichand the Holocaust is a is an
(07:43):
unavoidable question. But overthe last eighty years, Germany
has gone through a veryremarkable moral and material
regeneration from the end of thewar.
So how do the Germans seethemselves today? And does that
(08:04):
view match reality?
Frank Trentmann (08:08):
Well, that's the core questions which I'm
trying to get at in the book.And at the same time as I chart
this ever more intense sort ofmoral reorientation and
repositioning as being goodpeople, I point out that in
(08:29):
reality a lot of problems areoutsourced or swept under the
carpet. So you have a fair bitof hypocrisy trying to maintain
this moral standard. And you cansee this all the way to the
present. So the book, forlisteners, the book goes up to
the beginning of the Russianattack on Ukraine in 2022.
(08:56):
And it came out in winter twentytwenty three-twenty twenty four.
So a fair bit has happened inthese last two and a half years,
but the moral or the divide andthe ambivalence continues all
the way to the present. So ifyou just take Germany's position
(09:23):
in Europe, the population isdeeply divided over fundamental
questions. So some think thatsending weapons to Ukraine is
the right moral lesson to drawfrom the German past. Others see
it exactly the opposite.
And you have similar debatesabout Israel, about migration
(09:48):
and so forth. So Germany isreally in a tight spot. It
mainly has put itself in thistight spot where it has created
certain expectations of whatGermany should be like, both in
(10:09):
terms of material comfort, butalso moral position in the
world. And it finds it ever moredifficult to reconcile these.
And I think, I mean, that's sortof my personal view.
I think this will get harder nowbecause Germany is being pulled
(10:29):
into assuming greaterresponsibility in Europe
financially, but alsomilitarily. And it's been a bit
a country in denial. You know,you didn't need to. You could be
moral because you never had totake much responsibility. I
mean, militarily, Germany reliedentirely on NATO and
(10:53):
particularly on The UnitedStates.
Environmentally, Germany triedto be a sort of crusader for
environmentalism but ultimatelykept its coal industry going and
shut down nuclear, but you keepcoal going. So there are all
sorts of compromises that havebeen made. One should perhaps
(11:16):
point out, because it's ahistory book, so I don't just
look at the present, I try toput the present in this longer
perspective. It is quiteremarkable how much has changed
in Germany. So if you take justthe military side, these days
people look at Germany as sothis country doesn't have an
(11:40):
army, doesn't spend much fornational security.
It got sort of this idea thatthere would always be peace. In
the early 1970s, underChancellor Willy Brandt, Social
Democrat, Germany spent 3.5% ofits on the army. So the majority
(12:07):
of Germans went and did theirmilitary service in the army.
You had compulsory militaryservice. So you know, the way
Germany is now, Germany wasn'tin the seventies or sixties.
So we're dealing with changeover time.
Tim Benson (12:27):
Right. Before we get into all that stuff, I guess so
let me just ask you. So sort ofexplain to everybody what the
you know, what was the purposeof starting the narrative in
1942 instead of 1939 or 1933 oreven, you know, say 1945? Why
(12:55):
specifically the year 1942?
Frank Trentmann (12:57):
Yeah. So I start in the winter of 'forty
two-'forty three and the mainreason for that is that there
are three big developmentscoming together. I mean,
Holocaust is now underway and ontop of that you get in February
(13:20):
1943 the final defeat of theGerman army at Stalingrad, So
the Eastern Front is now incrisis. And then on top of that,
you have increasingly relentlessaerial bombing. So that gathers
speed as well.
So you have three things comingtogether. And as they're coming
(13:41):
together, more and more Germansare trying to make sense of a
situation that now looks to themever more uncertain. So the war
isn't lost at this point, butthere's the possibility it might
be lost. And that really shakespeople up and they start to ask
(14:03):
themselves questions which theydidn't or hadn't in the first
half of the Second World War.And so it's partly a, if you
want, a literary device so I canuse that period to open up to
readers how did people on theground experience this growing
(14:26):
pressure cooker?
How did they try to make senseof it? What sort of answers did
they reach? So it's partly that,but it's also that this period
shows how some people, not allpeople, but some people started
to reposition themselves. Sothey started to ask themselves
(14:51):
basic questions such as, youknow, why are we being bombed?
There must be a reason for that.
And so some people's answer is,well, this is probably payback
now for how we treated the Jews.We went too far. And we should
reconsider perhaps our attitudeto the Nazi regime in response
(15:15):
of that. On the other end of thespectrum, you have people for
whom this growing pressure isconfirmation that everything
Hitler and Goebbels have beensaying is absolutely right. So
they're seeing the bombing asevidence that the Americans and
(15:36):
Jews are trying to annihilatethe German nation.
So the response they take fromthis is not a retreat from Nazi
ideas, but to call for ever morerelentless acts of
(15:57):
extermination. So you can usethis period to sort of see how a
whole population is in flux,trying to make sense of these
changes. I mean, may sound alittle bit abstract to some
listeners. So let me give youone just one example of a school
teacher from Northern Germanywho was a fervent supporter of
(16:21):
the war effort in the first halfof the Second World War. So he
thinks Hitler is a genius, thegreatest military leader of all
time.
He volunteers to write secretintelligence reports on people
in his school and in his smalltown for the Nazi regime. His
(16:46):
son then joins the army and ismoved to the Eastern Front. And
so in December they still havesome letters from him and they
then sort of dry up and theyknow he's sort of near
Stalingrad. And so he listens tothe news on radio in which
(17:06):
slowly becomes clear this is areal catastrophe happening there
in Stalingrad, and he and hiswife start to worry. He keeps a
diary and you suddenly have inJanuaryFebruary 'forty three
that same man who was absolutelyconvinced of Hitler and the
German war effort askingquestions such as, I'm no longer
(17:31):
sure who the worst criminal onearth is.
Is it really Stalin or perhapsHitler? He's sort of angry as
Goebbels rails against the enemyand Jews. He says, you know,
this is really bad because heputs our boys who might be
(17:53):
prisoners of war in real danger.He then decides he's no longer
going to hoist the swastika, theNazi flag, out of his balcony.
He also takes off the partybadge and he stops writing.
He says, I'm not going to writeany more intelligence reports
(18:14):
for the regime and the flag isonly going to go up when my son
comes home, which doesn'thappen. So in this period, this
same man kind of repositionshimself towards the regime and
(18:35):
towards his own past. So whenthe war comes to an end, this
man has already persuadedhimself that he was never really
supporting the war effort. Healways had suspicions about
Hitler and so forth. And sothese kind of stories are very
important if we want tounderstand how a society where
(18:56):
the majority of Germans hadsupported Hitler and his regime
in 1939, how that same societymanaged to undergo
reconstruction.
So we don't have and that's whywe need to start in the middle
of the war because there is nosuch thing as the so called
(19:17):
'hour zero'. So 1945 is not aclean break where suddenly all
the Nazis have to be convertedor reinvent themselves. You have
already cracks appearing in theNazi community before the end of
the war. So this uncertainty andthe ambivalence and the sort of
(19:41):
people rewriting effectivelytheir own biography and their
own memories is very important.
Tim Benson (19:49):
Mhmm. And I think you said in the book, was it
something like was it half ofthe all the the the total German
battlefield casualties in thewar ended up taking place in the
final ten months. Is that right?
Frank Trentmann (20:03):
Absolutely. The final stages, I mean, the last
year particularly is absolutelybrutal and it has repercussions.
So, know, for some people, somepeople fighting, it actually is
a hardening experience. Beenfighting so long, that's all
they know. And they know that ifGermany loses, they're probably
(20:31):
gonna be they might be put ontrial or be in difficulty.
So they just toughen up and theykeep going. Others start
slipping away. So the number ofdeserters really shoots up in
very final stages. Yeah. No.
It's a it's a very brutal brutaltime of history.
Tim Benson (20:54):
Yeah. We could talk a lot more about the war itself,
but I wanna but you can just getbogged down in all the World War
two stuff. So I wanna moveforward a bit. So there's this
idea that the Germans, quote,unquote, retreated into silence
(21:17):
after the war. Is thatnecessarily true?
And, you write in the book thatthe the dominant language of
moral renewal after the war wascast in individual and spiritual
terms, not in political terms.And and it was mainly addressed
(21:43):
to the Germans themselves andnot their victims. Could you
talk a little about that for asec?
Frank Trentmann (21:48):
Yeah. So the common so the widely held view
of the immediate post war yearsis that Germans suppressed their
responsibility and their guilt.So they shut up and they went
into silence. And foreignvisitors and observers like
(22:13):
Hannah Arendt note that innineteen forty eight-forty nine.
They said they don't want totalk about it.
But that's actually amisconception and the evidence
is actually pointing more in theopposite direction. So the
Germans, including prisoners ofwar and their families, they
(22:38):
talk about the war. They don'tsee this as a problem. They
don't work with assumptions ofhuman rights. So they even
mention what we would nowconsider war crimes when talking
to each other.
The difference is they don'ttalk much about the victims of
(23:02):
Nazi violence. They talk aboutthemselves and that takes a
number of forms. So the initialform is actually you have
lectures in autumnwinternineteen forty five where famous
(23:22):
authors and so forth talk aboutguilt and they leave no doubt
that they think the Germannation is guilty. What then
happens is when they're tryingto explain how could, you know,
how could this land of poets andphilosophers have ended up
(23:46):
committing all these crimes? Howdo you explain that?
They don't then revert to whatwe might call historical causes.
So they don't look at politicalcauses. That's when they revert
to a sort of spiritual level,which is somehow in modern times
(24:07):
people got alienated from theirspiritual self and their minds
and actions were taken over.They were seduced by people like
Hitler, a kind of demonic forceswinning them over and then like
(24:29):
in witchcraft, they're sort ofbound. So it's not that they
pinpoint something particular inGerman history, it's more sort
of the spiritual atmosphere of aworld, a modern world gone mad
where people have lost theirmooring, they're just after
money or power or militarymight.
(24:50):
And the Germans were seduced bythat and that's the explanation.
But there is still talk ofguilt. That then changes in 1946
and after during denazification,because denazification works on
the premise that you have tofill in a form in which you
(25:10):
openly state, you know, joinedthe Nazi party in this year, was
active in this capacity and soforth. So the discussion of
moral guilt is now reallypersonal, because you can lose
your job or your home or befined or classified as a Nazi or
(25:36):
complicit in crimes. So indenazification, people step back
and they don't want to talkabout guilt And what now takes
over is the language of shame.
Now guilt is about something badyou do to another person, so
it's still focused onto what youdo to others. Shame is about
(26:02):
yourself. You know, you feelashamed how people look at you.
So it's self directed. So shamebecomes a very important way of
addressing something bad hashappened but ultimately becomes
directed towards the Germanpeople themselves and that then
(26:24):
gathers speed in the late 40sand 1950s because what we have
to remember is you have inGermany, you have 12,000,000 ex
police, those are the people
Tim Benson (26:39):
Yeah, massive numbers.
Frank Trentmann (26:40):
Ethnic Germans, ethnic Germans driven out of
Central And Eastern Europe. Sothey've lost their homeland,
their houses, their jobs. Youhave those. Then you have the
millions who've been bombed oftheir homes. Then you have all
the veterans and disabled peopleand so forth.
(27:01):
So you have enormous numbers ofpeople who didn't come out well
out of the war and they are nowthe main voice talking about
victims. Basically they'recompeting with each other. Who
can shout loudest? We're thevictims. We deserve help.
(27:21):
And in that chorus of voices,most of them German, the real
victims or the people we todayconsider as the real victims,
you know, Jews in the firstplace, but also political
prisoners, other victims of theNazis, you know, for religious
(27:43):
reasons or other orientations,they get marginalised. They get
shouted out basically. So thisfocus on their own victimhood is
quite important because it alsoties in with reconstruction.
You'd mentioned that we have inthis story, we have moral
(28:08):
reconstruction is entwined withmaterial reconstruction. And so
these people are partly asking,you know, look, been a victim.
I deserve help with housing or ajob if you're an exilee and so
(28:30):
forth. So these two stories arevery much entwined. One needs to
perhaps add two points. One isin West Germany, Adenauer, the
first chancellor of the FederalRepublic, he takes a big step
(28:52):
towards reconciliation withIsrael and he signs, by the
standards of this time, anunprecedented reparations
agreement with Israel and theJewish Claims Conference. This
was hugely unpopular.
So it was his government withthe support I mean some members
(29:15):
of his government boycotted thismove, so he needed opposition
party support to get it throughparliament, the majority of the
population think this is areally bad idea and excessive
and not right. So one way WestGerman society deals with the
(29:37):
question of guilt andresponsibility is you have a
division of labour. The statetakes over formally that
responsibility, but by doing so,it also lets individual citizens
off the hook. For most peoplewith Ardenau's policy, this
matter is now off the table, soyou don't any longer need to
(29:59):
worry about it and certainly youdon't need to have introspection
or ask yourself anymore aboutyour own role. That's West
Germany.
The country is divided, you havea socialist East Germany and
there the discussion of guiltand shame and rehabilitation
takes a completely differentroute because East Germany is
(30:23):
run by communists. Some of themhad been in concentration camps
themselves. They see themselvesas victims they were victims of
the Nazis and they seethemselves as historical
winners. So in theirunderstanding, they, the
communist resistance, togetherwith the Red Army, overthrew
(30:45):
this really bad fascist regime.So why should they be
responsible for anything?
They're not responsible. Theywere the victims themselves.
They don't owe anyone anythingexcept the Soviet Union with
reparation payments. So Jewsdon't get any attention or for
that matter any compensationfrom East Germany. So if you had
(31:09):
been a German Jew who lived EastOf The Elbe in what then became
the German Democratic Republic,the Socialist East, you had to
wait till 1990 to get somecompensation back because East
Germany just did not treat Jewsas worthy victims.
(31:35):
So in both societies, but fordifferent reasons, you have a
suppression or parceling out ofthe guilt question.
Tim Benson (31:45):
Mhmm. So was denazification a failure by
whatever metric you wanna applyto it, or did it actually, you
know, achieve some of its goals?
Frank Trentmann (32:03):
Well, denazification has a really bad
record. So most people point ormany people point out that you
have in West Germany, you havesome former Nazis in positions
of high office who aretolerated. You have in the 50s
(32:30):
particular, you have both inEast And West Germany amnesties
and hardly any trials anymore.So from that perspective, it
really failed. But if you lookat the early years, so 1946 to
'forty eight, when Germany wasoccupied, actually the numbers
(32:54):
are pretty impressive.
So you have several hundredthousand people in both the
American zone and also theSoviet zone who spent
considerable time prison, wholose their right to work in
their profession, who have topay compensation payments and so
(33:19):
forth. So for many people,immediately after the war,
denazification is seen as ahuge, huge threat and big dent
in their biographies. And Ithink it's important also to
sort of remember, I mean, andsometimes even historians forget
(33:42):
that, you know, it's one thingto look back on this experience
and know the outcome. But ifyou're caught up in 1946, 'forty
seven, 'forty eight, you don'tknow. You don't know that
denazification will come to anend.
So you have two years of yourlife which are lost. You don't
(34:07):
know when that's going to end.And when you come out of
denazification, many sort of midranking Nazis don't find their
footing back in society. So youhave cases where Nazi bigwigs
end up being salesmen for cheapliquor and their wife has to
(34:31):
work as a waitress in the localbar. And so for many people,
this is a real step down andhumiliating.
Some of them even lose civicrights, I think you say, so the
right to vote and things likethat. And they're being now
ignored. So denazificationwasn't perfect by all means.
(34:56):
There were many oversights,omissions, and mistakes. But it
also needs to be remembered thatmost people who'd been through
that experience now want to beleft alone and in peace.
There are hardly any people whohave any tastes left for fascist
(35:22):
or extremist politics. Sothey've learned to calm down, if
you want.
Tim Benson (35:29):
Yeah. I mean, at the very least, you know, the FRG or
or in and now Germany as aunited country once again, you
know, post 1990 has been a, youknow, stable functioning
democracy for, what is it now,almost eighty years. So at the
(35:55):
very least, like that, it workedto some degree where, know, it's
it's created a country that orhelped create a country that is,
you know, is a good neighbor andand stable and and all that sort
of thing.
Frank Trentmann (36:12):
Well, I mean, they could have done mean, I
just said I just and what yousay is right, but doesn't mean
they couldn't have done more.So, I mean, Adenauer had this
famous quote when people say,look, you know, you should just
have former Nazi judges on yourkind of on the payroll of your
(36:41):
government and not to speak ofthe foreign office and the
intelligence services, which areoverwhelmingly old Nazis in the
1950s. His response to that was,I mean, he came from Cologne and
so he sometimes liked to havethese Cologne sayings. And he
said, well, if the only waterthat you have is dirty water,
(37:06):
you have to make do with dirtywater. You don't throw out the
only water that you have.
That was sort of his line. If welook comparatively, you know, at
other European societies, thereare many societies that I think
Norway and The Netherlands wherecollaborators were punished much
(37:33):
more severely than in Germany.And they also became functioning
democracies and
Tim Benson (37:41):
strong
Frank Trentmann (37:40):
So, know, Adenauer, that was sort of a
self justifying aphorism putdown there. If he had wanted to,
you could have rebuilt theeconomy and and have put a few
(38:03):
more Nazis in jail. Thatwouldn't have been a problem, I
think.
Tim Benson (38:06):
Yeah. Plenty of Nazis to throw in jail. I mean,
I know, you know, punishment andin the immediate postwar,
decade, you know, punishment andthis the the quest for for
justice for the victims of thethird Reich wasn't as
(38:29):
enthusiastic as probably anybodywould like. You know, German
courts paid very littleattention to the murder of Jews
after the war, but that dideventually change. So how and
why did that confrontation withthe past begin to occur?
Frank Trentmann (38:49):
Yeah. No. Very important question. I mean,
classic answer you still get isvery short and simple and it's
1968. So many people say, well,it's in 1968 with the student
movement and the new socialmovements that a new generation
(39:12):
of Germans confronted theirparents and grandparents.
And that's then established muchgreater awareness and
remembrance of what at thatpoint of time became known as
the Holocaust. That's a bit toosimple really, and doesn't match
(39:35):
the facts. And it's also veryconvenient because the people
who maintain this story aremainly 68 themselves. So they
see themselves as the people whogot Germany moving on that
front. If go back to theimmediate post war years, I
(39:55):
mean, I was amazed in theresearch just how hotly debated
memory culture, as we call itnow, was.
So you have, on the one hand,you have all sorts of veteran
groups who want to insist thatonly Hitler, Himmler and the SS
(40:19):
were evil, but they in theregular army or even in the
Waffen SS were really goodsoldiers. So you have vocal
veteran defence of what they seeas a good war. But at the same
time, you have youth groups. Somid 1950s already, you have the
(40:46):
first sort of trips toconcentration camps such as
Bergen Belsen. And these arejazz orchestras who organise
trips to pay their respect tothe victims of Nazi crimes.
You have anti Semitism, but atthe same time you have local
(41:10):
schools volunteering to rebuilddesecrated local Jewish
cemeteries. You have anti warfilms, you have the Anne Frank
Diary becoming the bestseller inWest Germany and being put on
(41:33):
stage, you know, shows on over athousand stages in the late 50s.
So you have a lot going on. Soit's not that the war and war
crimes are sort of silenced andshut down and then suddenly in
1968 people wake up to it. Andthe complication is also on the
(41:59):
other end of the story becauseafter 1968 things die down again
a little bit.
So probably the biggest singleevent that raises awareness and
causes discussion and emotionalinvolvement the whole debate
(42:24):
about what had happened exactlyin the Second World War is the
American TV series Holocaust,which is shown in 1979. Single
TV program that attracted moretelephone calls, readers or
(42:45):
listeners, letters, publicdiscussion than anything else.
So it goes back and forth. So Ithink it's better to see it as a
shift in the relative positionof different voices than a kind
of simple story of there wasnothing and then there's finally
(43:05):
is more. So there's much moregoing on in the 50s and 60s than
many people recognize.
Tim Benson (43:14):
Mhmm. Bear with me here. You're gonna have to hear
my horrible pronunciation ofGerman words. But so the the the
economic miracle, what were thewere there any value changes
(43:34):
brought about by the? No.
Frank Trentmann (43:39):
The economic miracle is not bad, your
pronunciation. You're justmissing you're just missing one
s. It's.
Tim Benson (43:47):
Sorry.
Frank Trentmann (43:48):
Oh, yeah. No. It's alright.
Tim Benson (43:49):
In German, I I just I I can never get a handle on
it.
Frank Trentmann (43:53):
No. Was I mean, it was quite good. It was quite
good. Now, the economic miracleis really important both at the
time, but also since that time.So at the time, the economic
miracle allows you to integratethese 12,000,000 expellees I had
(44:16):
previously mentioned.
That's hugely important becausein the late 40s and early 1950s,
it's not clear how thesemillions will fit in to
Tim Benson (44:35):
the new I'm sorry to interrupt, was just saying, but
I mean, in the abstract,12,000,000 people is a lot of
people. So what is the actualpopulation Germany it's trying
to incorporate So
Frank Trentmann (44:49):
we're talking about 20 of the population. So
every fifth person is from anexpellee family. So they arrive,
you know, of them have a fewpossessions, but basically they
arrive without assets, withoutcapital, other than the few
(45:12):
possessions they have and theskills they have. And they
initially, they distributedmainly in the areas where they
arrive and for simple geographicreasons, that is the rural North
and the rural South. Now, inthese rural areas, there isn't
much work for them either.
(45:34):
So it's a real from a materialpoint of view, it's a very
difficult situation. But it'salso a difficult situation
politically because there isconsiderable debate among these
ex police what the future willor should look like. So some
(45:55):
people talk about revenge. Youknow, they think, okay, the war
was lost, but we're going toreclaim our homeland, which
means challenging the newborders agreed by the Allies
after 'forty five. So you have avery large potential group
(46:19):
that's threatening to domesticstability and international
stability.
And the economic miracle isreally vital for their
integration, they'rediscriminated against. Like most
refugees, I mean many peopledon't care that they're ethnic
(46:40):
Germans. They think they're justas strange and alien as people
from Poland or Czechs or otherpeople. So they discriminate
them and treat them very badly.The economic miracle gives them
a leg up and is hugely importantfor their own identity and sort
(47:04):
of pride in accomplishingsomething and restarting their
life, but it's also importantfor their status in society.
Suddenly, they're importantbecause they provide important
manpower in the economicmiracle. And the importance of
that you can see in the growingacceptance of the democratic
(47:27):
Federal Republic. So in theearly 50s, significant numbers
thought the best year when theyasked, what do you think are the
best years you and Germany havehad? Very few think the present.
Many more think the so calledpeace years under Hitler, so
(47:50):
1933 to 'thirty nine, and othersthink under the Emperor before
the First World War.
By the late 50s, so once theeconomic miracle is going,
sympathy with the Hitler yearshas completely gone down and
most people have you know, madedemocracy their new home. So
(48:14):
it's really, really importantthat growth period for absorbing
potential social conflict. Butthe economic miracle is also
quite important in the long runbecause even now most Germans in
the back of their mind I mean,if you're from West Germany and
(48:38):
as the German economy currentlyis in recession, now third year
is sort of stagnating, theeconomic miracle is the kind of
reference point which peoplehave in the back of their head.
This is how things should be. Ofcourse, as we
Tim Benson (48:56):
It's been here in The United States too. Mean,
it's people sort of have rosecolored glasses for the economy
of the 1950s and early 1960s,which is never going to return.
Just basically
Frank Trentmann (49:10):
No, no, But it's interesting how this is
relatively, I mean, historicallyspeaking, this was a short
period and a completelyexceptional period in history,
But it's become the sort ofyardstick. So the economic
miracle is also So I saideconomic miracle, it has these
(49:31):
positive effects. But in thelong term, actually, it has some
negative effects because itmeans people are having
expectations which arecompletely unrealistic now.
Tim Benson (49:44):
You brought it up a little bit. Are there any
Brevanschist feelings about theborders to the East, about east
Prussia? Is there I mean, isthere, you know, bubbling under
the the surface of Germansociety? Is there a a lot of I
mean, is that just basically, atthis point, you know, a fait
(50:04):
accompli and that's, you know,not really something anyone
really thinks about? Or is therestill some sort of longing for
the restoration of the, youknow, the the pre 1939 you know,
pre war pre World War twoborders of Germany.
Frank Trentmann (50:23):
Well, you had in the nineteen fifties, you had
organized parties for thedifferent ethnic, you know,
Sudeten, the people from theSudetenland and the Silesians
and also the East Prussians. Andin, you know, they for a brief
period they were in parliamentand they were one of the
(50:45):
coalition partners, Adenaar. Butwith the economic miracle that
then dies down and so theseparties go downhill, the sort of
cultural associations of theEast Prussians and Silesians,
they keep going. And when WillyBrandt commits to detente and
(51:11):
signs the so called EasternTreaties with Poland and the
Soviet Union recognising theborders, there's an outcry.
People think this is betrayaland fair enough, one should add,
both Brandt and ChristianDemocrats had always addressed
you know, these are hundreds ofthousands of people coming to
(51:33):
conferences and being addressedby politicians.
The politicians has always toldthem, look, we'll never we'll
never give up those territories.And then in 'sixty nine,
'seventy, you sign thesetreaties recognizing the
borders. So there's somepushback and some irritation,
but ultimately revanchismdoesn't have a big political
(51:58):
movement to support it. Sothere's some right wing
extremist groups still dream oftaking those lands back, but
they're marginal groups. And thepeople, the majority of the
people who had lost theirhomelands, they many of, I mean,
(52:23):
there's sort of studies chartinghow they accommodate themselves
with the situation.
And it sort of breaks downreally into three equal parts.
So, by the 1980s, '1 thirdthinks of West Germany as their
new homeland. That's theirhomeland. You have another third
(52:45):
who thinks in terms of like abit like a dual citizenship.
Think, I belong to West Germany,but somehow deep down my old
Eastern homeland still matters.
And then you have one third whoreally just nostalgic, but
they're not a political force.So this is an emotional
(53:05):
attachment which they finddifficult to let go, which is
understandable. But there's nobig political movement. And I
don't think now I don't thinkany of the parties, the most
extreme right, which a footnotethe co chair of the populist
(53:33):
alternative for Germany herfather was one of the ex police
and apparently never got overthat. So, he talks about that
but she doesn't she doesn't say,hey.
Let's let's take back Poland orso.
Tim Benson (53:48):
Right. Right. Right. Speaking of the the AFD, the
alternative for Deutschland orthe alternative for Germany, for
Americans who might not youknow, who probably don't follow
German politics very closely,I'm sure, you know, most
Americans don't. What to make ofthe AFD?
(54:08):
I mean, because I'm you know,they're they're branded a far
right party, you know, but thatseems to be when it comes to be
the European sort of center leftconsensus that sort of everybody
gets it seems like it's labeledif they're slightly slightly
(54:30):
right of center, they seem to belabeled a far right party. So
what do we make of the AFD? Isit an actual far right party? Is
it is it a is it a it a threatto German democracy? I mean,
what I mean, it just came in Imean, the party itself just came
in second rate in the the latestYeah.
(54:51):
Parliament significant the secoh, sorry. Go ahead.
Frank Trentmann (54:55):
Yeah. No, what you just said is interesting. I
mean, you said, well, comparedbasically, you said, compared to
what? Aren't there also similardevelopments in other European
countries? So how special arethey?
Tim Benson (55:10):
I mean, just like in America, would say, they're
almost kind of painted as like acrypto Nazi, you know, or like
just
Frank Trentmann (55:18):
They got 20% nationwide in the election on
the February 23, so a few weeksago. So 20% across the whole
country, but in the easternregions, they got 38%. And in
(55:41):
some cities and some towns inthe East, got 48%. And the first
point to make is that they'renow really established. It's not
some small splinter group or so.
They're there and I thinkthey're there to stay. The other
thing is what you said, well,let's put this a little bit in
(56:01):
European context. How extremeare they? There was an Austrian
the Austrians have their ownpopulist party which is very
big. And there was a joke inAustria saying, after the German
election, the Austrians said,What you call a move to the far
(56:23):
right in Germany, we call a moveto left because 20% isn't that
high.
It's much worse in Austria. Sothe IFTA who are they and what
do they represent? Well, theIFTA started not that long ago,
(56:46):
I mean compared to otherEuropean populist parties, only
started ten years ago or so, asa sort of professional middle
class circle of professors andeconomists and journalists who
were sceptical of AngelaMerkel's policies in the Euro
(57:10):
crisis and the financial crisisin the European Union. So it
really had an economic focus andwas making the demand that
policies shouldn't be moved upto the European level, but
monetary policy, the currencyshould be a national issue. So
(57:34):
get rid of the Euro, reintroducethe Deutsche Mark and have the
Bundesbank, the Central Bank incontrol and not Brussels.
So it was an anti European Unionmove. And then in the next few
years, these professors and someof them economic liberals, you
(57:59):
may want to call them, gotbooted out and more right wing
populist leaders took over andmade the party a mass movement.
And since then, it's movedfurther to the right. What does
(58:19):
that mean, further to the right?You have some leaders in the
East Eastern part of the countrywho've been officially defined
by the intelligence services andconstitutional court as having
(58:46):
right wing extremists' leaningsor beliefs.
Why? Because some of them wantto well, some of them in their
proposals, particularly whendealing with migration, would
break the constitutional rightsas defined in the basic law. So,
(59:12):
equality, respect forcitizenship and human rights,
some of the statements they madewould be a breach of those, and
so they've been labelled likethat. So those are people in the
East. In the West, I would sayyou have fewer of those right
wing extremists.
I mean, there I would moreclassify them as sort of
(59:33):
populists comparable topopulists in France or in
Britain or in Italy. So you havea mix. You have a real mix of
people and what unites them isthat they are anti
establishment. So, what they allbelieve in is that the
(59:53):
parliament is controlled bypolitical lobbies and the old
parties, the established partiesare using parliamentary
democracy to enrich themselvesor to help their constituencies.
So they want more plebiscites,things like that.
They're anti European Union, sothey want out of the European
(01:00:15):
Union, and they have a verystrong stand on the migration
issue. So some positionsbasically you have a spectrum.
You have a spectrum of viewsthat go from, let's call it,
sort of hard conservatism. Buton the other end of the
(01:00:38):
spectrum, have some Nazi fringesthere and constant legal
conflicts over people who'vealso been members of neo Nazi
parties or who are givingspeeches which are in defiance
(01:01:00):
of the constitution and thingslike that.
Tim Benson (01:01:02):
Right.
Frank Trentmann (01:01:02):
Now, what about the voters? So, I've talked
about the people running theparty, but ultimately they
matter because they have voters.And there are two things which
are interesting about thealternative for Germany. One is
they've won over a lot of voterswho used to vote Christian
(01:01:24):
Democrats or conservative peoplewho felt abandoned by Merkel. So
Merkel moves the ChristianDemocrit to the centre of the
political spectrum and leavesbehind at the fringes these
Conservative voters who don'tagree with her migration policy
(01:01:45):
in particular, who no longerhave a political home.
And the alternative for Germanysort of sucks them up. So that's
one important group. The otherimportant group is non voters.
So it's absolutely staggering. Imean, I've looked at the data in
the recent elections.
(01:02:07):
The RFD, which used to be asmall party, manages to attract
more non voters. So in the lastelection, the federal election,
they attracted as many nonvoters as all the other parties
together. So that's a sign ofhow alienated a sizable pool of
(01:02:32):
voters feel. And then the thirdgroup, which is important, is
the East. So, RFD has madeprogress in the West, but
there's a clear disproportionaterelationship between West
support in the West and supportin the East.
Tim Benson (01:02:48):
And when we say East, we mean like the old
borders of the inside the oldborders of the GDR.
Frank Trentmann (01:02:53):
That's right. That's right. So Saxony, Saxony
and Thuringia and Brandenburgand Mecklenburg, those areas,
you know, where they on averageget 38%, thirty nine %, which is
extraordinary. I mean, far, farmore than any other party. And
(01:03:20):
the reason there is thispolarization between the former
East and the former West and howeven now after, what, thirty
five years after reunification,you have growing not lessening,
but growing alienation.
(01:03:43):
Many Easterners feel ignored,discriminated against, and the
alternative for Germany is kindof their Eastern identity party
and their slogan in the electionwas the East is rising. So it
gives people the sense of youknow you vote for us, we give
you back your pride.
Tim Benson (01:04:05):
Do you have some I know we've gone over an hour
already, and that was about aslong as I wanted to keep you,
but do you have time to justanswer a couple more questions?
Frank Trentmann (01:04:13):
Yeah, just a few more.
Tim Benson (01:04:14):
Sure, So you've been touching on the migrant issue.
How much of the migrant issue isdriving or how much of German
politics is being driven by themigrant issue currently?
Frank Trentmann (01:04:30):
Most of it. Most of it. Most of it. I mean,
well, I mean, the election hashappened. So there are coalition
talks between the ChristianDemocrats and the Social
Democrats.
And they seem to have come tocertain agreement that suits
(01:04:51):
both sides about how to dealwith the migration issue. But,
you know, in the run up to theelection, sometimes you wouldn't
know that there is aninternational security crisis.
Sometimes you wouldn't even knowthat Germany is an economic
crisis because the migrationissue had completely taken over.
(01:05:13):
Mean, quite in many waysdisproportionate because
actually migration of thenumbers the numbers of migrants
had actually been falling. Sothere had been a steady fall but
it had been accompanied by someyou know brutal terror attacks.
So migration received a lot ofattention. The alternative for
(01:05:39):
Germany was pushing this issue,made it their own issue, and it
was then really becoming centerstage when Mertz, the person
likely to be the nextchancellor, Christian Democrat,
made it sort of his issue.Basically saying I mean, his
(01:06:01):
idea at that point was that youcan't ignore the issue. If you
want to contain the populists,you need to make migration your
own issue. That didn't reallywork.
I mean, he actually lost somevotes. I mean, it didn't make a
(01:06:23):
dent in the populists at all.And what it did, it sort of
reinforced the sense of thepopulist, 'Look, we've been
telling you this all this time.So we are right. You've been
taking far too long to wake upto this.' So, the IFD in a way
won the battle for publicdiscourse and public attention
(01:06:50):
because they actually did get tomake the migration issue this
central issue in politics.
Mhmm.
Tim Benson (01:07:00):
Now I know, like you said, this is the migrant issue
being the central issue. But youwrite in the book that it's over
the subject of war and peacemore than any other subject
where you can see the German thechanging conscience of the of
(01:07:23):
Germany or of the German people.So what has been the impact on
Germany, on German politics ofthe Russian invasion of Ukraine?
And, you know, what what is theprice, you know, the price of
Germany's post internationalrestraint, especially, you know,
(01:07:48):
post end of the Cold War andpost unification?
Frank Trentmann (01:07:52):
Well, it's a very concrete price. And I'll
just give you one example forthat point is that the initial
reaction of the Federal Republicto the Russian attack on Ukraine
was for the Chancellor Scholzthen to say, well, this is a new
(01:08:14):
we're now in a new era. We needto completely turn things
around. And he found a specialfund for the army. But when it
came to support for Ukraineitself, they dithered for a long
time.
So initially it was sort ofhelmets rather than tanks. It
(01:08:36):
took a very long time forGermany to commit more serious
weapons to it, and the reasonfor that was that Scholz was
really walking a tightropebecause public opinion was
deeply divided. So you had onthe one hand, half the
population think, oh we must doanything in our power to support
(01:08:59):
Ukraine and defend theirsovereignty. But the other half
was convinced, no, you shouldalways look for reconciliation
with Russia, and sending weaponswould be the very opposite
signal you should be sending, sono weapons. So he slowed things
down, Scholz.
(01:09:20):
In the end, they sent I think 12battle tanks. One reason why the
number was so small is thatafter 1990, they shrunk down the
army very They
Tim Benson (01:09:35):
don't have any tanks. That's the problem. Yeah.
Frank Trentmann (01:09:37):
So Germany used to have. When the Berlin Wall
came down
Tim Benson (01:09:43):
Thousands of tanks.
Frank Trentmann (01:09:44):
West Germany had something like 4,000 tanks
and East Germany had another2,000. Today, I think they have
300. So this is a very seriousdifference. And then they sent
the 12 tanks to Ukraine. And ofcourse, tanks like anything
else, particularly in wartime,things fall off or they get hit
(01:10:08):
and they need to be repaired.
So, months, hardly any of these12 tanks was still rolling
because there were no repairparts. So the German army is in
a very, very dire straits. Butthe population is divided and
again there's also aninteresting West East divide. So
(01:10:34):
sending weapons to Ukraine hasfar more support in the Western
part of the country than in theEastern part of the country. In
the Eastern part, even not justpopulists, but also Christian
Democrats want to reopenrelations with Russia.
They want Russian gas to flowagain across the Baltic. They
(01:11:01):
want the war to end by whatevermeans. Whereas the West, people
in the West are more inclined togive support to Ukraine. So the
divisions, the internaldivisions of the country also
play themselves out on theinternational stage. So it needs
to be seen.
Mean, Mertz has been veryoutspoken and persuaded his
(01:11:29):
party to boost defense byunprecedented amounts, but needs
to be seen whether he can takethe whole country with him
because there's a great deal ofsuspicion.
Tim Benson (01:11:42):
Yeah, okay. Alright. Well, there was a ton of other
stuff I would have loved to talkto you about, but like I said,
I've already kept you long, somy apologies. I'll just end it,
you know, with the normal exitquestion everybody on the show
gets, and that is, you know,what would you like the audience
(01:12:03):
to get out of this book? Or, youknow, what's the one thing you'd
want a reader to take away fromit having read it?
Frank Trentmann (01:12:12):
Well, I think the main thing I would like
readers to get out of it is thatthis longer historical
perspective really helps you tounderstand why Germany is so
conflicted and divided now. Youcan't understand it by just
looking at the presentsituation. The divisions we've
(01:12:33):
been talking about in thepodcast, they have historical
roots and so understanding howthese roots got formed is really
vital if you want to make senseof the way Germany is now and
its place in the world.
Tim Benson (01:12:51):
All right. Very good. Once again, the name of
the book is Out of the Darkness,The Germans, nineteen forty two
to 2022. Fantastic, fantasticbook. I have a lot of Germans on
here.
I I don't know if that's mypredilection or if it's just
(01:13:15):
there just are more Germanswriting books than other
nations, but I've had quite afew Germans on the podcast and
done quite a few books onGermany and German history. And
I'd have to say this book isit's truly, truly fantastic.
It's such a thorough look atthis period and where Germany
(01:13:44):
was and where Germany is goingand how Germany got to this
point. And as Doctor. Tremblantwrites in the book, after
decades of knowing what they areagainst, Germans need to figure
out what they are for headinginto the future.
But it's highly, highlyrecommended. Just look at this
(01:14:07):
last eighty years of Germancultural history, political
history, and you know, what itmeans to be German in the twenty
first century, what it meant tobe German after the fall of the
Third Reich, all those sorts ofthings. And you must have spent
(01:14:31):
you said you started the book in2015. So and it was published in
2023, I think, in Europe, atleast. It wasn't until 2024 over
here.
But eight years is a significantchunk of your life, and I'm sure
a lot of that was spent inarchives and taking through
letters and newspapers andmanuscripts and all sorts of
(01:14:54):
things. A ton of work went intothis. Once again, just can't
recommend it enough, name of thebook, Out of the Darkness, The
Germans, nineteen forty two to2022, the author, Doctor.
Trentman. Doctor.
Trentman, thank you so much forcoming on the podcast to discuss
the book with us. Like I saidearlier, thank you so much for
(01:15:16):
taking the massive amount oftime out of your life to get the
book put together and get thesucker published so we could all
enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Frank Trentmann (01:15:27):
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the
good questions. Good to talk toyou.
Tim Benson (01:15:31):
Oh, no problem. And again, if you like this podcast,
please consider leaving us afive star review and sharing
with your friends. And if, youhave any questions or comments
or any suggestions for booksyou'd like to see discussed on
the podcast, you can alwaysreach out to me. It's,
tbenson@heartland.org. That'stbens0n@heartland.org.
And for more information aboutthe Heartland Institute, you can
(01:15:53):
just go to heartland.org. And,well, we do have our, Twitter
account, whatever you wanna callit, for the podcast. You can
reach out to us there too. It'sunder at or
the@illbooksatillbooks. So,yeah, make sure you check that
out.
And, yeah, that's pretty muchit. So thanks for listening,
(01:16:15):
everyone. We'll see you guysnext time. Take care. Love you,
Robbie.
Love you, mom. Bye bye.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.