The importance of being German

The big issue: Nazi past

Thomas Kielinger can perhaps draw some solace from the fact that there are other film images of Germans in 1944 which are burnt into some of our minds (Comment Extra, last week). Some years ago I saw a TV documentary, The Restless Conscience, about the German Resistance. Archive footage included extracts from the trials of resisters before the Nazi judge Roland Freisler, in the aftermath of the attempt to kill Hitler. The courage and dignity of the defendants, in spite of torture and Freisler's vicious harangues, left an inspiring impression. I hope this documentary will be broadcast again, in time for that other 60th anniversary - that of the assassination attempt - on 20 July.
Dr M.M. Gilchrist


As someone of Kielinger's generation, I read his piece with interest. But I'm not sure I agree. Kielinger makes it sound as though it is only the 'perpetuity-like quality' of the visual record of the Nazi era and its horrors that prevent the past being forgotten. The problem is not the photographic record but the past itself. No one can escape that.

Having spent most of my adult life in Britain and America, I have developed quite a different attitude to my country's horrific past. I no longer feel personally responsible for Hitler simply because my father was a member of the Nazi party.

I feel even less responsible for the Holocaust, not yet called that in the Fifties when I was at school. Asked to give a talk, I alluded to it by simply saying: 'The murdered millions must not be forgotten.' You could hear a pin drop. Afterwards students, some Jewish, shook my hand. That simple statement cleared the air. They could see I was no monster. It is only in recent years that Germans have been cast collectively in the role of 'Hitler's willing executioners'.
Ludwig Rang

London NW1

Yes you can! I say to the statement that 'we Germans can never escape'. But only if you were born after 1942. Kielinger, as a five-year-old at the end of the war, probably had some consciousness of how 'great' Hitler was. Thousands of five-year-olds were taught that Hitler was a god.

It will take another 20 years, when we will all be dead and it will be over. Every German will be innocent of living Nazism - at last and forever.
Wenda Clenaghen
London N10

Kielinger's article on being German included a photo of a German soldier - defeated but uninjured. I have a better one of a German paratrooper - injured but undefeated. The paratrooper is Bert Trautmann and he is doubled up in pain from a broken neck. The photo was taken as this wonderful goalkeeper was led from the Wembley pitch having helped Manchester City to win the 1956 FA Cup final. Bert played on despite this potentially life-threatening injury and became the first overseas-born Footballer of the Year. Perhaps there was room in Kielinger's otherwise rather depressing tale for mention of the bridge-building done by genuine sporting heroes.
Alan Hallsworth
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire