"I feel like I've been transported back 80 years"

Ukraine war

"I feel like I've been transported back almost 80 years"

The road to peace and peaceful coexistence between Russia and Ukraine has its price. But the expense is worth it

By Hans Modrow

[This article published on 3/14/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, »Ich fühle mich um fast 80 Jahre zurückversetzt« (nd-aktuell.de).]

Hans Modrow

.

I was not 17 when I had to put out fires in Szczecin and bury the dead in my Pomeranian village. The war intervened hard in my life and drove me to the island of Rügen, where I was captured. Forced to be assigned to Hitler's last contingent, the enemy treated me leniently. Nevertheless, he thought it necessary to let me spend four years paying off some of the debt that the German people had incurred. Six years of genocide and barbarism under the swastika, whether I participated willingly or unknowingly, it didn't matter. We went along, we caught along, we hung along ...

No, we were not hanged. Instead, we were given the opportunity to think and rethink. At Antifa schools, in meetings with experienced, educated people who had already experienced the First World War, intervention and civil wars, who had defended the Republic in Spain against the united fascists of Europe or had done their part in the anti-Hitler coalition in exile. It was a wise, very wise decision to put us German POWs on the school bench.

Hans Modrow, born in 1928, was supposed to defend Nazi Germany against the Red Army as a youth in the Volkssturm in early 1945. He became a Soviet prisoner of war and later studied in Moscow. For many years he was an FDJ and SED functionary. In the fall of 1989, he became prime minister of East Germany (GDR) for a crucial six months. As a PDS member of the Bundestag and the EU Parliament, as well as afterwards, he campaigned for good relations between Germany and Russia. To this day, he is chairman of the Left Party's Council of Elders. In this text he writes about feelings and memories in the face of Russia's war against Ukraine and about resulting dangers for world peace.

I am probably one of the last witnesses who experienced and suffered through that war. And I count to that generation, which also experienced the magnanimity of a victorious power. For it was magnanimous not to repay like with like, but to give fellow travelers and perpetrators the opportunity to learn from their mistakes so that they would not repeat them.

The current images from Ukraine bring back my terrible youthful memories. They dictate my feelings. I see the destroyed apartment buildings, see burned-out vehicles on the streets, and people desperately fleeing from bombs and rockets. I feel transported back almost 80 years and become pensive. Europe had sworn to itself: Never again fascism! Never again war! The scars remain - at the age of 94, I feel them more strongly than ever.

Related articles

11.03.2022 / Paul Schäfer

The goal must be a stable peace

No weapons for war

The left needs a resolute position of militant non-militarism

Of course, we must help those from Ukraine who have become homeless. My brother, who was once a sailor, once told me: when we bring a shipwrecked person on board, we don't ask about nationality and skin color - we just save him. Because it is a human being.

However, this conflict in Ukraine should not be viewed exclusively from an emotional perspective. Tears obscure the view, they do not sharpen it. We must also take into account history and the present, national and international circumstances, impartially and truthfully examine the facts. Not to relativize, but to judge objectively and to act justly. Those who speak of a necessary change of times or of a 180-degree change of course also believe in "eternal truths" that are merely thrown overboard to be replaced by new certainties. Marx, on the other hand, did not only want doubt to be placed at the beginning of scientific work. Everything is to be doubted, he said. About everything! That does not mean, however, to distrust one's convictions - if one has gained any in the course of one's life.

The Cold War divided my family. They lived in the West Zone when I returned to Germany in 1949. That there would soon be two German states was not the wish and will of the victorious eastern power: it always wanted a whole Germany, but a neutral one. So that it would not be able to start another war. (This is what I wanted to achieve in 1990 with "Deutschland, einig Vaterland": neutral like Austria since 1955).

In the West, people saw things differently at the time. It was better to have half of Germany whole than half of Germany whole, they said. And armed! There could not have been a clearer articulation of the true intentions, which my later friend Egon Bahr put into a statement that he hoped to write into the consciences of high school students: "International politics is never about democracy and human rights. It is about the interests of states. Remember that, no matter what they tell you in history class."

The United States pursued clearly defined interests in Europe after World War II. To enforce them, they founded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The first NATO secretary general, Lord Ismay, formulated its mission unequivocally: "Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down" - the Russians were to be pushed back from Europe, the Americans were to assert themselves permanently on the continent, and the Germans were to be held down.

As we can see: The strategy has been fully and successfully implemented. The Russians left in 1994, the Americans are still there, and the Germans including the EU are more dependent on the U.S. than ever. Expensive fracked gas instead of cheap Russian gas is only a comparatively small item in this calculation, just one link in the chain to which the EU now hangs tighter than before.

At the beginning of the conflict over eastern Ukraine, there were comparisons with the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, when the world was on the brink of nuclear war. The Soviet Union had deployed missiles in Cuba at Havana's request after the Bay of Pigs invasion was repelled. As a deterrent or to be able to react in case of a new invasion. The U.S. then blockaded the island and stationed missiles in Turkey. Both great powers were thus at an impasse.

At the head of the U.S. administration at the time was John F. Kennedy, and behind him his even wiser brother Robert. They understood that Cuba had a legitimate security interest, which Moscow emphasized forcefully and with missiles. The U.S. president telegraphed Khrushchev on Oct. 27, 1962, that he understood. If the Soviet Union withdrew its missiles, he would "give guarantees against invasion of Cuba. I am confident that other countries in the Western Hemisphere would be willing to do the same." And so it happened. Both sides backed down, jumped over their shadows, showed reason and saved face.

For years, Russia has demanded nothing less for itself: Security guarantees. However, there was no politician in the West of the stature of the Kennedys who would have respected this legitimate demand of Moscow and had the courage to make such a promise. Perhaps they feared suffering the same fate as these two? JFK was assassinated the following year, Robert Kennedy was shot in 1968 as he prepared to become U.S. President ...

There is undoubtedly a parallel between these two conflicts: It is their global dimension, the danger of escalation to nuclear war. De-escalation is the only reasonable alternative. And this can only be won at the negotiating table and not on the battlefield. But this presupposes a willingness to compromise on both sides. And this necessarily requires that each party must make concessions that hurt. The road back to peace and peaceful coexistence between the states involved has its price. But the cost is worth it, far below that of an uncontrollable war of annihilation.

China's President Xi Jinping has offered to act as a mediator. In doing so, he is signaling that for the People's Republic, peace is above all else, including geostrategic interests. After all, what better could happen to the Chinese than to participate in the gigantic raw material resources of Siberia, for example, if the West boycotted Russia completely? What vast hinterland would Beijing gain if the West's combined fleets plowed through the South China Sea to protect freedom of navigation and Taiwan?

That, however, is not Beijing's calculus. China does not think in years, but in millennia. And it is banking on "tianxia," the idea of a peaceful world order. This idea, which means something like "all under one sky," originated in the millennium before the dawn of time: It relies on voluntariness and not on submission, not on individuals but on the community, every change must benefit everyone, no one may lose. The policy of following the Dao of Heaven, the idea of peace, balance and justice, is called harmony instead of hegemony. For example, means New Silk Road instead of national power politics in the style of the 19th century ...

The Left Party, whose Council of Elders I chair, will hold a party congress in Erfurt in a few weeks. This has many questions to answer, but at the center can be only one task: How do we achieve that peace becomes and peace remains? All considerations should be discussed - except for those that have already been adequately answered by history. Namely, first, that more weapons do not mean more security, and second, that wars do not solve conflicts but intensify them and create new ones. Political, i.e. diplomatic, solutions are in any case the only options we should support as a peace party. "Lay down your arms!" can only be the first step; the second must be to destroy them.

Disarmament is the order of the day, not rearmament. Rearmament neither with words nor with war equipment. Most people want nothing more than to be content, that is, to live in peace, to work, to raise a family and see children grow up, to be happy. Nothing more. "That's the simple peace, don't esteem it low," says the touching song by Gisela Steineckert.

I remember Davos in early 1990, the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountains. It had been taking place since 1971, and I took part for the first and only time as prime minister; after a year, the GDR no longer existed. People came together without protocol and were able to exchange ideas casually. A dpa photographer surprised Chancellor Kohl and me as we talked in a relaxed manner on Saturday, February 3. Kohl, two years younger than me, had similar memories of the war: He had been trained as an anti-aircraft gunner in the Hitler Youth and had lost his brother in a low-flying air raid in the Ruhgebiet at the end of 1944. For him, it was irrevocable - and he and Honecker agreed on this, as they had declared together at a meeting in Moscow in 1985 - that war must never again be allowed to emanate from German soil, only peace. Kohl also stood by this statement in conversation with me. Despite all the political differences that separated us, we were in complete agreement as children burned by war: never again! How would Kohl think and decide today?

The "Washington Post" reported on the following Monday about the forum with more than 800 politicians and captains of industry from all over the world and quoted the Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski. The latter supported "the proposal for a neutral united Germany put forward last week by East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow." And Jaruzelski, the U.S. newspaper continued on Feb. 5, 1990, had ruled out a withdrawal of Soviet troops from his country "as long as there is no overall solution to the East-West division of Europe." The Russians would not withdraw from Poland until "the existing balance of forces in Central Europe is not affected."

The newspaper quoted me as saying that Modrow had indicated "that West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had given him hope that his neutrality proposal could become part of a dialogue on reunification." But General Jaruzelski also said in Davos: "Military can only invade countries - its withdrawal, however, must be organized by politics."

This statement, in my opinion, is still valid. Everything else is only for the history books.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Russian, the enemy

by Harald Neuber

[This article published on 3/14/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Der-Russe-der-Feind-6549002.html?seite=all.]

The reputation of Russia and its citizens has suffered.

Since the Russian army invaded Ukraine, there has been anger. This also has consequences for people in Germany, even the youngest

In light of the Russian intervention in Ukraine, attacks on people from Russia or with a Russian migration background are on the rise in Germany. Representatives of the SPD-led federal government are now warning of an increase in hostility. In doing so, however, they ignore the fact that the development has been promoted in word and deed from within their own ranks over the past two weeks.

According to the news magazine Der Spiegel, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has recorded hundreds of crimes against Russian or Russian-speaking people in Germany. The anti-racism commissioner of the federal government, Reem Alabali-Radovan (SPD), expressed concern in view of the figures.

According to the report, the BKA had documented 318 acts since the Russian attack on Ukraine, ranging from damage to property to insults to threats on the Internet and in public spaces.

Worldwide demonstrations against Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Washington, D.C. on March 6. Photo: Frypie / CC-BY-SA-4.0

The Berlin police alone recorded 86 corresponding offenses in the aforementioned period, and the number of unreported cases is probably higher due to offenses that were not reported to the police. Berlin had hosted the largest demonstrations in Germany against the war in Ukraine since February 24.

"In some cases, people no longer dare to speak Russian on the streets. That worries me very much," Alabali-Radovan told the newspapers of the Funke media group. The SPD politician spoke of "attacks on Russian food markets" and insults to children at school. "We must not tolerate this," Alabali-Radovan said.

Der Spiegel went on to say that many German-Russian associations and organizations have been plunged into an existential crisis by the war in Ukraine and the sometimes violent reactions in Germany. "We are facing the ruins of our work," the magazine quotes Martin Hoffmann, executive director of the German-Russian Forum in Berlin.

Karin von Bismarck, chairwoman of the board of the Economic Club Russia, also sees a necessary change of course in the voluntary work for German-Russian relations: The focus must now be solely on civil society assistance, she said. According to von Bismarck, it is important "not to develop an absolute image of the enemy toward Russians now."

Political paradoxes in times of war

Among the paradoxes of current developments is not only that anti-war protests, which are often left-liberal, seem to favor racist attacks. At the same time, right-wing structures such as the so-called Federation of Expellees (BdV) oppose "hostilities against fellow citizens with roots in Russian-speaking areas in Germany." A topsy-turvy world in wartime.

BdV President Bernd Fabritius had already remarked on this at the beginning of March that one did not want "Putin's war in Germany" and he called for "social cohesion." According to a BdV statement, Fabritius warned against "blanket discrimination and exclusion of Russian Germans, Jewish contingent refugees and Russians in Germany." These people were "among the victims of Putin's attack on freedom and peace in Europe."

Like the president of the "Landsmannschaften" from the former German eastern territories, Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had also warned on March 4 against hostilities against people with Russian roots.

The SPD politician stressed that the "horrific war of aggression against Ukraine" was "Putin's war". However, it was not "the war of people with Russian roots who live in Germany," Faeser told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Contrary to all these warnings, many institutional ties between Germany and Russia have been hastily and sweepingly severed in the past two weeks - including in the academic sphere.

Julia Herzberg, Professor of History of Russia and East Central Europe at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, sees this as putting students and academics in Russia at double risk:

Students and teachers (...) are threatened with de-registration for participating in protests, which for male students means far more than just losing their place at university. They may now be drafted and sent to the front lines in Ukraine. Because of these disturbing developments, it is important to keep academic channels to Russia open. An Iron Curtain, which German universities and science ministries are hastily knitting along with, will not bring us back to a European peace order, but it will weaken Russian civil society and also leave the opposition in Russia in the lurch.

Julia Herzberg in the FAZ

War in Ukraine, attack on Berlin elementary school

In her guest article for the FAZ, Herzberg hints at something that is currently not discussed enough: the promotion of anti-Russian racism by official bodies.

A prime example - intentionally or unintentionally - is Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who, to cite just two quotes, expressed her hope that the West's sanctions would "ruin Russia," while she saw "all human limits" crossed with head of state Vladimir Putin.

Such moral hyperbole is not without consequences. As Telepolis reported, as recently as February 24, members of the Bundestag from the three government factions and the CDU/CSU kicked out Russian candidates for a Bundestag scholarship program that, according to its own presentation, is supposed to teach "democratic values and tolerance."

Meanwhile, the anti-Russian sentiment is not only affecting scientists and young academics, but also the youngest ones: In Berlin's Marzahn district, the gymnasium of the International Lomonosov School was the target of an arson attack. "A fire broke out in the entrance area due to an incendiary device," the Berliner Morgenpost reported. A police spokesman said they assumed a connection with the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine.