From “German Fatherland” to “Christian Occident”: (Re-)Education and White Supremacist Ideology in Post-WWII Germany

• In Event: 50460 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7: Nations and Nationalisms

Abstract

How malleable are ideas of difference and supremacy? And which factors shape how they change over time? I use the case of post-WWII Germany to trace how the first generation of Germans growing up after the Holocaust and the defeat of the Nazi regime – a critical juncture regarding education and political socialization – thought about what defined the German nation and Europe in the world, and how they conceptualized difference and supremacy. By analyzing 125 archival school student essays from across 1950s West Germany, I show how students defined German-ness and European-ness on cultural, rather than racial, grounds, and blurred symbolic boundaries within Europe while brightening them vis-à-vis other parts of the world. Criticizing nationalism and emphasizing a joint European culture, the student writings resonate with the goals of the Allies’ re-education reforms, while nonetheless reproducing ideas of supremacy. In addition, the essays show how the discursive shift from “race” towards “culture” occurred before a public reckoning with the Holocaust and was instead motivated by a geopolitical context marked by the loss of empire, decolonization, and the Cold War. More broadly, the essays demonstrate the key influence of colonialism and fading empire on early European integration and push us to question assumptions about an integrated Europe as an inherently progressive force.

Author

• Berenike Firestone, Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)