70 years have passed since the Second World War, but it has not become a forgotten "history", and people are constantly asking, how did all this happen? Reflections on history torture human morality and conscience. For 70 years, Germany, Italy, and Japan, which were axis powers at the time, were also reflecting on that period of history, but in their attitude of summarizing and reflecting on history, the three countries did not stand on the same height.
First, Germany
In the 70 years since the end of the war, Germany has carried out a comprehensive and profound reflection on the heinous crimes committed by the Nazis in the Second World War. By reflecting on history and war reparations, Germany has won the recognition and respect of the international community, thus stepping out of shame, entering prosperity and becoming a responsible great power on the international stage today. Reflection in Germany is a process that gradually deepens and is reflected in practical action.
1. Reflection is in-depth
In the years immediately after the end of the war, german society generally had a mentality of "winner prince, loser thief", and the reflection on World War II was mainly limited to the academic scope. In September 1951, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Adenauer, issued a statement stating: "The majority of the German people oppose the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews, and the majority of the German people have nothing to do with such atrocities." "The Adenauer administration is trying to get rid of the baggage of history as soon as possible. In September 1949 and June 1954, the Federal German Parliament passed the amnesty bill twice, and even some Nazi leaders who had directly participated in the Holocaust were released, and public opinion rarely exposed Nazi crimes.
In the 1960s, the Federal Republic of Germany began a deep reflection on the war. In 1963, the trial of Nazis at Auschwitz in Frankfurt attracted widespread public attention. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the victory in World War II, the then President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Heinrich Lübeck, spoke on the Liberation Day of the Bergen-Belson concentration camp, the Federal Republic of Germany began to break the silence on Nazi crimes, and public opinion began to widely discuss the Holocaust. Young people are starting to ask their parents: What is the Holocaust? What is a concentration camp? What did you do in the war? Are you a member of the Nazi Party? In 1970, Federal Chancellor Brandt knelt in front of the Monument to the Jewish Victims in Poland to express Germany's apology and confession for World War II.
After an open and extensive discussion, German society was truly aware of Germany's guilt in World War II. The turning point is that in 1985, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, President Of the Federal Republic of Germany, Weizsäcker, made it clear: "May 8 is the day of liberation, and we are all liberated (on this day) from the Nazi dictatorship." The cognitive shift from "defeat" to "liberation" marked an important leap forward.
2. Actions show sincerity
Germany's reflection on World War II did not stop at confessions, confessions and apologies, but also made its attitude clear on the issue of war reparations, and successively paid huge reparations to Poland, Russia, the former Czechoslovakia and other victimized countries and the Jewish people who suffered. Upon the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, it began to return property confiscated by the Nazis and compensate those who had suffered damages. In 1956, the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany passed the Reparations Act for Victims of The Nazis, and 4 million people received compensation in the decades that followed. In June 2001, the German parliament approved the establishment of a $4.5 billion fund to compensate laborers forced to sell coolies for German companies during the Nazi era. More than 6,300 companies contributed to the fund. By 2002, Germany had paid $104 billion in reparations, and it continued to pay $624 million a year to 100,000 victims in pensions.
As the years passed, fewer and fewer witnesses to the devastation of World War II. Therefore, since the 1990s, all strata of German society have held various commemorative events every year at the sites of concentration camps, major battlefields, museums, and the cemeteries of Western Allied and Soviet forces to remind Germans not to forget and ignore the crimes committed by the Nazis. At the same time, the government has also taken positive measures to educate young people through the revision of history textbooks and other means. German education law clearly stipulates that German history textbooks must contain sufficient content of Nazi history. In accordance with this regulation, the Federal Council of Ministers of Culture, composed of the Ministers of Culture and Education of the Länder, establishes, by resolution, the basic framework for the national history textbook. Within this basic framework, the cantons prepare, approve and publish history textbooks under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Education.
In 1995, the German government built the "Land of Terror" war memorial in the center of Berlin to expose the atrocities of the Nazis, and this year built a Holocaust memorial and memorial in Berlin. The main World War II battlefield sites in Germany have monuments and tombstones of the Red Army and the Western Allies. Every year, German leaders attend commemorative events held in these places to commemorate the heroes who died in the battle against the German army. Hitler and his aides became infamous in Germany, where there were no graves of them or any of their monuments on German territory.
3. Sincerity of heart has its own returns
The German government has been taking drastic measures to resolutely combat neo-Nazism, racism and other far-right forces. In 1994, the German Parliament passed the Anti-Nazi and Anti-Criminal Offences Act, which legally limited the resurgence of the Nazis. The Reflection of the Germans really touched the soul of the nation. As German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder put it: "The memory of Nazism and its wars, genocides and other atrocities has become an integral part of our own national identity." "Germany's sincere reflection has won wide recognition from the international community and has also won Germany friends. Experts and scholars here generally believe that one of the most typical examples is that if Germany had not been more thorough in its confession to World War II, if Germany was still considered to pose a military threat, the United States, the former Soviet Union, and Germany's neighbors would not have agreed to German reunification, and reunification would have been at least much more difficult than it is now. Why was Germany able to reflect thoroughly on World War II? Historians believe that one of the important reasons is that Hitler, the culprit of the war, killed himself at the end of the war, the anti-fascist alliance completely destroyed the military, political, judicial and other systems of Nazi Germany, and Germany completely "started from scratch", which is the basis for its complete denial of Nazis and complete confession. At the same time, the post-war Allies prosecuted 70,000 German war criminals, convicted 36,000 people, dismissed a large number of so-called coercors, and carried out a more comprehensive liquidation of the Nazis.
4. The attitude of the successive Presidents of Germany
(1) As early as 1949, Theodor House, then President of the Federal Republic of Germany, spoke publicly of the Nazi crimes against the Jews: This period of history is and will be a disgrace to all of us Germans.
(2) Twenty-one years later, one man fought this disgrace alone: on December 7, 1970, then Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Willy Brandt, knelt on his knees in front of the Monument to the Jewish Victims in Warsaw. Apologize for the crimes that Germany has committed. The media commented: Brandt fell to his knees, and all the Germans stood up completely.
(3) In June 1995, then-German Chancellor Kohl knelt down again in front of the Monument to the Victims of the Jewish Victims in Israel to apologize and set up a Committee of Atonement to atone for the sins of the countries that had been invaded by Germany in World War II.
(4) "We cannot recover the past history, but we can learn from that history, from the shame that our country has never forgotten." Germany will not yield to any attempt to forget or not recognize that period of history. On April 10, 2005, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's muffled words echoed over the site of the Nazi concentration camp in Buchenwald.
On December 7, 1970, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Brandt was in the Polish capital
Kneeling in front of the Monument to the Jewish Martyrs in Warsaw, he asked for forgiveness from the victims of the war on behalf of Germany.
On April 10, 2005, at the site of buchenwald concentration camp near the eastern German city of Weimar, German Chancellor Schroeder laid flowers at the monument to the camp victims
70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 2015, Merkel with survivors
The comparison of the attitudes of Germany and Japan on the two issues is very illustrative. First, Germany designated the day of surrender of the Nazi German government as the National Liberation Day, indicating that the German government regarded the surrender of Nazi Germany as a holiday for the German nation. Secondly, when the German government and public opinion talk about the huge casualties caused by the war to Germany, they always emphasize that this is a disaster brought to the German people by the War of Aggression launched by the Nazi regime, and therefore, in order to prevent the disaster from happening again, it is necessary to put an end to all possibilities of the revival of fascism in Germany. This is a complete separation from the past history of aggression. Look at Japan. On the one hand, Japanese politicians always avoid the word "surrender" and prefer to use the term "final war" to regard Japan's defeat and surrender as a disgrace. On the other hand, when japan's mainstream political leaders talk about the loss of life and property of the Japanese people in World War II, they often emphasize that the Japanese people have also been attacked by the atomic bomb, as if Japan's victims were the same as those of the countries invaded by Japan. This blurs the distinction between aggression and aggression, and it is impossible to draw a clear line with the militarism of the past.
Ii. Italy
The publication of The Diary of Anne Frank in previous years caused a huge sensation around the world, but the most striking reaction came from Germany and Italy. In the post-war years, the Italian government tried to educate the people about the evil nature of Mussolini fascism, but the results were not satisfactory. However, Anne's diary shook them greatly. When the play "Anne Frank", based on Anne's diary, was staged in many Italian cities, Italy fell into deep contemplation and reflection. Anne was buried in a mass grave at the Belson concentration camp. People come here every day to hold memorial services. The words of a 17-year-old Italian secondary school student represent the thoughts and feelings of all: "Anne ended her life so pitifully, at a younger age than all of us. She died because someone had decided to exterminate her race. This inhuman hatred must not be allowed to recur among our peoples. "Now, The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the must-read books for Italian middle school students. Italy played a deeply disgraceful role in World War II and the Holocaust, and Italians hope that this scene will never be repeated. Like many European countries, history textbooks are an important means for governments to prevent the recurrence of this tragedy. Publishing houses that publish textbooks must be reviewed by the Textbook Committee of the Department of Public Education, and only books that do not contradict history and embody correct values can be approved for publication, and only those conditions are eligible to be designated as textbooks. Textbooks can describe history without any scruples. In one textbook, the Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia was described as follows: "After a long period of deliberate planning, the Fascist regime of Mussolini created an incident, found an excuse to invade and occupy Ethiopia, and carried out a brutal colonial rule, which was sanctioned by the League of Nations." ”
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Italy's National Liberation Day, solemn commemorations were held throughout Italy, from the government to the people. President Ciampi, who is nearly 85 years old, flew to Milan to attend a commemorative rally there, at which he stressed the steadfastness of all Italian citizens in their steadfast defence of the pacifist constitution adopted in 1947.
After the war, in the face of the darkest page in human history, Germany, Italy and Japan, which are also the main culprits of war, have shown completely different historical attitudes, which has to be pondered. Facing up to the history of war is to maintain today's peace, and history cannot be changed. Mankind must treat history correctly, and only by facing history and drawing lessons can we truly face the future and cherish peace, and only by truly taking history as a mirror can we find the correct path connecting history, today and the future!
3. Japan
In Japan, there are quite a few people who cannot face history itself, and they downplay the history of Aggression by Japanese militarism. These people represent a special national psychology, that is, the inferiority and arrogance of an island nation. They regard China as a weak country, do not recognize the Chinese battlefield as the main battlefield, and psychologically think that it is justified to be defeated by the United States. Japan destroyed a large number of war archives after the war, taking advantage of the incompleteness of the archives to create a kind of sadness.
The dispute between East Asian neighbors and Japan began with the revision of textbooks and extended to the sovereignty dispute over Dokdo in the Sea of Japan and the anti-Japanese demonstrations in South Korea, to the dispute against Japan's accession to the Security Council, disputes over the east China Sea oil fields, and anti-Japanese demonstrations in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. Not only was the South Korean president harshly critical, but the Chinese side also took a tough stance, believing that the responsibility for the anti-Japanese trend was in Japan, and not only did it not need to apologize, but Premier Wen Jiabao refused to receive the visiting Japanese Foreign Minister Machimura Nobutaka. Singapore also criticized Japan's tampering with textbooks, among other things, while the foreign ministers of Southeast Asian countries attending the Asian-African Summit almost unanimously expressed difficulty in agreeing with Japan's approach.
Japan's understanding of World War II, from the post-war to the present, in the face of relevant issues, has made it clear that "from the hands of european and American empires, liberate the colonized East Asian countries and establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" is the main thinking of the Japanese leadership in educating and driving the people to the battlefield, and it is also its contribution to the East Asian countries and peoples. Although this goal cannot be achieved because of defeat, it does not mean that there is no relative effort. Indeed, even after World War II, in the process of eliminating foreign forces in many East Asian countries, there are still traces of Japanese military advisory groups, such as Vietnam's expulsion of French forces, and even in the name of "white groups", they assisted the Kuomintang in opposing the Communist Party to protect Taiwan. These processes and achievements have further strengthened the Understanding of the Japanese Leadership's Rationalization of World War II Behavior; it is inevitable and appropriate to reclaim Ryukyu, educate the people with this knowledge, and transfer the A-class war criminals (such as national heroes in the eyes of outsiders) to the Yasukuni Shrine and worship them.
However, Japan's act of "entering and leaving China and liberating Asia" has caused millions of casualties among the people of its own country and neighboring countries, and the pain of family destruction and displacement is not a "necessary evil in the process of liberation" and can be explained by prevarication. The gap in the perception of the aggressor and the aggressor is an important factor in Japan's inability to gain the understanding of its neighbors and the people like Germany.
Since 1955, Japan's five-year system has taken shape, with the opposition Socialist Party as the main body of the reformists and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party as the main body of the conservatives, the two sides are facing each other, that is, the situation of long-term confrontation between the left and right factions has been formed. Although the conservative rightists held more than half of the seats in the National Assembly, they could not cross the threshold of two-thirds of the constitutional amendment, which allowed the new constitution of post-war Japan to be retained and has not been amended. However, as the structure of cold war antagonism disintegrated, the atmosphere of ideological confrontation in Japan also faded, and the socialist and communist political forces, which symbolized the left," declined rapidly, forcing the socialist party to change its name to the Democratic Socialist Party to be maintained.
In contrast, the strength of the right wing in Japanese politics has increased significantly, not only the passage of constitutional amendments can be expected, but also the case of seeking permanent membership in the UN Security Council is also active. The textbook case has become a routine, and the prime minister and cabinet members visiting the Yasukuni Shrine show the indicators of the right-wing behavior in Japan.
China's rapid rise in recent years, the pressure to replace the world's third-largest economy, and China's rapidly rising military power, coupled with Japan's unattainable influence on international politics, have made the right-leaning Japanese leadership nervous. Internally, we should speed up the project of reforming the Constitution, hoping that in a short period of time, we can complete the political and economic "normal country" with complete autonomy and will no longer be constrained by Article 9 of the Constitution; externally, under the catalysis of the common interests of the US-Japan alliance, we will step up our efforts to obtain positions in important international organizations such as permanent members of the UN Security Council, so as to strengthen its international status and increase its voice and influence. Japan's perception of World War II and its positive internal and external pace have intensified the enmity and enmity with its East Asian neighbors since World War II, and ignited the anti-Japanese trend in East Asia. If it continues, it will inevitably damage Japan's short-term development goals, so the change of the Japanese cabinet from a strong to a moderate posture and Prime Minister Koizumi's apology statement are the corresponding ways to damage control. However, if Japan wants to completely resolve its grievances and become a normal country in East Asia, it must still start from adjusting the leadership's understanding of World War II, and resolve it with practical actions and through intergovernmental coordination, so as to have the opportunity to truly unload the original sin of World War II. Source: China Net