German historian: Berlin long mistakenly equated soviet WWII victims with Russia alone

Until February 24, 2022, Soviet victims of World War II were almost entirely and mistakenly identified exclusively with Russia in German society and politics, while Ukraine and Belarus – the main arenas of the Nazi war and the Holocaust – were marginalized.

This was stated in an interview with Ukrinform by Franziska Davies, Associate Professor at the Department of Eastern and Central Eastern European History at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

“Until February 24, 2022, Soviet victims of World War II were effectively identified exclusively with Russia in the German perception. Moreover, we had the absurd situation in which both politics and society commonly justified the refusal to supply weapons by citing a special responsibility toward Russia because of World War II. To legitimize this specifically through World War II and responsibility toward Russia was essentially taking the lessons of World War II to the point of absurdity,” she said.

Davies explained that Ukraine and Belarus, which were fully occupied and became the main arenas of both the occupation war and the Holocaust, had long been marginalized in German memory culture. According to her, this is linked not only to a flawed interpretation of the lessons of World War II, but also to a deeper “colonial complicity” – a tradition of joint imperial actions by Germany and Russia at the expense of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. She said this tradition dates back to the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century and reached a bloody climax with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939.

“This shows how egocentric German memory culture still remains. For Poland, for example, the experience of occupation by two totalitarian regimes is central to understanding World War II,” the historian noted.

According to her, “this dimension still plays a comparatively minor role” in Germany.

“It has become more visible, as has the realization that Ukraine was the main arena of events and a victim, of course, of Germany, but not only Germany, also of the Soviet Union. However, this old way of thinking has still not disappeared,” Davies added.

Read also: Russia-Ukraine war changes Germany’s strategic culture, Bundeswehr general says

As reported by Ukrinform, a Ukrainian march took place in Berlin to honor the memory of Ukrainian victims of World War II and to demand that the Bundestag create a separate memorial site.

Photo from the archive of Franziska Davies