Bloggers Flunk History

Just to be clear about the Victory Column: It is not a Nazi monument. Obama has not flunked history — or offended Germans — by choosing to speak there. The original source of this story is, again, my own employer, so I know when bloggers inflate the details out of all proportion. Some minor German politicians have grumbled about the Siegessäule’s history, for political reasons, but their comments aren’t very important.

Hitler did indeed move the Victory Column to its current location in Berlin, and he did like it because it commemorated Prussian victories over the French and other enemies around 1870. But no one I know drives past the Siegessäule now in their car and thinks, “Ugh, Hitler.” The Nazi contribution to the Victory Column’s “meaning” is obscure even to Germans. In fact Nazi associations are a lot more immediate with the Brandenburg Gate, because anyone with a visual sense of Third Reich history knows the story of the torchlight march by Nazis on the night Hitler was appointed chancellor. The flames flowed under the Brandenburg Gate like a river, and Max Liebermann, the Jewish artist, watched from his apartment. “Kann jar nich soviel essen, wie ich kotzen möchte,” he said. “I can’t eat enough to puke enough.”

There’s your Brandenburg Gate, Mr. Reagan (and Mr. Clinton, and Mr. Obama). No part of Berlin is not contaminated by the Nazi past. But the Siegessäule has more to do with World War I than World War II. It’s an emblem of Germany’s mood when Germany sent a fresh generation of soldiers to fight the French in 1914, laden with dreams of victory. It works for Germans as a warning against military arrogance; the name “Victory Column” itself has a bitter and ironic taste for Berliners. Just the sort of chastening America, and even certain candidates for president—but especially some bloggers—might want to heed.

     posted 23 July 2008 by Michael Scott Moore

  1. Someone on the Well was passing gas about “a monument that stinks of the Nazi past” and I reminded them that not only is there not a single street corner in Berlin that doesn’t so reek, but that a good half of them also reek of the Communist past. It’s not Obama’s fault—or the fault of anyone caught up in this molehill—that Berlin chooses to dwell on this and downplay the other bits of its rich history, nor that the U.S. media seizes on that as part of its reflexive Germans = Nazis trope.

    — Ed Ward    Jul 23, 02:37 pm    #

  2. thanks for the link!

    i appreciate your honesty:

    “Just the sort of chastening America, and even certain candidates for president—but especially some bloggers—might want to heed.”

    me and my allies on the right do not believe the USA needs chastening.

    you and your comrades on the postmodern left share this attitude with al qaeda.

    which partly explains why you are birds of a feather.

    BTW: no one can say with any certainty what obama believes: he is not an honest steadfast lefty like kucinich, but a corrupt phony chicago pol.

    — reliapundit    Jul 24, 12:13 am    #

  3. reliapundit needs chastising , not all Americans or America. Bush needs chastising. People who voted for Bush TWICE! or who plan on voting for McCain need chastising and need to apologize to all patriotic Americans and the world for there stupidity and or fascism. Bin Laden is grateful for having adversaries like craven coward reliapundit republicans but real Americans are ashamed.

    — gocart mozart    Jul 24, 01:09 am    #

  4. Do0d!

    Get some lower case!!

    — Twisted_Colour    Jul 24, 02:37 am    #

  5. ... Is this site coming out in all caps on some computers? That may be a quirk in some versions of Explorer. The only parts of the site that should be in all caps are the blog headlines. I thought we’d fixed that…

    — Mike    Jul 24, 10:17 am    #

  6. Realpundit, your leaps of logic are like short circuits.

    — Mike    Jul 24, 10:58 am    #

  7. The victory column is probably more famous around the world as an icon of the love parade by now. I should be watching his speech right at this very moment, but my daughter would rather watch pingu…

    — Paul    Jul 24, 07:07 pm    #

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