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What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present.
DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present.
DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present.
DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present.
DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. \u201cAll of us, whether guilty or not,\u201d continued von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s 40th-anniversary address<\/a>, \u201cwhether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. Those powerful words emerged with special force because von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s father had loyally served the Hitler regime as an important diplomat\u2014and been convicted by a Nuremberg tribunal of war crimes. The future president of a united Germany, a six-year combat veteran of the Wehrmacht, served as part of his father\u2019s legal defense team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll of us, whether guilty or not,\u201d continued von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s 40th-anniversary address<\/a>, \u201cwhether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. There was no one moment of redemption, but a steady process of acknowledgment. At the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, West German President Richard von Weizs\u00e4cker spoke of \u201cthe attempt by too many people, including those of my generation, who were young and were not involved in planning the events and carrying them out, not to take note of what was happening. There were many ways of not burdening one\u2019s conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those powerful words emerged with special force because von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s father had loyally served the Hitler regime as an important diplomat\u2014and been convicted by a Nuremberg tribunal of war crimes. The future president of a united Germany, a six-year combat veteran of the Wehrmacht, served as part of his father\u2019s legal defense team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll of us, whether guilty or not,\u201d continued von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s 40th-anniversary address<\/a>, \u201cwhether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. But the successes kept coming. In Exorcising Hitler<\/em>, Frederick Taylor vividly describes the two decades after the war as a \u201csleep cure.\u201d And when the sleeper at last awoke, jolted by the social and political convulsions of the middle 1960s, it turned out that German democracy had somehow steadied its foundations after all. After 20 years of conservative governments, the elections of 1969 at last alternated power, electing the first Social Democratic chancellor since the Weimar Republic. Justice was never fully done, but memory returned\u2014and returned with ever more onrushing intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no one moment of redemption, but a steady process of acknowledgment. At the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, West German President Richard von Weizs\u00e4cker spoke of \u201cthe attempt by too many people, including those of my generation, who were young and were not involved in planning the events and carrying them out, not to take note of what was happening. There were many ways of not burdening one\u2019s conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those powerful words emerged with special force because von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s father had loyally served the Hitler regime as an important diplomat\u2014and been convicted by a Nuremberg tribunal of war crimes. The future president of a united Germany, a six-year combat veteran of the Wehrmacht, served as part of his father\u2019s legal defense team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll of us, whether guilty or not,\u201d continued von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s 40th-anniversary address<\/a>, \u201cwhether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. Political democracy certainly is accepted in Germany in the form of what in America is called a working proposition<\/em>, something that has functioned well up until now and has permitted and even promoted prosperity. But democracy has not become naturalized to the point where people truly experience it as their own and see themselves as subjects of the political process. Democracy is perceived as one system among others, as though one could choose from a menu between communism, democracy, fascism, and monarchy: but democracy is not identified with the people themselves as the expression of their political maturity. It is appraised according to its success or setbacks \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n But the successes kept coming. In Exorcising Hitler<\/em>, Frederick Taylor vividly describes the two decades after the war as a \u201csleep cure.\u201d And when the sleeper at last awoke, jolted by the social and political convulsions of the middle 1960s, it turned out that German democracy had somehow steadied its foundations after all. After 20 years of conservative governments, the elections of 1969 at last alternated power, electing the first Social Democratic chancellor since the Weimar Republic. Justice was never fully done, but memory returned\u2014and returned with ever more onrushing intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no one moment of redemption, but a steady process of acknowledgment. At the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, West German President Richard von Weizs\u00e4cker spoke of \u201cthe attempt by too many people, including those of my generation, who were young and were not involved in planning the events and carrying them out, not to take note of what was happening. There were many ways of not burdening one\u2019s conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those powerful words emerged with special force because von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s father had loyally served the Hitler regime as an important diplomat\u2014and been convicted by a Nuremberg tribunal of war crimes. The future president of a united Germany, a six-year combat veteran of the Wehrmacht, served as part of his father\u2019s legal defense team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll of us, whether guilty or not,\u201d continued von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s 40th-anniversary address<\/a>, \u201cwhether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. This approach seemed a profoundly corrupt bargain to many who watched it in the making. In a famous essay from 1959, the philosopher Theodor Adorno bitterly complained<\/a>, \u201cThe murdered are to be cheated out of the single remaining thing that our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance.\u201d In that same essay, Adorno wondered how committed, really, the Germans were to democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political democracy certainly is accepted in Germany in the form of what in America is called a working proposition<\/em>, something that has functioned well up until now and has permitted and even promoted prosperity. But democracy has not become naturalized to the point where people truly experience it as their own and see themselves as subjects of the political process. Democracy is perceived as one system among others, as though one could choose from a menu between communism, democracy, fascism, and monarchy: but democracy is not identified with the people themselves as the expression of their political maturity. It is appraised according to its success or setbacks \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n But the successes kept coming. In Exorcising Hitler<\/em>, Frederick Taylor vividly describes the two decades after the war as a \u201csleep cure.\u201d And when the sleeper at last awoke, jolted by the social and political convulsions of the middle 1960s, it turned out that German democracy had somehow steadied its foundations after all. After 20 years of conservative governments, the elections of 1969 at last alternated power, electing the first Social Democratic chancellor since the Weimar Republic. Justice was never fully done, but memory returned\u2014and returned with ever more onrushing intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no one moment of redemption, but a steady process of acknowledgment. At the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, West German President Richard von Weizs\u00e4cker spoke of \u201cthe attempt by too many people, including those of my generation, who were young and were not involved in planning the events and carrying them out, not to take note of what was happening. There were many ways of not burdening one\u2019s conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those powerful words emerged with special force because von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s father had loyally served the Hitler regime as an important diplomat\u2014and been convicted by a Nuremberg tribunal of war crimes. The future president of a united Germany, a six-year combat veteran of the Wehrmacht, served as part of his father\u2019s legal defense team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll of us, whether guilty or not,\u201d continued von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s 40th-anniversary address<\/a>, \u201cwhether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. Read: What America taught the Nazis<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach seemed a profoundly corrupt bargain to many who watched it in the making. In a famous essay from 1959, the philosopher Theodor Adorno bitterly complained<\/a>, \u201cThe murdered are to be cheated out of the single remaining thing that our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance.\u201d In that same essay, Adorno wondered how committed, really, the Germans were to democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political democracy certainly is accepted in Germany in the form of what in America is called a working proposition<\/em>, something that has functioned well up until now and has permitted and even promoted prosperity. But democracy has not become naturalized to the point where people truly experience it as their own and see themselves as subjects of the political process. Democracy is perceived as one system among others, as though one could choose from a menu between communism, democracy, fascism, and monarchy: but democracy is not identified with the people themselves as the expression of their political maturity. It is appraised according to its success or setbacks \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n But the successes kept coming. In Exorcising Hitler<\/em>, Frederick Taylor vividly describes the two decades after the war as a \u201csleep cure.\u201d And when the sleeper at last awoke, jolted by the social and political convulsions of the middle 1960s, it turned out that German democracy had somehow steadied its foundations after all. After 20 years of conservative governments, the elections of 1969 at last alternated power, electing the first Social Democratic chancellor since the Weimar Republic. Justice was never fully done, but memory returned\u2014and returned with ever more onrushing intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no one moment of redemption, but a steady process of acknowledgment. At the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, West German President Richard von Weizs\u00e4cker spoke of \u201cthe attempt by too many people, including those of my generation, who were young and were not involved in planning the events and carrying them out, not to take note of what was happening. There were many ways of not burdening one\u2019s conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those powerful words emerged with special force because von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s father had loyally served the Hitler regime as an important diplomat\u2014and been convicted by a Nuremberg tribunal of war crimes. The future president of a united Germany, a six-year combat veteran of the Wehrmacht, served as part of his father\u2019s legal defense team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll of us, whether guilty or not,\u201d continued von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s 40th-anniversary address<\/a>, \u201cwhether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. Yet it was not only guilt that was suppressed. It was equally impolitic to discuss German suffering during the war and aftermath. In a 1999 book, W. G. Sebald remarks upon the silence adopted by the postwar generation about the ruin of their country in 1945\u2014not only the smashing of German cities by Allied bombing, but the expulsion of German populations from ancient homes, the mass rape of German women by Soviet soldiers: \u201cThere was a tacit agreement, equally binding on everyone, that the true state of material and moral ruin in which the country found itself was not to be described. The darkest aspects of the final act of destruction, as experienced by the great majority of the German population, remained under a kind of taboo like a shameful family secret \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: What America taught the Nazis<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach seemed a profoundly corrupt bargain to many who watched it in the making. In a famous essay from 1959, the philosopher Theodor Adorno bitterly complained<\/a>, \u201cThe murdered are to be cheated out of the single remaining thing that our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance.\u201d In that same essay, Adorno wondered how committed, really, the Germans were to democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political democracy certainly is accepted in Germany in the form of what in America is called a working proposition<\/em>, something that has functioned well up until now and has permitted and even promoted prosperity. But democracy has not become naturalized to the point where people truly experience it as their own and see themselves as subjects of the political process. Democracy is perceived as one system among others, as though one could choose from a menu between communism, democracy, fascism, and monarchy: but democracy is not identified with the people themselves as the expression of their political maturity. It is appraised according to its success or setbacks \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n But the successes kept coming. In Exorcising Hitler<\/em>, Frederick Taylor vividly describes the two decades after the war as a \u201csleep cure.\u201d And when the sleeper at last awoke, jolted by the social and political convulsions of the middle 1960s, it turned out that German democracy had somehow steadied its foundations after all. After 20 years of conservative governments, the elections of 1969 at last alternated power, electing the first Social Democratic chancellor since the Weimar Republic. Justice was never fully done, but memory returned\u2014and returned with ever more onrushing intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no one moment of redemption, but a steady process of acknowledgment. At the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, West German President Richard von Weizs\u00e4cker spoke of \u201cthe attempt by too many people, including those of my generation, who were young and were not involved in planning the events and carrying them out, not to take note of what was happening. There were many ways of not burdening one\u2019s conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those powerful words emerged with special force because von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s father had loyally served the Hitler regime as an important diplomat\u2014and been convicted by a Nuremberg tribunal of war crimes. The future president of a united Germany, a six-year combat veteran of the Wehrmacht, served as part of his father\u2019s legal defense team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll of us, whether guilty or not,\u201d continued von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s 40th-anniversary address<\/a>, \u201cwhether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. So many people were implicated in Nazi crimes that comprehensive justice could never command democratic assent. The price of democratic assent was to pretend that the crimes were the work of a tiny minority, of which the majority had no idea. \u201cDemocracy had to be built on a shaky foundation of justice delayed\u2014hence denied \u2026\u201d The historian Joachim Fest quoted<\/a> his own father\u2019s answer to questions about Nazi crimes: \u201cI did not want to talk about it then and I don\u2019t want to talk about it now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet it was not only guilt that was suppressed. It was equally impolitic to discuss German suffering during the war and aftermath. In a 1999 book, W. G. Sebald remarks upon the silence adopted by the postwar generation about the ruin of their country in 1945\u2014not only the smashing of German cities by Allied bombing, but the expulsion of German populations from ancient homes, the mass rape of German women by Soviet soldiers: \u201cThere was a tacit agreement, equally binding on everyone, that the true state of material and moral ruin in which the country found itself was not to be described. The darkest aspects of the final act of destruction, as experienced by the great majority of the German population, remained under a kind of taboo like a shameful family secret \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: What America taught the Nazis<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach seemed a profoundly corrupt bargain to many who watched it in the making. In a famous essay from 1959, the philosopher Theodor Adorno bitterly complained<\/a>, \u201cThe murdered are to be cheated out of the single remaining thing that our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance.\u201d In that same essay, Adorno wondered how committed, really, the Germans were to democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political democracy certainly is accepted in Germany in the form of what in America is called a working proposition<\/em>, something that has functioned well up until now and has permitted and even promoted prosperity. But democracy has not become naturalized to the point where people truly experience it as their own and see themselves as subjects of the political process. Democracy is perceived as one system among others, as though one could choose from a menu between communism, democracy, fascism, and monarchy: but democracy is not identified with the people themselves as the expression of their political maturity. It is appraised according to its success or setbacks \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n But the successes kept coming. In Exorcising Hitler<\/em>, Frederick Taylor vividly describes the two decades after the war as a \u201csleep cure.\u201d And when the sleeper at last awoke, jolted by the social and political convulsions of the middle 1960s, it turned out that German democracy had somehow steadied its foundations after all. After 20 years of conservative governments, the elections of 1969 at last alternated power, electing the first Social Democratic chancellor since the Weimar Republic. Justice was never fully done, but memory returned\u2014and returned with ever more onrushing intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no one moment of redemption, but a steady process of acknowledgment. At the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, West German President Richard von Weizs\u00e4cker spoke of \u201cthe attempt by too many people, including those of my generation, who were young and were not involved in planning the events and carrying them out, not to take note of what was happening. There were many ways of not burdening one\u2019s conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those powerful words emerged with special force because von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s father had loyally served the Hitler regime as an important diplomat\u2014and been convicted by a Nuremberg tribunal of war crimes. The future president of a united Germany, a six-year combat veteran of the Wehrmacht, served as part of his father\u2019s legal defense team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll of us, whether guilty or not,\u201d continued von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s 40th-anniversary address<\/a>, \u201cwhether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, the Berlin Wall cracked open. The East German state had systematically disclaimed responsibility for Nazi crimes. In 1964, a New York Times<\/em> correspondent reported<\/a> with amazement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the remarkable discoveries on a journey through East Germany is that virtually no one holds himself accountable in any way for the Germany of the past\u2014or even related to it \u2026 Everything that went wrong in prewar Germany is explained as the consequence of capitalism and thus as something that could never recur in this half of the country. The injustices of Stalinist times a decade ago and more recent totalitarian acts are depicted as wholly unrelated excesses peculiar to the early years of a Communist society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Purified by communism, the East German authorities could, guilt-free, espouse paranoid anti-Semitism, spy on their citizens, even order their soldiers to goose-step on parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the state was reunited in 1990, it committed itself even more aggressively than the old West Germany to building national identity upon memory. A monument to the murdered Jews of Europe occupies the center of rebuilt Berlin. Hobble stones<\/a> force their attention on pedestrians at places of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But eastern Germans do not always appreciate the history lessons, especially given that they have had to rethink their past without any rerun of the economic miracle in the west a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Teaching kids about genocide<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite the contrary: Unification brought the West German state its very own Rust Belt, and all the troubles that attend upon post-industrialization. To gain consent from its neighbors for unification, Germany pledged itself to even tighter European integration, including a single European currency<\/a>\u2014and all the troubles that followed from that<\/em> for less-competitive regions in Europe, which include the German east as well as the Mediterranean south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political management has become only more challenging since Angela Merkel\u2019s 2015 decision to open Germany\u2019s borders to 1.2 million refugees from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems\u2014more problems!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet here it is, the 70th anniversary of the German state, and for all those problems, the promise of article 1 of the German constitution has indeed been honored. Adenauer\u2019s gamble\u2014democracy first, justice later\u2014has been vindicated. And those of us in other democracies are maybe called upon to search our own consciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is our plan to rehabilitate our societies from their recent turn to authoritarianism and kleptocracy? How do we memorialize the wrongs done by our societies? How much justice can our democracies withstand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 70 years of self-examination, modern Germany has some lessons to teach and some wisdom to impart from its own hard experience to those perhaps excessively proud of their own imperfect past and deteriorating present. In his superb history of the postwar aftermath in the two divided Germanies, Jeffrey Herf attributes this insight to Konrad Adenauer, West Germany\u2019s first chancellor: You could have democracy in post-Nazi Germany or justice in post-Nazi Germany, but not both.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So many people were implicated in Nazi crimes that comprehensive justice could never command democratic assent. The price of democratic assent was to pretend that the crimes were the work of a tiny minority, of which the majority had no idea. \u201cDemocracy had to be built on a shaky foundation of justice delayed\u2014hence denied \u2026\u201d The historian Joachim Fest quoted<\/a> his own father\u2019s answer to questions about Nazi crimes: \u201cI did not want to talk about it then and I don\u2019t want to talk about it now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet it was not only guilt that was suppressed. It was equally impolitic to discuss German suffering during the war and aftermath. In a 1999 book, W. G. Sebald remarks upon the silence adopted by the postwar generation about the ruin of their country in 1945\u2014not only the smashing of German cities by Allied bombing, but the expulsion of German populations from ancient homes, the mass rape of German women by Soviet soldiers: \u201cThere was a tacit agreement, equally binding on everyone, that the true state of material and moral ruin in which the country found itself was not to be described. The darkest aspects of the final act of destruction, as experienced by the great majority of the German population, remained under a kind of taboo like a shameful family secret \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: What America taught the Nazis<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach seemed a profoundly corrupt bargain to many who watched it in the making. In a famous essay from 1959, the philosopher Theodor Adorno bitterly complained<\/a>, \u201cThe murdered are to be cheated out of the single remaining thing that our powerlessness can offer them: remembrance.\u201d In that same essay, Adorno wondered how committed, really, the Germans were to democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Political democracy certainly is accepted in Germany in the form of what in America is called a working proposition<\/em>, something that has functioned well up until now and has permitted and even promoted prosperity. But democracy has not become naturalized to the point where people truly experience it as their own and see themselves as subjects of the political process. Democracy is perceived as one system among others, as though one could choose from a menu between communism, democracy, fascism, and monarchy: but democracy is not identified with the people themselves as the expression of their political maturity. It is appraised according to its success or setbacks \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n But the successes kept coming. In Exorcising Hitler<\/em>, Frederick Taylor vividly describes the two decades after the war as a \u201csleep cure.\u201d And when the sleeper at last awoke, jolted by the social and political convulsions of the middle 1960s, it turned out that German democracy had somehow steadied its foundations after all. After 20 years of conservative governments, the elections of 1969 at last alternated power, electing the first Social Democratic chancellor since the Weimar Republic. Justice was never fully done, but memory returned\u2014and returned with ever more onrushing intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no one moment of redemption, but a steady process of acknowledgment. At the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, West German President Richard von Weizs\u00e4cker spoke of \u201cthe attempt by too many people, including those of my generation, who were young and were not involved in planning the events and carrying them out, not to take note of what was happening. There were many ways of not burdening one\u2019s conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping mum. When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust then became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it or even suspected anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those powerful words emerged with special force because von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s father had loyally served the Hitler regime as an important diplomat\u2014and been convicted by a Nuremberg tribunal of war crimes. The future president of a united Germany, a six-year combat veteran of the Wehrmacht, served as part of his father\u2019s legal defense team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll of us, whether guilty or not,\u201d continued von Weizs\u00e4cker\u2019s 40th-anniversary address<\/a>, \u201cwhether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Are today\u2019s Germans morally responsible for the Holocaust?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a<\/p>\n","post_title":"The Triumph of German Democracy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-triumph-of-german-democracy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_modified_gmt":"2025-02-02 08:39:40","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/dctransparency.com\/?p=2829","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":true,"total_page":70},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_2o3","class":"epic_block_3"};
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