One of the doorstep comments staying with me from the referendum campaign is: Im voting Out: we havent beaten the Germans in two world wars to give in now.
The psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan talks of chosen traumas and chosen glories, as stories from the past get retold and shape collective identity.
The trouble is that how the events are remembered changes. The stories seem to be about the past, but also have a present-day purpose. At the celebrations of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, Margaret Thatcher pointed out that we had had a revolution a century earlier: she was quoting history, but also making a point about how she understood Anglo-French relations now.
My sense is that the two world wars are acting as chosen traumas articulating a sense of the struggle and as chosen glories, speaking of our success.
But the wars are remembered differently on the two sides of the Channel. Though things were tough, we didn’t experience invasion, fighting in our streets, occupation or brutal repression.
The films and stories I remember from childhood gave the impression that we defeated the Germans on our own, grossly underestimating the contribution of our allies. In fact, most of what I remember gave the impression that England won, fuelling an England against the world mentality which might well have contributed to the reasons for Scotland voting differently in the referendum.
At the very least this overlooks the huge amount the English and the Germans have in common, going right back to the fact that England is a German word and the Anglo Saxons were Germanic tribes. Its appealing to think of Nazism as a German vice we bravely resisted, but Mosleys Black Shirts, admiration for Hitler (at least early on) and widespread anti-semitism at the time suggest we could have gone down the fascist route more easily than we like to think.
In psychoanalytic terms its sometimes useful to think of feelings that are around being acted out by a minority. If the feelings are in some way unacceptable, a great way of dealing with the feelings is to then attack the minority. I think there were some nasty things in the European consciousness in the 1930s. Hitler wasn’t a great leader: he was a nasty man who acted as a lightening conductor for those feelings.
When people talk of the EU as the fourth reich they are invoking that chosen trauma. It puts some of our unacceptable vices into the driving seat:
- wanting to make the UK a great trading nation and a world power independent of the EU sounds like a desire for us to dominate;
- worry aboutever closer union forget that nations are either drifting apart, which is the path towards war, or coming closer together.
The chosen glory of plucky Britain/England making a stand mobilises some unattractive feelings and globalisation means it is a grandiosity that can only end badly.
Talking about an actual trauma tends to bring back the memories painfully. Talking about a chosen trauma down-plays the actual suffering. How many people talking about the Blitz have a sense of what it was actually like? Is this the fantasy people are engaging when they suggest Brexit might be a bit tough to begin with but we will get through it?
Theres a very dangerous cocktail when stories of the past are recycled to tell us to stand pluckily independent, and to down-play the cost of that.
Right now we might need to re-visit the stories told of the war to recognise the contributions of our allies, and the sufferings of the Germans under the Nazis. The actual narrative, which goes back to Churchill and the United States of Europe and the Schuman Declaration, is of countering facism by standing together in freedom and stability. As globalisation has its effect, this is becoming more important than ever.
* Mark Argent was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Huntingdon in the 2019 and 2024 General Elections.
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23 Comments
I think all of us who were involved in the referendum would have heard these kind of anti-German comments. It was difficult to totally refute them in a short space of time so I tended to say something like “well we’ve no quarrel with ordinary German people. It’s their right wing politicians and their neo-liberal economists which are the problem”. That usually produced a measure of agreement – at least from pro-Brexit Labour supporters.
Talk about a “Fourth Reich” is of course way over the top. But nevertheless, the way the EU allows politicians like Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schauble to speak on its behalf, and this happened extensively during the Greek crisis of 2015 and it is happening again now in the aftermath of the UK’s vote to leave, allows this kind of charge to be made. If there is a problem between any one member state and the EU it should be the elected officials of the EU, and who therefore have some democratic credibility, who take centre stage and not the unelected representatives of any one member state.
Frau Merkel’s democratic credentials stop at the French border to the West and the Polish border to the East! It’s high time the rest of the EU reminded her of that!
Listening to some members of the older generation speaking on TV about the referendum I think the way Greece was dealt with shocked them and brought back memories of the war. I was born in 1946 so have no direct memory but even for my generation the War was a tremendous influence. At first I just understood it as something malign which made me feel sick and then as I grew up I listened to stories of hardship, bravery and indeed the isolation Mark talks about. These stories were intense and sometimes, for example, over Korea it seemed frighteningly likely that there would be a Third World War. The omnipresent threat of nuclear war created a terrible fear and for those just ten years older than me that fear would have been made more traumatic by actual memories, even though they may just have been of families with fathers away fighting rather than experiencing bombing themselves. As you get older these memories can be easily triggered so people re-experience them, for example, the memoties of traumatic evacuation.
So I disagree with your argument, Mark. I think some people were genuinely taken back to wartime memories because it appeared that Germany was calling the tune and forcing Greece into poverty and deprivation. Television comes into our homes so we can feel more intensely about a situation being portrayed. More people know about the reality of the Blitz than you imagine, because they have heard about it from people they know and love and, of course, there is the iconic footage of fire fighters struggling to stop St Paul’s from destruction and commentary by an American whose name I have forgotten describing how we were struggling alone before America came into the War. My generation know how lucky we were that this struggle ended well for us.
So I think your argument is wrong, Mark.
If I follow Mark’s arguments correctly, we should be forming a union with our closest ally in the war, the USA, and not with those we fought, the Germans and Italians, or the collaborators in France.
“Its appealing to think of Nazism as a German vice we bravely resisted, but Mosleys Black Shirts, admiration for Hitler (at least early on) and widespread anti-semitism at the time suggest we could have gone down the fascist route more easily than we like to think.”
Actually it shows the opposite. the Black shirts had no electoral success and were widely despised , particularly after their use of violence which lost them middle class support and that of Lord Rothermere.
‘Hitler wasn’t a great leader’. There are innumerable things you can say about Hitler but he was an appallingly effective leader, taking one tiny party among many to not only rule Germany.
My sense is that the German voice in the EU now has echoes not of Nazi Germany, but of the Holy Roman Empire — which was, for a long time, a federation of (mostly Germanic) states working together. The Hannoverian Kings here where among its electors.
Angela Merkel’s role in the EU may mobilise fears, wrapped around the war by the chosen trauma/chosen glory narrative, but her actual role is more due to Getmany’s central position. In cultural terms the lands that can be considered Germanic include Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, parts of France, and the UK. What’s significant is that she acts as a “voice of the EU” rather than in any sense it’s ruler.
petermartin2001 – ‘It was difficult to totally refute them in a short space of time so I tended to say something like “well we’ve no quarrel with ordinary German people. It’s their right wing politicians and their neo-liberal economists which are the problem”. ‘
But then I don’t think that’s really the issue. Many of us would love some German Ordoliberalism here in the UK. The war is red-herring here.
25or so years ago it was fashionable to talk of Europe as an economic giant and a political dwarf. Post 2008 Europe is now a poor place with a few hot-spots, many of which are in Germany. Look at how refugees/migrants voted with their feet. Germany is not a first amongst equals, but it’s on the way. A look at Greece (a country I have little sympathy for) and refugee quotas up some of the issues and how they are very far from theoretical.
I don’t know what the answer is, but seeing this as a matter of neoliberalism is surely underbaked?
IMO the ‘long and the short’ of the overwhelming age related gap in voting preference was the nostalgia among the older generation….
A nostalgia for a Britain where we never locked our doors, where we wouldn’t take any nonsense from ‘johnny foreigner’, where John Mills slapped cowardly Richard Attenborough’s face, a Britain of ‘George Dixon’, etc., etc…In short, a Britain that never really existed and was created by the passage of time….
Over the years successive governments have found an easy scapegoat by blaming their own failings on a uncooperative partner (does 2010-2015 ring any bells?)…
Earlier this year Sajid Javid told South Wales steel workers that their problems were caused by EU regulations (ignoring the fact that it was his own government that blocked proposed EU tariffs on the cheap Chinese steel) and yet months later urged these same workers to vote ‘Remain’….
Is it any surprise that those, old enough to remember a ‘rose-tinted’ pre-EU Britain, voted to go back?
BTW…I’m a 73 yo ‘Remainer’…
‘the impression that we defeated the Germans on our own, grossly underestimating the contribution of our allies.’
We only ‘stood alone’ from June 1940 to 1941 (summer was the attack on the Soviet Union and December the entry of the United States). Prior to June 1940 the larger Allied land power was France, though the UK (not England) had the larger active Allied navy.
Of course ‘alone’ included lots of other nationalities on British soil, Canadians from the first, but later Free French, Poles, Czechoslovaks, Norwegians….
We should remember also that the Poles provided two important technological breakthroughs for the Allied victory.
We only ‘stood alone’ from June 1940 to 1941 (summer was the attack on the Soviet Union and December the entry of the United States).
The most important contribution of the UK during the war was not towards the defeat of Hitler: that was a foregone conclusion as soon as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was broken.
No, the thing that the UK did which was vital for the future of humanity, was ensure that the USSR was stopped halfway through Germany, rather than taking over the whole of Europe.
Had Britain fallen, there would have been no Normandy landings (because there would have been nowhere to launch them from); no ‘race to Berlin’; all of Europe, from Brest to the Bering Strait, would have been under Stalin’s control.
And it’s quite possible, in that situation, that the wrong side could have won the Cold War.
No, we didn’t beat Hitler single-handedly, or even, really, at all. But what we did do was perhaps even more important, though we couldn’t have known it at the time, in saving humanity from Communism.
Dav 27th Jul ’16 – 10:12am…………..The most important contribution of the UK during the war was not towards the defeat of Hitler: that was a foregone conclusion as soon as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was broken…..
Too much extrapolation from available facts….Had Britain fallen/surrendered in 1940 Hitler would have been fighting only on his eastern front; such a factor would have made his task far easier..
Had Britain fallen/surrendered in 1940 Hitler would have been fighting only on his eastern front; such a factor would have made his task far easier
Even on one front, even without el Alamein, it’s highly unlikely he could have held out against the Red Army forever. And neither Hitler, nor Stalin, was likely to sue for peace.
In a fight to the death between Nazi Germany and the USSR, there was only ever going to be one winner, and it wasn’t going to be the country that was invadable in winter.
So I stick to my guns: the UK may not have defeated Hitler, but in the end it did something far greater: first it stopped Europe from falling to Stalin, who remember was a far, far worse tyrant than Hitler, and then it allowed the world to be saved form Communism.
The lesson of the two wars which we fought to stop Germany dominating Europe is that despite 2 devastating defeats the Germans are more dominant than ever and there is nothing anyone can do about it so whatever we think about them now we failed and the terrible sacrifices were in vain.
nvelope2003 ” the Germans are more dominant than ever and there is nothing anyone can do about it so whatever we think about them now we failed and the terrible sacrifices were in vain.”
Are you really sure you want to say that ?
The idea of conflating the expansionist Prussian monarchy of 1914-18 and the vile Nazi regime of 1933-45 with modern Germany is not what one expects on a Liberal Democrat site.
I speak as one who had close relatives who were casualties in both wars and who I know would certainly not have expressed any such opinion, and indeed would have been deeply offended by it..
Perhaps you would like to reflect on this ?
The idea of conflating the expansionist Prussian monarchy of 1914-18 and the vile Nazi regime of 1933-45 with modern Germany
I hope that is not what is meant. I hope that is just bad phrasing and what’s actually meant is that it is not in Britain’s interests for any single power to dominate continental Europe, however benign.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE
@ Dav It’s probably what Hillary Clinton would call ‘a miss-speak’ – as when she claimed (wrongly) to have come under sniper fire when landing in Bosnia in 1996.
Biggest reason for voting for Hillary ? She’s not Trump, and that’s about it.
Bernie…………………………….
David Raw: There is a vacancy in the Supreme Court. President Obama has nominated, Republicans in congress are refusing to hold hearings, preferring to wait for the next President. This affront to democracy is unprecedented, please see the White House website. This alone is enough to vote Clinton, but also recall the hanging chads in Florida being referred to the Supreme Court, who asked “Why are you here?”
Biggest reason for voting for Hillary ? She’s not Trump, and that’s about it.
Nearly 320,000,000 Americans, and they manage to find the two least popular ones and nominate them for President…
It might also be relevant to remind such people that victory over Fascism was achieved not only with US involvement, but also with the help of many exiled Poles (worth asking if he’s heard of 303 Squadron), Czechs, and other European mainlanders, many German-born Jews some of whom had been “illegal immigrants” and of course numerous individuals and units of Black and Asian combatants.
I have a deep discomfort about what now seems to be a continuous cycle of commemoration. We are currently in a 4 year window of 100 year anniversaries of every WW1 battle with the odd 75th WW2 anniversary. As the commemoration event to mark the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles concludes we’ll start on a 6 year cycle of 80th anniversaries of WW2 battles. Somewhere around 2024 we will have a mix of 80th and 110th anniversaries. At each, the Royal Family and Ministers will look solemn and make speeches. Learning of and from history is essential education that is supposed to stop us repeating mistakes but never does. However you have to try. This cottage industry of commemorations is virtually always how we beat the Germans and their tyrannical designs. When I was a kid WW2 was still fresh in the memories of all the adults around me. My Great Grandfather was killed in the Blitz, an uncle survived the Burma Railway, my school wall had bullet holes in it. But it’s history now, for classrooms and books and an annual catch-all Remembrance Day. I speak a little German, have lived, worked there, I do not view Germans as enemies no matter how many commemorations try to remind me they were by association. It is time to forgive and forget bar every 11th November.
We must be honest here, when it comes to the EU, it is clearly a vehicle for German economic dominance, giving free access to markets that might benefit from protection. The Euro is an invention that mostly benefits Germany by making their goods and services competitive whilst making those from poorer Eurozone countries more expensive. The job of the German government is to promote the interests of Germany not Greece, and they do it superbly. Wealthier fellow members also gain from the German wake. That’s why our self interests are served by EU membership. And national self-interest is the reason why ever closer political union is destined to fail. I would rather Remain but let’s not kid ourselves Germany is interested in anything other than Germany. That’s what’s relevant not 75 year old history.
@Little Jackie Paper
Many of us would love some German Ordoliberalism here in the UK
Why? Ordoliberalism is predicated on the idea that a successful economy is an exporting economy. In other words, at least half the world’s economies have to be failures. It’s just not possible for everyone to be a net exporter like Germany.
It’s like some standing up in the theatre and saying “I’ve got much better view, now. So if everyone else was just like me and got up off their backsides, they’d have a better view, too”
There’s a fundamental problem of a fallacy of composition in the German argument. But they have a big problem in seeing it. For example, I’ve been told by a German engineer, who I know is otherwise very bright, that because Germany manages perfectly well with the euro therefore all other countries could – if they too were just like Germany!
But, for every country in the EU which has a surplus there has to be another which has a deficit. Supluses and deficits do have to sum to zero. Until the genius “ordo-economists” (NOT!) of modern day Germany recognise the basis of simple arithmetic the Eurozone is never going to function properly.
@ Steven Rose
Euro is an invention that mostly benefits Germany by making their goods and services competitive whilst making those from poorer Eurozone countries more expensive.
It depends on how you look at it. Germany is providing more goods and services to the ROW in exchange for fewer goods and services, year in and year out.
That must mean that the standard of living in Germany, especially for its less well paid workers, isn’t what it could be if its trade were balanced.
In other words, the German surplus means German workers are less well off that they could be, and Greek workers end up being unemployed, and therefore much less well off, because they are stuck with a currency which is too expensive!
Does anyone still think the euro is a good idea, BTW ?
We must be honest here, when it comes to the EU, it is clearly a vehicle for German economic dominance,
Disagree, the potential for Germany to dominate the EEC/EU has been known about for decades; it was one of the reasons why the UK was encouraged to join and may also go some way to explaining why the ‘EU’ has in the past shown some tolerance towards the UK’s demands.
Yes the UK’s departure from the EU may result in EU policy and direction becoming more aligned to Germany’s interests, because of it’s economic strength providing a set of broad shoulders and sense of purpose to the EU project. I therefore suggest that if the EU does become a vehicle for German economic dominance, it will in part due to the failure of the UK to play it’s part…
Supluses and deficits do have to sum to zero
No, they don’t. Comparative advantage.