Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Berlin and Baghdad
Gabor Steingart, Der Spiegel's bureau chief in Berlin from 2000 to 2007, wonders at the similarities between Berlin in the late 1940s and Baghdad today. Fair use excerpt from behind the WSJ subscriber wall:
When I was born the war was already over. The mission was accomplished, as we would say today. But the aggression was still alive. The interior of my hometown was divided into four sectors, and there were occasionally clashes at the borders between the sectors, resulting in injuries and even loss of life. Sometimes as a child I heard the rattling of machine-gun fire. My bedroom was less then 2,000 feet from one of the checkpoints.
Whenever my father and I came within earshot of a border post, he would always remind me of the iron rule of the early days after this war: Keep your mouth shut! A wrong word or even a silly grin was enough to cause big trouble for an entire family.
The situation worsened year after year of what was called "peace." There was no "progress on the ground," as we would say today. The rival groups in my city were absolutely irreconcilable, which is why the men with the Kalashnikovs ended up building a massive wall down the middle of our street. They tore down the houses behind the wall to make room for watchtowers and automatic shooting devices....
If the supreme commander of the U.S. Army in Berlin had been subject to the same requirements Gen. David Petraeus is subject to today, the Americans would have had to turn the city over to the Soviets. Baghdad today and Berlin in those days are more similar than some would like to believe. The general contention is that the Iraqis, unlike the Germans, never had a democratic culture. Once you break the palace, by ousting the dictator, the elevator goes straight to the mosque, these people argue. There is nothing in between -- no civil society, no real labor unions, no real parliament or press.
That's the situation in Iraq, but that was also the situation in postwar Germany. There was no flourishing democratic tradition in my country before the Allies marched in. Adolf Hitler came to power, not by overthrowing a government, but through elections, because the Germans were poorly equipped to handle their young, fickle democracy. A majority considered discipline and order to be more valuable than parliamentary representation. Germany was a republic without republicans.
Iraq, so the argument goes, is a wild, mixed bag of ethnic groups and religious communities. Speaking strictly off the record, critics say that fanaticism is practically part of the human genetic code in this part of the world. What a contradiction! If there were ever a hotbed of fanaticism, it would be somewhere between Berlin and Munich. The Baath Party and its leaders couldn't hold a candle to the Führer in Berlin and his followers. Millions marched through the streets chanting: "Führer command, we will follow!"
Of course, we had to kill many more Germans than we have Iraqis, even if we accept The Lancet's discredited extrapolations. Knowing that Germany was a hotbed of extremism, FDR and Winston Churchill fought to destroy Germany's economy and society so that its people would be prostrate before us. Bush and Blair waged a profoundly humane war by comparison, notwithstanding the propaganda to the contrary. Did that condemn us to a more violent occupation?
13 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Sep 18, 12:47:00 PM:
This analogy seems pretty damn bizarre to me, for many reasons. Frankly, I think this is totally absurd, and I'm very surprised you think so highly of it.
First off, the comparison is absurd on its face for the simple reason that the "aggression" in Berlin '61 was between two different regular militaries rather than resistance against the occupiers. The gunfire was people being shot trying to escape East Germany, not insurgents fighting regular troops - a little different from gangs of Sunnis and Shiites massacring each other! To say "if the supreme commander of the U.S. Army in Berlin had been subject to the same requirements Gen. David Petraeus is subject to today, the Americans would have had to turn the city over to the Soviets," well, no shit Sherlock - the situations are *totally different*.
Comparing German extremism with Islamic extremism is absurd for many reasons. Germany had a secular government for a very long time before Hitler's rise to power. To say "Adolf Hitler came to power, not by overthrowing a government, but through elections, because the Germans were poorly equipped to handle their young, fickle democracy" is totally ridiculous. Hitler gained power because he was a charismatic leader who promised to lift the people out of their economic misery and the humiliating Treaty of Versailles (e.g. the Dolchstosslegende etc). Inflation was so bad in Germany in the '30s that a loaf of bread cost a million marks; people were starving, and gangs of thugs were fighting it out for political control in the streets. No such conditions existed in the places where the middle-class 9/11 bombers came from; you'll have to turn to another explanation for the fanaticism of the Jihadis.
People turn to the Jihad not just because they don't have enough to eat, but because they don't have anything to live for in that part of the world, and the Imams promise them self-actualization and paradise through holy war. The evils they commit are sanctioned by God, and they are taught to hate the West and its military, that we are inferior because not Muslim. Germany used similar "inferiority" rhetoric to justify killing millions in concentration camps, but they did not attempt to arouse those same passions against their military opponents; indeed PoWs were treated much better than the guests of Jihadis are now! Partly as a consequence of this, when Germany lost and the occupation came, the citizens of occupied Germany wanted and accepted help to rebuild their country from their former opponents. "Freihe Bahn dem Marschallplan" and all that; the situation in Iraq is rather substantially different, wouldn't you say?
Finally, the bit at the end is inconsistent: "The Baath Party and its leaders couldn't hold a candle to the Führer in Berlin and his followers." Well yeah, but we're not fighting Baathists anymore. We're fighting Jihadis, who I would argue have definitely demonstrated that they have the same capacity for inhumanity that the Nazis did. Oh, and "If there were ever a hotbed of fanaticism, it would be somewhere between Berlin and Munich." What the ...? You've argued that the type of Islamic extremism has been a problem since the days of the caliphates and the Dhimmi laws. Nazism was a flash in the pan compared to that!
Look, I believe we should keep fighting in Iraq too, but trying to make this look like WWII really just isn't working at all. And by extension, the position of people who oppose continuing the war in Iraq are in no way analogous to anyone who might have opposed WWII. Just stop with that already.
By 
antithaca, at
Tue Sep 18, 12:59:00 PM:
Phrizz11, it seems to me that you're conflating several places in time as well as places in the modern landscape as it were.
I think the author of the piece is talking about "post war" Berlin...not Berlin circa '61. But, to be fair, I can't access the entire article and, I wish I knew more about the factions in the city at the time (that is, immediately post war).
-----------------------
Interestingly, the wife and I JUST watched "The Third Man" (google it) and I remarked to her the analogies one could draw between Berlin at the time (as portrayed in the movie) and Baghdad today.
By , at
Tue Sep 18, 01:29:00 PM:
Gabor was born in '61. He never experienced Berlin in the 40's or 50's. So his anecdotal experience is not from that time period.
By , at
Tue Sep 18, 02:43:00 PM:
@phrizz11
”Hitler gained power because he was a charismatic leader who promised to lift the people out of their economic misery and the humiliating Treaty of Versailles. Inflation was so bad in Germany in the '30s that a loaf of bread cost a million marks.”……
Wrong decade. Try 1923.
”gangs of thugs were fighting it out for political control in the streets.”
And the Brownshirts were one of the more prominent gangs.
No such conditions existed in the places where the middle-class 9/11 bombers came from..
You might consider the hundreds of years of decline of the Arab/Muslim relative to the West.(“humiliating Treaty of Versailles”…Consider how Bin Laden has harped about the fall of the Caliphate, a.k.a, Ottoman Empire, ditto a result of WW1 and Treaty of Versailles…)
By , at
Tue Sep 18, 03:54:00 PM:
Boludo: You're picking nits. Yes, the hyperinflation was in 1923, but Germany was still absolutely economically devastated by the Wall Street crash in '29 and the Great Depression that followed. Economic conditions in the '30s in Germany were dire.
Yes, of course the brownshirts were one of those gangs. Your point?
It's still completely wrongheaded to claim that the conditions which gave (and are giving) rise to Bin Laden and Islamic extremism in general, are analogous to those which enabled the Nazis to gain power in Germany.
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Sep 18, 06:31:00 PM:
A common flaw in analogical reasoning goes something like this.
A is like B.
A1 is like B1.
Therefore, A2 must be like B2.
Analogies are useful for understanding modern problems. That's pretty much the whole point (aside from love of learning) of studying history, right? But no 2 situations will ever be exactly the same and to treat them as such, even rhetorically, is wrong.
Young democracies are volatile, a commonly known fact.
If the native political culture is not friendly to democracy as a system, they might revert to their traditional ways. (i.e. the early Nazis were pro-monarchy, and allied with monarchists politically. When they overran the Low Countries, the Kaiser [or his son? I forget. Maybe both] who was/were in exile there received a Nazi honor guard. Not that they had any intention of re-instating him by that point)
I think that's about all you can draw from this.
By Miss Ladybug, at
Tue Sep 18, 06:59:00 PM:
My take on this:
*post-war Germany wasn't a cake-walk for the allies or Germans
*it took time for things to settle down
*post-fall of Saddam Iraq hasn't been a cakewalk for the Coalition or Iraqis
*it will take time for things to settle down
Then, there is the added issues of outside forces (foreign terrorists/AQ & Iran) doing their best to muck it all up for the US, something that wasn't so much an issue in post-war Germany (the only ones making things more difficult for the allies were the Soviets, and they had BEEN one of the Allies....)
Oh, and the Nazis and Middle Easterners seemed to have gotten on very well during WWII - the Ba'ath Party was modeled after the Nazi Party, after all...
By Hope Muntz, at
Tue Sep 18, 07:12:00 PM:
The answer to your question is yes. Most of our troubles in Iraq are due to our not having killed enough Iraqis at the onset, particularly Baathists still in uniform.
However, the analogy is inexact; Baghdad could only be compared to PostWar Berlin if we had invaded in conjunction with Iran and Turkey and then divided up the city among us.
The other day I accidentally complimented you on an article by "Iowahawk", not by you. Duh! Sorry about that. I still think you're brilliant, tho--just maybe a teeny bit less brilliant ;)
By , at
Tue Sep 18, 09:49:00 PM:
I think this article was written primarily for Germans (Spiegel Online) to challenge the high, morally superior horse many have been riding. Some in the German blogosphere have been linking to it.
By , at
Tue Sep 18, 10:34:00 PM:
Just as Germany was divided into four occupation zones for the British, French, Americans and Russians, Berlin was also divided among the four powers (much to the consternation of Russia, even though it had been agreed to at the Yalta Conference).
There was tension between the occupation zones, just as there is/was tension in Bagdad between the largely Shia area (Sadr City) and other predominately Sunni areas. And also areas of Bagdad that were controlled by the government and those that were contested by 'insurgents'.
German social institutions were shattered after WWII. Millions had been killed in the war, millions had disappeared into the camps (Jews, and many others).
Cities were wrecked, much of the industrial base was destroyed, people in many of the big cities were actually starving to death. The Bolsheviks, the nemesis of the Nazis, were making a come-back under the Russian occupation (a latent political insurgency?).
The country was to end up being divided after the occupation zones were united and the Russians refused to play ball.
Of course it's 'not like' Iraq. Saddam had crushed all social institutions that were not in concert with the Baath party. Hundreds of thousands of Kurdish Iraqis were killed in the Anfal (87-88). Hundreds of thousands more were killed and maimed in the Iran-Iraq war. Then the Gulf War of '91. Then 11 years of the embargo that punished the poor and middle class by giving Saddam more leverage, more tyranny over the populace as the country became poorer and poorer.
By 2003 and OIF, Saddam, the Baathists and the embargo had gone a long way to wrecking the country physically and socially. Since then the insurgency (al Qaeda, back by Saudi-Sunni money, and the Shia militias backed by Iran) has smashed large parts of some cities badly (like Ramadi, see Michael Totten's recent article on his site).
So yeah, I fail to see any similarities at all. Yeah, that's the ticket.
-David
By antithaca, at
Wed Sep 19, 10:41:00 AM:
I realized this morning walking to the car...The Third Man was set in Post-War Vienna NOT Berlin.
I don't think it detracts from the fundamental message and common themes though.
Those being: It's hard. Life is full of scared people (too afraid to talk to their own police in fact), corrupt creeps, opportunists, thugs, duplicitous backstabbers, etc, etc.
By Cardinalpark, at
Sat Sep 22, 11:41:00 AM:
Phrizz- The writer of the German piece knows Germany and its history far better than you, and he's pretty clearly right. Germany's republican "tradition" was erected in the aftermath of WWI. Germany only became a unified nation in 1870. Only when the Prussian military Kaiser lost a war, did Germany make an attempt at Parliamentary democracy. Hitler came to power initially via an electoral process which garnered him only some 33% of the German vote. By then brokering a deal with the old and ineffectual President Hindenberg, did Chancellor Hitler come to hijack German democracy, such as it was, and end any notion of voting.
The writer's comparison of perceived Arab fanaticism to the Geman version is pretty fair.
And to say post war Berlin wasn't a violent disaster area is silly. Not only was it violent, but it was utterly bankrupt, with massive population displacement, disease and starvation. Baghdad is a rose garden by comparison.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Sep 22, 08:14:00 PM:
Don't forget the mass rape and rampant suicides.
Such is the difference between conquest by Americans and conquest by Russians.
