Anyone else experience selective WW2/Holocaust history while visiting museums in Germany?

These places can't even be open about their part in the wars of religion centuries ago; perhaps it is too much to expect them not to use the defense mechanism of denial when it has served so many of us so well. (Looking at you, American pioneers.)

I've seen the movie, but have not been to Passau. I just want to point out that in general, Germany gets relatively high marks for acknowledging the past. When we went to Buchenwald, we saw groups of (middle school??) students who had been bussed in and were walking to the multiple education-center buildings between the parking lot and the camp. They did not look happy to be there.

The official English movie title is an unsatisfactory translation. Some literal translations, like "The Bogey-girl", or "The Awful Girl" aren't useful as a movie title. Maybe "Bad Memories"?

Cameron Hewitt wrote about this topic recently in Rick's newsletter:
https://blog.ricksteves.com/cameron/2024/07/honest-history-matters/

https://blog.ricksteves.com/cameron/2024/07/honest-history-matters/

Cameron Hewitt's post is outstanding. Well done.

I found it first amusing that it appeared to blame America's stock market crash as being the trigger that sent Germany into the arms of Hitler. Way to blame big bad America for causing them to cross that line!

Like it or not, the stock market crash (like the 2008 bank crisis) had international effects, one being to contribute to economic issues in Germany. There were a number of factors, likely the terms of the Versailles Treaty was also mentioned, but the Staock Market crash had a major effect. Not really very amusing.

@Paul -- pop history blames the terms of the Versailles Treaty but modern academic scholarship mostly call bs on that explanation, not least because the harsh terms were never actually implemented. (I mean the economic terms) The loss of their colonies in Africa, etc., was carried out [mostly the corporations just set up shell companies] so I suppose we could play our sad violins for the poor German empire forced to endure the loss of their overseas slaveholdings and resource extraction industries. Boo hoo.

Interesting discussion.

Last time I went to Disney California (I know, not a museum) I don't recall seeing a ride celebrating the war with Mexico that expanded the US by about 1/3.

I found Cameron Hewitt's article, referred to above, to be excellent and insightful.

I think it is interesting about how we perceive history and how that has changed over my lifetime. There is more openness in some areas and more cover up in others in just about the history of any country, including the United States. The history I learned in the 60's was an interesting mix of "classic" American history where the outstanding members of different races or groups were only occasionally mentioned. We are doing much better on making American history more representative of the very people who are America and indeed have contributed to our society. There are also a few groups that are being marginalized since acknowledging them is apparently now politically incorrect.

I don't want to go off into politics are spark a great political discussion, but I don't think it takes a great stretch of imagination to see why Hitler became popular if you look through the lens of the times. It should be a warning to us all. As Franklin Roosevelt said, "Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education."

I have been experiencing selective historical reporting every day of my life. This is true especially for the past 8 years and I don't even have to leave my house, just turn on the nightly news. If we're not careful, the American people will have a lot to answer for 80 years from now.

apropos this topic the 30 July episode of PBS' Frontline is about the new rise of extremism in Germany:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/germanys-enemy-within/

There are approximately 1600 museums dedicated to WWII history throughout Europe (I'm working my way through a book that lists that many). The ones I find rather skewed (and this is just from those I've visited) are those in France, where they still seem to have issues with the politics of that time. On the other hand, French history (as represented in their museums) seems much more unified in those dedicated to WWI. I think that, no matter what country you're in, the message of what the museums display is going to be set by the ideology of the folks who run it.

Folks, please steer this thread back to travel. I removed two posts to try and keep this thread from falling off the rails. Let's not make this about politics.

There are approximately 1600 museums dedicated to WWII history throughout Europe

"WWII" is often used as a general term by travelers without specifying what they are interested in:

• Compat places, weapons and military stuff
• Holocaust
• Nazi terror regime

All happened in partly overlapping time periods and under same political regime but are very different in content and context.

To get best advice it makes sense when travelers can tell what they are mostly interested in,

It's not a priority for my own travel, but I had bookmarked this long discussion, which seemed useful to me:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/czech/the-rhetoric-of-war-and-remembrance-focused-on-wwii-and-the-cold-war

Honestly, Germans have done a pretty commendable job of discussing the horrors they perpetrated a little over a century ago.

Compare it to the antebellum mansions that Americans visit in the South that for over 100 years never talked about slavery.

@heather - and don't get me started on how the Swedes discuss their world war II involvement. Living in Sweden, I was surprised to discover there is rather a lack of discussion or even general acknowledgment of the aid and support Sweden gave to the Nazis.

I won't go into more detail but you can read it here, in effect they aided the German invasion of Norway - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_German_troops_through_Finland_and_Sweden

In Spain you'll hardly find any museums or memorials dedicated to the Civil War. It is swept under the rug.

History is written by the winners: a quote from "To Serve Them All My Days" that has stuck with me. I try to remember that when I'm visiting monuments and museums in different countries.

Facts certainly are unchanging and immutable, but after the passage of time personal recollections of factual occurrences are usually what remains, and even facts themselves can be misleading in the absence of context. The absence of other facts that often are suppressed can also lead one to arrive at questionable conclusions. Regardless, I try not to judge a society too harshly, and particularly not to judge their historical acts and those of their individual members by today's mores. Context is important, and in my opinion broad travel provides the opportunity to gain better context to understand not only other societies but also our own. It's a big reason why I so love to travel.

That saying is usually attributed to Winston Churchill but it predates him by about two centuries, at least in modern European languages:

https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/history-is-written-by-the-victors-quote-origin.html#

Edited to add this line from the link: "In other words, the world has rewritten history to credit the saying to one of the 20th century’s greatest victors, but it’s always been very popular with history’s biggest losers."

Indeed -- most of the instances in which it has come up in conversations it has been an expression of sour grapes by someone whose sympathies were with the losers, be they southern slaveholder traitors to the USA or Nazis or Lutheran clergy.

Interesting topic!

I have been doing a bit of a deep dive on my current visit to Germany, and have found the general honesty and openness of memorials to the holocaust and the documentation centres to be excellent. Top marks go to the NS Documentation Center in Munich. They have an excellent English language tour at 1pm on Sundays and go very in depth on the factors that led to the rise of nazism. The Topography of Terror in Berlin is also very, very good, with incredible detail on how Himmler, Heydrich, et. al. planned and carried out their many atrocities.

On the other hand, and similar to the original post, I also went to the DDR museum in Berlin and found it a bit off-putting. While they acknowledge the repression and tyranny conducted by the regime, the whole thing came off as a bit too ostalgically joyous about how great the economy was, how much money people were earning, and how great things would have been if it wasn't for the dastardly stasi. The reconstructed apartment is several times larger than the condo I live in in Vancouver, and that just doesn't sit right with my understanding of conditions in communist eastern europe.

Critically examining what happened, and how we tell the stories of what happened is an essential process in any democracy.

Regarding history being written by the winners:

Indeed -- most of the instances in which it has come up in conversations it has been an expression of sour grapes by someone whose sympathies were with the losers, be they southern slaveholder traitors to the USA or Nazis or Lutheran clergy.

Wow. That's so at odds with my experience, the conversations I've had with others. In my experience it's most often made by sympathizers with the dispossessed and colonized, native populations who've become marginalized in their lands. Recently museums in places like Nantes, once a slave trading center, and Amsterdam, recognizing some of the exploitation of their former colonies, are helping to turn the narrative.

This entire Germany-centric discussion is so helpful for me, as we're headed to Berlin today. Thanks to everyone who has added their Berlin vignettes!

I remember on my second trip to Paris over 30 years ago, I visited the French Army museum.

In the WWII section, every exhibit talked about how Charles DeGaulle led the invasion of Europe and almost single handedly defeated the Germans. It was a very big exhibit. The other Allied troops--USA, UK, Canada, Australia, etc.--were hardly mentioned. When they were, they were made to sound as backup to Degaulle.

I was told that up to that point, that was the history taught in French schools.

It's one of the things you learn from traveling. Every country and people has their own view of history, and we dont have a common agreement on what was right or wrong, or even what happened and why.

Hi,

Thank you for all voices, as this topic is a a very interesting read.

I have recently travelled around Poland with a genealogy "group" (2 people), as a guide. My guests had German roots, and their grandmother had to flee Poland for Germany (then they eventually left for Canada), because WWII ended badly and the Poles, supported by the bayonets of the Russian army, had been taking over houses belonging to German settlers for at least 3-4 generations.

I may be straying a bit from the topic, but it is only recently that in Poland we have been trying to look at the Second World War through the eyes of others: in this case, the German settlers who had lived in these lands since the 18th century (and in some cases earlier). Only recently have books been published that bear witness to how harsh and savage Europe, and Poland in particular, was between 1945 and 1947.
Germany's borders changed in 1945. The same thing happened to Poland.

Nevertheless, when I enter our Polish museums, I have the impression that history is very well told there, but there is no mention of ordinary people and their suffering. Regardless of their origins. Only about great events, seen from a local perspective.

I have not been to Passau, perhaps the sentiments of the author of this post are correct, but I visit Berlin very often, again as a city guide, and try to encourage the younger generation to look at 20th century German history as a great educational training ground, because history likes to repeat itself.

History is one thing, but it can be looked at and interpreted in many ways.

Hey Tomasz, I have never made this observation before, but because of one line in your post, I want to point out that my father's parents left Lodz, in a hurry, around 1920. I was told that it was because the grandfather was about to be drafted, and it was especially unhealthy for Jews to be in the Army. But I believe there were Pogroms well before 1945. In fact, "The 1919 Pogroms" are "a thing." My older uncle was born in Berlin, on the slow way to New York City.

I don't mean to sound rabid, as I wrote, I have never mentioned this to anyone before.

@jphbucks

Thanks for your perspective -- I wonder if you are part of the millennial generation?

I ask because your use of buzzwords like "the dispossessed and colonized, native populations who've become marginalized in their lands" seems to be from a relatively recent trend in education, perhaps most famously poked fun at by scenes in Monty Python's Life of Brian like the 'What did the Romans ever do for us?' or the insistence on referring to the trans member of the Judaean People's Front by their preferred name.

My hope is that after only a few more swings of the pendulum we will be past the contrast between dominant history and alt history or oppressor history and oppressed history or patriarchal history and feminist history and instead get to the point where we have simply incomplete history and more-complete history.

But to bring this back to the original post, as is mentioned above, there has long been the French perspective and its difference from the German perspective, or the Soviet perspective and the American perspective (in the version of WWII taught when I was in high school the Soviets had very little to do with Hitler's defeat!) Boomers and Gen Xers whose first exposure was to the German perspective tend to think of Napoleon as a villain and the outcome of the war with Prussia a positive one -- everyone else seems much more sane to me, because I see the French imposition on Europe and the Caribbean of modern liberal values as overall a good thing -- being claimed by France was an improvement for most places so far as I am concerned.

The Global South might have had a net benefit from its exploitation by mustache-twirling European oppressors. Maybe.

@jphbucks Thanks for your perspective -- I wonder if you are part of the millennial generation? I ask because your use of buzzwords like "the dispossessed and colonized, native populations who've become marginalized in their lands" seems to be from a relatively recent trend in education, perhaps most famously poked fun at by scenes in Monty Python's Life of Brian like the 'What did the Romans ever do for us?' or the insistence on referring to the trans member of the Judaean People's Front by their preferred name.

I'm 71. So no, not a millennial. And I use the terms because I regard them as accurate descriptors. If you disagree, so be it.

It's possible to view western imperialism from different perspectives: bringing the progress and culture of the western world to less developed populations while simultaneously enslaving and/or marginalizing them. It's not either-or. I'm American, and I love my country, but its history is reliant on Europeans conquering indigenous people and relegating them to second class status. Pretending otherwise is silly IMO.

This is all getting pretty far afield from discussing travel, but our apparent disagreement here underscores that extensive travel doesn't inevitably lead to travelers sharing the same social and geopolitical opinions. We're all different, and that's a good thing.

To bring this back to a travel focus, every American who visits Normandy should visit both the American and German cemeteries. While there we can think about the differences and speculate as to why they are different.

@KGC, There are approximately 1600 museums dedicated to WWII history
throughout Europe

Do you know of a similar source for Franco-Prussian war museums? That war seems to have started the modern hostility between Germany and France that was so horibly played-out in WW 1 & 2.

I would like to visit a museum or two from that era.

@ jkh.....Yes, there is a serious museum focusing on the Franco-Prussian War in France. It is located in Gravelotte in Lorraine. In France what is called in English as the :Franco-Prussian War is called the "The War of 1870" (La Guerre de 1870.)

Very fitting and appropriate that this expanded and modernised museum is situated in Gravelotte. Gravelotte is comparable in losses on a single day to the Antietam and Gettysburg., ie the bloodiest battle of the 1870 War. The battle is also described by two names (similar to Antietam and Sharpsburg). The French call it Gravelotte , the Germans St Privat.

You can access the town by bus from Metz, I saw that when taking the bus from Metz to Verdun. Getting to Verdun from Metz can be done by train or bus, I choice the bus...good thing.

I haven't seen the new expanded Museum in Gravelotte except tid-bits on its website. In 1999 I took the bus from Metz to Gravelotte, bad choice day as the simple museum then happened to closed on that day but the Prussian-German military cemetery along with the French one were open and located also there are the German military plaques pertaining to certain units and their losses...very moving and poignant.

@ Jhk.... If you're interested in seeing the WW1 German military cemeteries in Lorraine, one of the bigger ones is in Morhange. Even though Morhange can be reached by direct train from Metz, you do need a car to reach the cemetery site.

The horrors of the war began with the Battle of the Frontiers , the German cemeteries, the French ones and the Franco-German ones where both French and German soldiers are buried in the same cemetery attest to these horrific losses, especially that of the French.

I would suggest checking out and inquiring in the Travel Offices in Metz located in the centre-ville and also in the small town of Thionville (in 1914 it was called Diedenhoffen), ca 20 mins. or so from Metz. I spent an afternoon trip in Thionville....plainly interesting.