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Gitta Sereny |
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Gitta Sereny was born in Vienna in 1923 and educated in Austria, England and France. Her previous books include The Case of Mary Bell (1972 and 1995), Into that Darkness (1974 and 1995), The Invisible Children (1984), Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995) and Cries Unheard (1998).
The German Trauma is about Germany, and my experience of it during and after the Second World War. It begins with what was basically my first contact with Nazism in 1938, at the Nazi 'Anschluss' with Austria, and continues more or less to the present.
Despite the perverted efforts of 'revisionists' we know more now about Hitler, his regime and its aftermath than we ever have before and, being more distant from the period, we also have a better perspective on it. One of the main purposes of the book is to trace the impact of the Third Reich on Germany and the Germans since it ended.
Even if comparatively brief, Hitler's reign was of course one of the most traumatic epochs in human history. His genocide of the Jews and gypsies, his violence against homosexuals and religious groups such as the Quakers, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and others, and his intention (well on the way to being fulfilled with 14 million slaveworkers toiling for the Germans by the time the war ended) of dividing Europe into 'Aryan' masters and Slav and other 'subhuman' slaves, was uniquely evil. As a writer I am interested above all in how individual human beings succumb to or resist evil, and what this tells us about human nature in extremis.
As almost all the people speaking in this book confirm, a great wound exists in the German psyche. That it has been felt so deeply now for more than half a century has altered what was generally thought of as 'the German character'. and if today, in a quite different way from hat which Hitler planned, Germany has become not the ruler but the heart of Europe, it is precisely, I believe, because this wound has been and still is constantly being confronted by Germans of all ages.
But there is another side to this absorption with the past and one which I believe the Germans have recognized far more than others. This is the extent to which an understanding of Hitler's racialism and xenophobia and their consequences in the 1930s and 40s should and could have provided - and must for the future arm us with - a warning against the racialism and xenophobia of others, whether it be between different nations, tribes or colours in Africa, political factions in Asia, religious or ethnic divisions in the Balkans, or indeed in the hearts and minds of every one of us. My purpose in writing this book has been to show all this through different voices, and to clarify and perhaps personalize it by reflections and experiences of my own by now long life.
