Germany learned how to deal with the far right. Time the rest of us did.

The xenophobic European Right, in attacking the European Union, often criticises the dominant role of Germany. Which is interesting, because one of Germany’s most striking characteristics is its political maturity. It’s often said that if you don’t learn from your mistakes, you’re condemned to repeating them; Germany made the most catastrophic of political errors when it let its extreme right into power, but it has learned the lesson, and is now perhaps the nation least likely to fall into that trap.

No wonder organisations like UKIP in Britain distrust Germany so profoundly.

Some years ago, I read a study based on an American academic’s doctoral thesis, The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria. The author, David Art, contrasted German attitudes towards its past with the behaviour of Austria, which likes to present itself as the Nazis’ first victims. Austrians were incorporated into the Third Reich by force when German troops came across the border, but no one’s fooled: the majority of the population greeted the invaders with cries of joy.

The Germans by contrast have gone through an intense period of introspection and examination of a repellent period of their history. There is a widespread consensus to regard it as shameful. The result? Where in Austria the rise of the extreme right “Freedom Party” seemed irresistible, culminating in its leader becoming deputy Chancellor, in Germany the corresponding party, the Republicans (REP), had only a flash in the pan: it enjoyed a brief rise, even winning a few seats in parliament, and then faded into obscurity again.

Why did it vanish so quickly? Because no one would give them the time of day. Specifically, the Conservative CDU decided have nothing to do with them. They adopted a policy of “marginalisation” (Ausgrenzung). David Art explains that it:

…prohibited personal contact with REP politicians, reliance on REP votes to pass legislation, and support for any REP candidate or proposal. This occurred at every political level. Party members in communal parliaments were instructed to vote against even the most mundane proposals of the REPs, such as installation of traffic lights, on principle. Members of the CDU and FDP [their Liberal allies] who violated the policy of Ausgrenzung were immediately kicked out of their parties.

The CDU in several parts of Germany also officially classified the REPs as threats to the Constitution, which brought them under observation by the Verfassungschutz, the “Constitution Protection” police.

What this meant is that supporters of the REPs were liable to police surveillance, while voters began to understand that no elected REP member, at local or national level, would ever be able to realise any concrete measure: no one would allow him into a coalition, even if that was the only way of securing power for themselves, or pass any proposal he put forward, even if they agreed with it. Quickly voters learned that lesson too, and stopped backing REP candidates. The party vanished into the obscurity it so richly deserved.

Which makes what happened at the weekend in Britain particularly instructive. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, was twice asked on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, whether he would ever consider a coalition with UKIP. Twice he refused to rule it out.

Two Conservative politicians
But Cameron doesn't know how to resist the far right – while Merkel does

So it looks as though our Conservative party, unlike its sister party in Germany, has opted for the Austrian approach rather than the German one. Austria gave the extreme right the oxygen it needed to flourish, and that opened the road to nearly the highest office in the land. In Germany by contrast, they cold shouldered the corresponding toxic movement – and drove it back to where it belonged.

All this has become topical again because a new far right movement, similar to UKIP, has recently emerged in Germany. PEGIDA has much in common with UKIP, in its xenophobia and Islamophobia. But Angela Merkel has denounced them publicly, and today the Bild tabloid paper, usually similar to Britain’s Sun with its xeonophobic inclinations, publishes a call from fifty leading figures, including a former Social Democrat Chancellors and a former national football team captain, calling for opposition to PEGIDA and appealing for tolerance.

No wonder UKIP supporters dislike Germany so much. It has shown it won’t again fall prey to the far right, and is mobilising to make sure it doesn’t happen. In the UK, with an ambivalent Conservative Party, and a general environment that guiltily collaborates with xenophobia and Islamophobia, it sees an opportunity.

My own feeling? If the Germans can marginalise the far right and uphold tolerance, so can other nations. And we should. With no further delay.

Anschluss: Nazi crushing of a victim or willing meeting of accomplices?

75 years ago today German troops marched across the border into Austria, and were greeted with delirious joy by a large proportion of the population there.

A German soldier during the Anschluss
Note the air of devastation on the faces of the Austrian civilian population

This was the 1938 Anschluss or union of Austria with the Nazi Third Reich. Someone who wasn’t cheering was a late friend of mine, Bob, who had the misfortune of belonging to the Vienna Jewish community. Within months, he and his friends and relatives were out of work. They spent their days on their doorsteps, chatting and wondering how they were going to keep body and soul together.

‘I’m always amused about the talk today about household debts. We had no debts. You have to be rich to have debts. If you have no money, nobody will lend you any.’

Like a great many Viennese Jews, his family would queue daily at various embassies asking for visas that would get them out. He told me about the sheer arrogance of the staff at the British Consulate, who would treat them contemptuously, knocking papers out of their hands if the staff felt they hadn’t been completed correctly, and giving priority to those who had the money to bribe them.

Eventually, Bob and one of his sisters got out to Britain. They were the only members of his family to survive the war: the others were all Holocaust victims.

It took years to screw up the courage to go back to Vienna, and when he did he wasn’t impressed: ‘you can still cut the anti-Semitism with a knife’, he told me.

Eventually, he took the plunge and travelled to Germany itself, the heart of the darkness that had blighted his life. He went to Bonn.

‘I couldn’t believe it. What a great country!’

He tried to get back every year.

So – what was the difference between the two countries?

Some years ago I read David Art’s The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria which traced the way each country had addressed it Nazi past. It took a while for Germany to decide it had to face up to what had happened, but since the 60s they have made sustained efforts to analyse and understand. One of the best Holocaust films I’ve seen was a German TV reconstruction of the Wannsee conference, where the third Reich formallyl adopted the final solution, the extermination of the Jews. Reconstructed from minutes and eye-witness accounts, it lasted exactly 100 minutes, just as the conference did: an hour and two-thirds to decide to exterminate 12 million people (yes, they only achieve 50% success).

When a neo-Nazi movement, the Republikaner, emerged in Germany in the 80s and 90s, all the mainstream parties unanimously combatted them: the right made no attempt to work with them or adopt their programme; the left wing made no attempt to exploit the possible splits in the right-wing vote. The result? The Republikaner got nowhere and an electorate which realised they were never going to deliver stopped voting for them.

Austria maintained the fiction that, far from being a willing accomplice of Nazi Germany, it had been its first victim. This comfortable illusion prevented their having to face up to any moral dilemmas. As a result, their neo-Nazis, the Austrian Freedom Party, became a major force, rising to the point where it became the junior party in a governing coalition.

At root, the problem was that Austria preferred to concentrate on the military invasion that took place in the Anschluss, which made Austrians victims, rather than the warmth of the welcome they gave the German forces, which would have made them accomplices.

So on the anniversary of the Anschluss of 1938, there’s a moral for us all: if we want to deal with the contamination that bigotry and intolerance represent, we have to face up to it, and isolate it and prevent its getting anywhere near power.

Whether it’s the Tea Party in the States, UKIP in Britain or the Front National in France, that’s a lesson that all of us who are committed to democracy need to learn and actively apply.

On this anniversary of that grim event, I’ll raise a glass this evening to the memory of Bob. I know he would have agreed fervently with the need to learn that lesson.