Hitler—Gone but Not Forgotten
FRIDAY, September 26, 1980, had been warm and sunny in southern Germany. By about 10:15 p.m., however, there was a chill in the air. Crowds of people were spilling out of the enormous beer tents at Munich’s famous Oktoberfest and were heading for the exits. Suddenly there was a tremendous flash of light near one of the main gates, and a gigantic explosion ripped the air, leaving over 200 persons injured and 13 dead.
Investigation later revealed that the person responsible for this terrorist attack had neo-Nazi connections. Just eight weeks earlier, a similar right-wing attack had taken over 80 lives in Bologna, Italy, when a train station was bombed. And during the same period, France was experiencing its most severe wave of anti-Semitic violence since World War II.
To most people, Nazism (or neo-Nazism) and Hitler are almost synonymous. So events like these have kept Hitler alive over the years, at least in the news media. And these new Nazi atrocities have been taking place before the old ones have even been forgotten. In fact, the German newspaper Nürnberger Nachrichten points out that as of December 1983, a staff of 35, including 10 judges and public prosecutors, was “still busy collecting, collating, evaluating and referring to the courts all available material on Nazi crimes [committed during the Hitler era].” It added that “129 cases are still pending, while over 1,700 trials are still in progress.”
All of that may go largely unnoticed by the general public. But other events have been quite effective in reviving the memories of Nazism that millions of people have tried to forget. Consider, for example, Holocaust—a television program of a few years ago—or the sensational report in 1983 that a popular German magazine had obtained copies of Hitler’s personal diaries. That news, greeted by some with skepticism, became notorious when the diaries were found to be fakes. One German, clearly disgusted as well as frustrated, asked: “Will Hitler never stop making fools of us?”
No wonder that Canada’s Toronto Star noted: “We continue to be horrified but at the same time fascinated and even mesmerized by both the Fuhrer and the state he led.” This seems to be the case because, according to a German source, “the flood of published work on the Third Reich seems to be increasing as the period recedes into the past. Over 20,000 publications have appeared, and even experts cannot hope to have heard of them all.”
Why this global fascination with Hitler and his Third Reich? Could it, together with the neo-Nazi groups that the magazine Der Spiegel said are becoming “increasingly militant,” be the harbinger of history repeating itself? Some neo-Nazi publications boast: “We are not the leftovers of yesterday but the vanguard of tomorrow.” Not without reason, then, and not without cause are some people asking: ‘Nazism—could it happen again?’