To Forget It All and Begin Anew: Reconciliation in Occupied Germany, 1944–1954 by Steven M. Schroeder (review)

Historical narratives that seek to explain the postwar Franco-German rapprochement and the rapid integration of West Germany into pan-European and transatlantic alliances and institutions usually emphasize geopolitical motives. There was a common fear of Soviet aggression and, especially in France, of domination by the United States. West German leaders feared French hostility and the possibility that the American army would leave Europe absent Western European cooperation. European leaders believed that a failure to combat energetically the poverty of the postwar era would lead to a revival of political extremism.

Steven Schroeder offers a complementary narrative, one that emphasizes grassroots initiatives that promoted reconciliation based on “individual peace-making.” His primary focus is on civic organizations motivated by Christian principles. Schroeder argues that these organizations brought about “a genuine change of mind and action from both sides of the victim-perpetrator divide” that made possible a range of later political initiatives. While Schroeder includes the Soviet zone of occupation in his study, he finds that East German efforts to assist victims of Nazism and to promote reconciliation between Germans and their neighbours suffered from the top-down approach of Soviet authorities and the priority they placed on legitimizing communist rule.

Schroeder focuses especially on the work of Moral Re-Armament, a group led by the American Lutheran minister Frank Buchman, and the Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation, of which there were thirteen in West Germany by 1953. These groups received critical support from the Allied occupation authorities, and in particular from the Americans. Schroeder writes that the “international network of people who laboured towards interpersonal, national, and international reconciliation under the auspices of Moral Re-Armament … played a pivotal role in setting the stage for Franco-German reconciliation and peace in Western Europe.” The 1947 Moral Re-Armament conference in Caux, Switzerland, was attended by 500 delegates, including 150 from West Germany. The following year the same conference attracted 5,000 participants, among them the prime minister of Denmark and Konrad Adenauer, shortly to become the chancellor of West Germany. According to Schroeder, the relationship between Adenauer and French foreign minister Robert Schuman was “brokered by Frank Buchman and his colleagues.” He makes similar claims with respect to German-Danish relations.

The Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation promoted dialogue between Germans and representatives of what remained of the Jewish community in West Germany. They also combatted anti-Semitism. In 1950 the Frankfurt chapter of the group successfully lobbied the minister of culture of North Rhine-Westphalia to remove anti-Semitic schoolbooks from classrooms. Schroeder argues that the Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation and several kindred organizations “made possible the ongoing discussion of victimhood and victim compensation” in West Germany. Two of the principal negotiators of the 1952 reparations agreement with Israel, Franz Böhm and Otto Küster, were active society members. Böhm and Küster both forcefully advocated a generous reparations settlement, an approach not popular at the time in West Germany.

It is often difficult to evaluate Schroeder’s claims regarding the motives and influence of the individuals and organizations he examines. Irène Laure, a French socialist, provides the most striking example of the form of reconciliation that Schroeder describes. Inspired by an encounter at the 1947 Caux meeting with the widow of a leading figure of the German resistance, who asked Laure for forgiveness for her own failure to oppose Nazism earlier, Laure decided in turn to seek forgiveness for her earlier hatred for all Germans. In early 1949 she toured West Germany, speaking before dozens of groups, including most of the Land parliaments in the western zones of occupation. But can one accept the claim, which Schroeder quotes, that at the 1948 Caux conference “every vestige of bitterness and hatred [felt by the French delegates] disappeared”? And what is one to make of the statement of a Moral Re-Armament member that plays promoting reconciliation...