Remember how Judge Meinerzhagen objected to the German
anthem being sung in a Zundel hearing in Mannheim not all that long ago in
honor of Ernst's Holocaust debunking efforts? I have been told it upset the
judge to no end. He thought it was improper and showed
"disrespect" for what was being said and done in Germany's
Holocaust Heresy Trial.
Against that backdrop, consider the following, stitched
together from various letters I received during the month of June from my
husband:
I promised in the previous letters to illuminate some
evolving and, I believe, historically significant stations of the cross on
the way to German freedom via self-liberation. Soccer, or Football, as the
English like to call it, is perceived to be a safe area, not as dangerous
an area as the political arena. Ingrid, my dear wife - at some point in
life everything becomes political up to a point! Thus, valuable lessons
can and will be learned.
German people, it seems, are in a football euphoria - a
state of mind I can relate to, since I, too, had my first real bonding
with what this essence is that ties one to one's Volk. There is a
best-selling book and a blockbuster film out about an historic event,
referred to as the "Miracle of Bern", when nine years after
World War II the Germans shook off at least the worst of the trauma of the
defeat and began to reassert themselves in the family of European nations.
Eighty to ninety millions of Germans spread all over the European
heartland felt relieved, as if a stone had been lifted off their chests.
It was a wonderfully uplifting feeling, almost like a "having been
born again" feeling must be for Christians.
The soccer world was then purely European. Other nations
had not yet been [caught] by the football fever. This world championship
was held in Bern, where Germany's national "eleven" met the
equally qualifying Hungarians for the World Championship. My schoolmates
and I fevered along with the rest of the nation. At the time, we German
children played amongst the devastation and ruins of our fatherland. The
ruins were our stage set.
I have discussed that period with many thousands of
Germans all around the world, and all who were old enough to feel and
think for themselves about national issues - all, to a man, and even we,
who were youths at the time - felt the same. Something in our psyche had
changed! One 90-minute soccer game had accomplished what the writers,
poets, singers - and, even more so, what the Allied-appointed and beholden
politicians had not even come near to achieving: A soccer game gave the
German nation and its traumatized people back their self-confidence.
Ingrid, as strange as it may seem to others soul-wise,
maybe even to you 5,000 km away from all this action, today we may well be
experiencing an almost tectonic shift similar to the one I described to
you above, because this feeling is only the outward expression of
something going on at a much deeper level - deep, deep down inside the
bowels of this churning, rumbling German soul volcano. Volcanos are
interesting spectacles, mainly observed and studied by geologists and
volcanologists equipped with their seismographic devices that are capable
of detecting, mapping and interpreting these tremors and cataloguing their
behavior patterns. Because of their specialized training and knowledge,
they can see things and predict what will most likely happen within a
certain time period to a long-dormant volcano.
We, the knowing, who have specialized expertise acquired
over decades of intensive study and relying on a roadmap of this specific
German volcano called "historical events" - Ingrid, we are like
these scientist who are climbing all over the mountain slopes or are
flying over its gas-and-ashes-venting, cauldron-like peak. What we see
taking place is what percolates to the top, and for the moment at least
vents only as harmless gas with a whiff of noxious fumes and some
bothersome ashes that settle over the German political landscape. We see
many things and detect even more with our soul-detecting instruments what
the German political volcano is up to. We, in fact, are ideally suited for
this job. We understand our volcano because we are an intimate and
integral part of it. That's why our predictions and projections, our
intrinsic insights, are of a quality for which intelligence agency employ
highly priced intelligence assessment and evaluation teams.
Ingrid, I believe our volcano is active, deep down,
because the internal pressure of these primeval forces that have been
building for decades have to vent, have to find some form of release - and
if it is not to explode in a violent fury one more time, it would be
better to allow it to vent steam, gases, and even some lava along harmless
secondary eruption channels in order not to blow its whole peak, like
Mount St. Helens did over 20 years ago.
This soccer world championship is allowing the Germans [to
vent] collectively and individually as shouting, dancing and screaming
spectators wearing the new, harmless uniform of identity - an endless sea
of T-shirts with German flags and patriotic slogans shouted very often in
English, if you can imagine that scenario. These mostly younger Germans,
many of them girls, are letting off steam and pressure that built for a
long time.
These young soccer players were born while I was
struggling in my court cases. One very young 22-23 year old defended the
players who had draped their arms over each other's shoulders as they sang
the national anthem, which one TV commentator mentioned to the former
Leftist Interior Minister Schily - undoubtedly responsible, in part, for
my fate! - that he had never before heard the whole stadium erupt in such
a loud rendering of the national anthem, which Schily sourly acknowledged
and took credit for because of the generation of 1968 [of which he was a
part], their immigration reforms etc.
Even mainstream commentators are now detecting [this
venting]. One of them said it succinctly: "The German are no longer
uptight." They are liberating themselves for the moment in a
seemingly innocuous way, by means of T-shirts with patriotic slogans or
with shawls with sentences from the German national anthem on it - to be
safe! Others signal their patriotism with buttons, by dyeing their hair in
black-red-gold, even painting their faces and soccer boots.
Claudia Schiffer, hardly a champion of German virtues and
nationalism, recently appeared in England in a Brigitte Bardot type public
appearance photo shoot, draped only in a German flag. People are coming
off the fences, as it were. There is something in the air, and I am not
alone feeling it and commenting on these definite seismic shifts in the
public stance of Germans. It is not just the identification with that flag
- that alone for a German of that generation is an unheard-of, almot
career suicide step - but what she said just about knocked me for a loop.
"It's time to clear out the cliches about
Germany."
Ingrid, in press conference after press conference,
Germany's national trainer, Jürgen Klinsmann, a former national champion
of great acclaim who lives with his wife and children in Malibu,
California, recounts how Americans also celebrate their Day of
Independence [the Fourth of July] with gusto, [honoring] their Stars and
Stripes. He explains how on the 4th of July in America everybody hangs out
their flags, drapes their cars, drives around waving the Stars and Stripes
- joyfully and absolutely naturally! He says it's the most logical thing
to do! And he repeats this in Swabian-tinged English for the interviewers
from the BBC, CNN etc. Can you see the dynamic at work? Not only are 80
million Germans hearing common sense explanations from the trainer of the
national team - the rest of the world hears it also! When Klinsmann
decided to strike a patriotic pose, he told a foreign reporter how he
joined in [an American 4th of July celebration] by raising the German
flag! And this German with a Swabian accent spoke to an audience of over
500 million soccer fans around the world of the need for [a healthy
national identity].
Klinsman said, according to one of Germany's largest
newspapers, Süddeutsche Zeitung: "Young players and aggressive
tactics are going to get us in our own land the world championship. We
want to show the world who we are." Ingrid, he sounds like a football
revisionist. That is the gospel of self-liberation.
This world championship started subdued enough, with the
customary German masochistic demeanor which had spread over the nation's
psyche like a World War I poison gas cloud. Everybody played down any
patriotic notions. It was a sad spectacle to observe for an intuitive type
like myself.
Then came the criticism leveled against Klinsmann - the
Swabian from California. That was the acid mood, tangible to those who can
detect and feel nuances of human behavior. Ingrid, I know you don't follow
sports, but Klinsmann was the team captain under Franz Beckenbauer, who
was and is the legendary figure in German soccer, its former team captain,
then national trainer of German soccer of almost three decades. That's why
they call him "Der Kaiser" - the Emperor of German soccer.
Beckenbauer, too, had escaped to America because the
football establishment was overly bureaucratic, hidebound in traditions,
and ailing - he was called back, or should I say lured back to German with
promises of lots of money and a free hand at doing things his way, not
unlike Klinsmann was to be lured back from sunny California where he has
lived for the last eight years on the beach of Malibu with his wife,
Debby, and his children.
Ingrid, how often have I written and talked about this
beneficial mix of American largesse and yet simplicity in doing things and
tackling problems that might seem to the Germans living in Germany
insurmountable because of their induced fear of daring to soar with the
eagles instead of being stuck with the turkeys in the barnyard. I am
pleased to show you that with all my scholastic limitations and handicaps
I was right - and sensing what was missing and is still a stumbling block,
namely the willingness to be free in spirit, to shake off centuries of
limiting conventions, unwritten rules, taboos - to challenge long passé
dogmas which are the curse of the establishment. These limitations are
like mental handcuffs for a people and its state institutions. Germany, my
dear Ingrid, is the classic case.
One of the reporters wanted to know what all this
new-found "togetherness" was all about, and Klinsman said
defiantly, staring into the world media's cameras, "a dash of
patriotism is good and can never hurt!" Ingrid, in 60 years I have
only heard such words from the mouths of [those believed to be out of
touch]!
I promised you some images of how the new generation is
trying to normalize their soul-condition. They may not have exactly the
in-your-face courage to assert themselves in an organized way politically.
The system has devised the ways and means to prevent that so far, but look
at the ages and the faces - the "released" faces!
Ingrid, as I write these lines I am watching the NTV 5
p.m. news on Sunday, 18 June and the patriotism debate - "it is
dangerous to show so much releasing flag waving" and "is German
nationalism rising?" where one young, 25-year-old German says,
"We have much to catch up on as regards patriotism.." That's
against the background of a sea of waving flags filling the TV screen and
as far as the cameras can focus - hundreds of thousands of young Germans
"showing their flag," umembarrassed, as you can see even from
these few photos.
Look at the girl in the center, Ingrid - she is of the
"generations yet unborn" for which I undertook that arduous task
when I told American and Canadian interviewers in answer to the question,
"Why do you subject yourself to all this vilification, these dangers,
this painstaking effort?" My answer always was, "I do it for the
wartime generation who have no advocate, no one to protect them, no one to
speak for them - and I do it for the generations yet unborn!" Here is
that generation - then not yet born! This girl was born around the time of
my arrest, her parents during the time of my first trials and
tribulations. That's history in the making!
First, they will free themselves emotionally, and as they
mature politically, those who can still think, from which the new
generation of leaders will come, will draw the proper conclusions. This is
the information age, as I have stated a thousand times, that will break
the stranglehold of the hidden censors, the lobbyists in key positions,
via the democratization of information.
That age is now upon us. It is, of course, different from
what some of us, and the chattering political classes, have expected.
History does not ever repeat itself in exactly the same way. But consider
this: German T-shirt and flag makers have had to start nightshifts to fill
the demand! This is, in fact, a street revolution which has taken
everybody by surprise. It is no repeat from our father's methods and ways.
It is more innocent, and less threatening to those who need to fear
replacement. That is the way it should be. Patriotic feelings should be
positive feeling - just like America's, celebrating the Fourth of July.
The Mannheimer Morgen of June 9 quotes the World Soccer
Federation President, Joseph Blatter, aying that 32 Billion viewers will
watch these world championships. 180 countries are involved and organized
in this association. Ingrid, this is the most important sports event ever!
That's why the imagery is important - and the transformation of these
young Germans will start an image change. Every game where the German team
can hang in here will mean that more firmly the new images and feelings
will be embedded in people's minds.
Even if the German team, coached by this American Swabian
Klinsmann, should be knocked out of the competition along the way, the far
more significant victory, politically speaking, has already been achieved
- and that is that Klinsmann's unconventional ways, his questioning of old
habits and dogmas, of importing the almost naïve, boyish self-confidence
of youth has achieved [a transformation] of the German football mythology
that will be strengthened and heightened with every game this young team
can hang on to. Every game, even the most insignificant games against
teams which are given little chance, are important to this process now at
work, which is the release of the German Volk psyche - the relaxing, the
freeing of the collective psychic cramps which have held the German
national spirit in a straitjacket for almost three generations. One has to
see and watch this process unfold like a filmed time lapse sequence in one
of those science films about blossoms opening after a desert rain shower -
the faces of those boys and girls, adorned with the ever-present T-shirt
and jeans, clothing geared to exuberance, carefreeness. It is the
unmistakeable thumb print of the "American way".
A kind of fashion streamlining has taken place which
turns, by the message it carries, into an instant political statement or
mini-billboard. Since these soccer championships are watched by billions
of viewers, an incredible propaganda value is achieved because TV needs
close-ups to be effective in communicating passion, joy, exhuberance -
that is the quality which has been already achieved: the voluntary
identification with one's team and one's national colors, its symbols and
one's Volk.
Thus are idols born! Liberators of the spirit! Klinsmann's
soccer team is a tool for German self-liberation. Our young people are
declaring their innocence and are dancing their way to a new tomorrow -
one soccer game at a time! Ingrid, this is the defining image which kicked
off the patriotism debate. That's how they sang the national anthem in the
stadium. I spent 30 years being virtually the only one in the English
speaking world saying that at every opportunity. And now photo models and
actresses are saying it publicly at press conferences.
A new generation is taking over. No telling what this
generation will talk about at press conferences and on talk shows. This
being a censored letter, I will leave it at that.
Ernst Zundel