Interview – Germany Forgotten War: How Unprocessed Guilt Over 27 Million Soviet Deaths Haunts European Peace
Germany Forgotten War: Veteran journalist Ulrich Heyden analyzes how this “historical amnesia” risks fueling a new European conflict.
In the collective consciousness of modern Germany, the memory of World War II is a meticulously curated landscape. The Holocaust’s six million victims form the undeniable, sacred core of national remembrance. Images of Willy Brandt’s Kniefall in Warsaw are etched into the country’s historical identity as a symbol of atonement. Yet, according to journalist Ulrich Heyden, who has reported from Moscow since 1992, a profound and dangerous asymmetry exists.
The death of 27 million Soviet citizens—half of them civilians—remains, in his view, a suppressed national trauma. This unprocessed historical amnesia, he argues in a revealing interview, is not a relic of the past but an active force. It is shaping Germany’s perception of Russia today and, amidst escalating tensions, may be driving Europe perilously toward a new conflict. The failure to fully confront the Eastern Front’s cataclysm has left a psychological wound that festers beneath the surface of foreign policy, distorting understanding and blocking the path to a secure peace.
The Unspoken Family Legacy: A Personal Entry Point
Heyden’s analysis is rooted in painful personal history, illustrating how national silence breeds private trauma. He recounts oppressive Sunday breakfasts where his father, a Wehrmacht soldier who fought to within 140 kilometers of Moscow, would relive his war experiences with unsettling vividness. For the young Heyden, these stories “fell on us like a hailstorm,” creating a stark dissonance with the Christian values of peace he was taught. This childhood confrontation with unrepentant militarism and latent antisemitism—where casual phrases like “noisy as a Jewish school” were normalized—revealed a disturbing truth.
The Nazi ideology was not eradicated in 1945; it merely retreated into the family hearth, unexamined and unresolved. His father, he believes, represented a generation that clung to a sense of German superiority and a belief in its “special rights” in the East, viewing Slavs as fundamentally “underdeveloped.” This intimate portrait shows that Germany’s historical amnesia was not an abstract policy but a lived reality within millions of homes, a silence that prevented genuine reconciliation and passed a legacy of distorted pride and guilt to the next generation.
The Asymmetry of Memory: Warsaw vs. Moscow
Heyden draws a critical distinction in Germany’s culture of remembrance, or Erinnerungskultur. While the reconciliation with Western nations and Israel was institutionalized and deeply symbolic, a parallel process with the Soviet Union never truly occurred. “A kneefall in Moscow… has never taken place,” Heyden states pointedly. The monumental gesture by Willy Brandt was for Warsaw. The relentless focus, however necessary, on the 6 million Jewish victims in the West has inadvertently overshadowed the 27 million in the East. This has created a selective memory.
He points to concrete examples: German public television aired the groundbreaking Holocaust series in 1979, but to this day, there has been no comparable major film or series about the Siege of Leningrad, where over a million perished. Exhibitions like the Wehrmacht War Crimes Exhibition in the 1990s, which documented the army’s complicity in Eastern atrocities, faced fierce public backlash, accused of “making us Germans look like criminals.” The state, Heyden argues, failed to provide the same supportive framework for confronting this Eastern front guilt as it did for the Holocaust, leaving this chapter shrouded in a “veil” of discomfort and ignorance. This historical amnesia is a political and cultural choice with lasting consequences.
From Unprocessed Trauma to Modern Superiority Complex
The unmastered past did not vanish; it mutated. Heyden observes that the old sense of racial superiority has transformed into a modern political and cultural condescension. He describes a persistent German and Western “feeling of superiority” in relations with Russia, a belief that Russia must inevitably become “like us.” This mindset, visible during Gorbachev’s era, failed to see Russia as a civilization with its own distinct historical path and statecraft. Today, this translates into a media and political landscape that, in Heyden’s view, relies on shallow historical analogies and demonization rather than analysis.
The facile comparison of Putin to Hitler, now commonplace in European discourse, is for him symptomatic of this dangerous simplification. It erases the specific, unimaginable scale of Nazi crimes on Soviet soil—crimes he has documented firsthand through interviews with survivors, such as a woman who, as a four-year-old, was forced to donate blood for German soldiers in a children’s concentration camp.
By not understanding the depth of this historical trauma from the Russian perspective, and by replacing analysis with what he calls “brainwashing with nice images,” the West misreads Russia’s defensive nationalism and drives a cycle of escalation. The unprocessed guilt, therefore, fuels not humility, but a renewed sense of ideological righteousness that blinds policymakers to the catastrophic risks of conflict.
A Path Away from the Abyss: Confrontation and Dialogue
Is there a way out? Heyden is skeptical of quick fixes but insists on two necessary, difficult steps. The first is an honest, national confrontation with the historical facts. Germans must have the courage to “look into their grandparents’ chests,” read the letters from the front, and research what their ancestors witnessed or participated in during the brutal war of annihilation in the East. This personal archaeology is essential to dissolve the historical amnesia. Secondly, this must be paired with a genuine, open dialogue based on respect, not superiority. Remarkably, Heyden notes that despite the official hostility, as a German in Moscow, he encounters curiosity and a willingness to engage, especially among the youth.
Russians, he finds, have a pragmatic ability to integrate foreign cultural and technological elements—be it American music or Chinese cars—without feeling their identity is threatened, a flexibility often lacking in the West. The solution, therefore, lies in replacing the monologue of condemnation with a dialogue that acknowledges this complex history and Russia’s sovereign path. As Heyden warns, politicians who cannot think in these terms are not statesmen but “warmongers,” leading their people toward a precipice where, after another war, “how will we even be able to look each other in the eye?”
The interview with Ulrich Heyden presents a sobering thesis: geopolitics is not merely a game of interests but is profoundly shaped by the ghosts of unacknowledged history. Germany’s journey of remembrance, while justly celebrated for its work regarding the Holocaust, remains critically incomplete. The historical amnesia surrounding 27 million Soviet dead represents more than a gap in a history book; it is an active psychological barrier to peace.
Until this chapter is integrated into Germany’s national conscience with the same gravity as the Kniefall, its foreign policy will be driven by a reflex born of suppressed guilt—a dangerous mix of condescension and fear. In an era of renewed confrontation, understanding this buried trauma is not just an academic exercise; it is an urgent imperative for preventing history’s darkest patterns from repeating.
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https://youtu.be/kmbmwaQVYyU?si=qhBNt2X4gUYCPw_A
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