This statement is another bewildering conjunction of seeming contradictions, including Rothkirch’s outrage at the way the executions are carried out, the laconic attitude of the executioner, and the arbitrary process by which victims are selected. Rothkirch’s anti-Semitism is also unusual. He is one of the few POWs to have spoken of “Jewish Bolshevism.” He is also someone who fears Jewish revenge. The frame of reference within which he argues, however, admits the possibility that Germans can regain the international trust they have lost and that Germans will be allowed to play a part in “creating a sensible world.”
We should resist the temptation to shake our heads at these astonishing disparities between perception, interpretation, and argumentation. What appears hopelessly contradictory today was not necessarily so six decades ago. People who supported anti-Semitic policies could criticize how they were put into practice without any inherent contradiction. Indeed, they could even regard anti-Semitic practices as a mistake that would cause considerable trouble. Hostility toward Jews did not automatically mean that people wanted to be excluded from the circle of nations that would shape the world of the future. Rothkirch’s belief that anti-Jewish policies were implemented in the wrong way does not call into question the racist worldview that formed his frame of reference. Nor did it shake his faith that Germans should be full-fledged members, worthy of trust and equal in status to others, in world politics. Rothkirch’s views may appear, ex post facto, to be the products of hubris, naïveté, or sheer stupidity. But they reveal the contours of the frame of reference within which he acted at the time.
The dilemma is the same one that left many Germans, at least until the 1970s, unable to comprehend that what they had done or tolerated in the Third Reich could have been utterly wrong. This resulted from what we today might call an absolute incompatibility of the frame of reference “Third Reich” with the political and normative standards that applied in democratic, post–World War II Germany. This incompatibility is at the root of the frequent, heated debates and scandals surrounding the past in post-Nazi German society.237
Incompatibility also occurs in the protocol excerpt cited at the beginning of this section, in which a German POW wonders how others could see Germans collectively as “swine,” when they were the people of Liszt or Wagner. In another dialogue, a low-ranking artillery officer and a foot soldier search for an explanation:
HÖLSCHER: It’s very strange that they are always against us.
VON BASTIAN: Yes, it’s very, very strange.
HÖLSCHER: As ADOLF said, it’s possibly all due to the Jews.
VON BASTIAN: Both ENGLAND and AMERICA are under the influence of the Jews.
HÖLSCHER: For instance, he now abuses AMERICA more than he does ENGLAND. He says AMERICA is the arch-enemy.
VON BASTIAN: Yes.
HÖLSCHER: American high finance, Jewish finance. Only after that does he speak about ENGLAND.238
Within the frame of reference of the Holocaust, beliefs about the negative traits and enormous influence of Jews are so securely anchored that Jewish treachery can serve as an explanation for practically anything. That explains soldiers’ reflexive tendency to cite Jewish stereotypes, even in those anecdotes that begin with someone expressing a modicum of sympathy for the plight of Jews:
