Merkel’s Uber-Hypocrisy to
Japan over War Past… and Present
By Finian Cunningham
March 16, 2015 "ICH"
- "SCF"
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
reprimand last week to Japanese leaders
to «face up to their wartime past» had an
ironic twist that went scarcely noticed. The
irony is that it is the German leader who
actually stands accused of not facing up to
her country’s wartime past. More sinisterly,
her historical denial is manifested in
actual present-day war-making in Ukraine,
and it is furthering a dynamic that could
lead to an all-out war with Russia because
of baseless Western demonisation of Moscow.
A demonisation that Merkel’s Germany is
playing no small role in.
For while the German
chancellor was lecturing Japan on its legacy
of imperial crimes, it emerged that Merkel
had decided to snub major forthcoming
commemorations scheduled
for May 9 in Moscow to mark the 70th
anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany by
the Soviet Union. The far-reaching impact of
such a move by Berlin will underpin the
reactionary neo-Nazi regime in Kiev and its
continual attempts to whitewash the crimes
of Second World War German Nazism.
On her controversial absence
from Moscow in May, Merkel made some
unconvincing reference to present political
tensions over Ukraine and alleged Russian
interference in that country as the reason
for her forthcoming non-attendance. As if by
way of offering a paltry consolation, the
German leader is instead planning to pay her
respects at a wreath-laying ceremony to the
“unknown soldier” in the Russian capital on
the following day, May 10, along with
Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Berlin rationale for
Merkel’s absence in Moscow is not good
enough. By boycotting – and that is what
Merkel’s absence amounts to – the May 9
event, the German government is, in effect,
giving present political concerns over
Ukraine equal importance to what is truly a
momentous milestone in the 20th
Century. The defeat of a monstrously
genocidal German regime in 1945 with the
capture of Berlin by the Soviet Red Army is
an event unparalleled in the past 100
years.
Europe was liberated from a
fascist tyranny that had dominated most of
the continent from 1939 until 1945. Up to 30
million Russians – nearly half of the war’s
total dead – paid with their lives in the
Third Reich’s bid for hegemony, and in the
process of neutralising the German war
machine. Up to 90 per cent of the German
Wehrmacht’s total war losses were incurred
on its Eastern Front against Russia. That
figure alone tells which of the wartime
allies – Soviet Union, Britain or the United
States – were instrumental in the historic
defeat of Nazi Germany.
So, it is entirely fitting
that the May 9 commemorations in Moscow
marking the end of the Great Patriotic War,
as it is known to Russians, should be seen
as the definitive event out of several other
Western war anniversaries dedicated to the
end of the Second World War and the
surrender of Nazi Germany.
It was Russia that won that
war, despite Western vanity which purports
to elevate their role beyond an objectively
marginal contribution in the vanquishing of
Nazi Germany. It is therefore a moral
imperative that any world leader wishing to
genuinely pay homage to the people who
sacrificed most in defeating the criminal
dictatorship of Adolf Hitler should be at
the May 9 commemorations in Moscow. That
moral imperative is even greater on
present-day German leaders, given the
culpability of their country in one of the
great war crimes of the past century.
Merkel’s de facto snub of the
Moscow war memorial this year is thus a
grave sign of Germany not facing up to its
wartime past – and ironically in the same
week that the German chancellor was in Japan
lecturing Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe
on his moral obligations over past war
guilt.
By the way, Japanese leaders,
including Abe, have already made formal
apologies for their country’s imperialist
raping of China and Korea. In 1995, then
premier Tomiichi Murayama made a landmark
statement of reparation, and in 2007 Abe
issued a written apology to China.
Conservative low-key Japanese culture
perhaps gives such apologetics an air of
insouciance or lack of sincerity. And yes,
Abe has made several public visits to pay
respects at the Yasukuni war memorial in
Japan where alleged Japanese war criminals
are buried among many other war dead.
However, seen from a Japanese
perspective, why should it be singled out
for its need to apologise and face up to
wartime crimes? On the same day of Merkel’s
visit to Japan, March 9, the date also
marked the 70th anniversary of the
firebombing of Tokyo by the US Air Force.
That bombing raid resulted in more than
100,000 Japanese civilians being incinerated
in a two-day period involving over 300 B-29
Super Fortresses dropping incendiaries along
with TNT payloads. Five months later, in
August 1945, the US was to drop atomic bombs
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing another
200,000 people, mainly civilians.
America and Britain used
similar «strategic area bombing» on the
German cities of Berlin, Hamburg, Essen,
Cologne, Leipzig and Dresden, where the
combined civilian death toll from such raids
amounted to at least half a million, again,
mainly civilians.
Where is the «facing up to
wartime actions» by either Washington or
London? Precisely, none. So is it any wonder
that Japan perhaps feels an ambivalence
about unilateral professions of guilt when
Western crimes of similar magnitude are
simply ignored or even justified by the
West?
But getting back to Merkel
and her snub to Russia over its historic
defeat of Nazi Germany. One cannot explain
her actions as simply a random error of poor
political judgement.
It is reprehensible enough
that Merkel should equate present political
concerns over Ukraine and largely unfounded
claims of Russian aggression with the defeat
of Nazi Germany. The former is a subjective
issue and conditioned by dubious political
claims largely made by US-led NATO, with
scant evidence, which even the German
authorities in a Der Spiegel report have
lately expressed misgivings about the
veracity of.
Furthermore, and this is what
is even more unconscionable, Merkel’s
planned absence from Moscow on May 9 is part
of a disturbing recent pattern of re-writing
the Second World War, the heinous role of
Nazi Germany, its covert Western backers,
and the honourable achievement of the Soviet
Union in smashing European fascism.
At the end of January,
Russian President Vladimir Putin was not
invited by the Polish authorities to attend
the 70th anniversary of the
liberation of Auschwitz. Even though it was
Russia that liberated that Nazi death camp,
and the commemorative event was attended by
German and French officials.
This is part of a systematic
ideological trend whereby the crimes of Nazi
Germany and those who supported it are being
re-written and gradually lessened. The
heroic role of Russia is slowly being
airbrushed out of history.
And what gives this
historical revisionism impetus is the US-led
Western geopolitical campaign to confront
and undermine Russia. That campaign of
economic sanctions and rampant NATO
militarism across Europe is being
spearheaded by the Western-backed neo-Nazi
regime in Kiev.
Berlin is, along with
Washington, responsible for the illegal
regime change in Ukraine that took place in
February 2014, which saw the overthrow of a
constitutionally elected government and the
installation of a neo-Nazi junta. The new
Kiev regime of Western-backed Prime Minister
Arseniy Yatsenyuk and President Petro
Poroshenko openly adulates and glorifies
Second World War Ukrainian regiments that
assisted the Third Reich in the mass murder
of millions of people. Not only that, the
Kiev regime has waged a war of aggression
over the past year on the ethnic Russian
people of eastern Ukraine – all with
diplomatic, financial or military support
from Washington, Berlin and other European
capitals.
Yet this appalling reality of
Western-backed resurrection of Nazism in
Ukraine and its provocation to Russia is
stupendously denied by Washington, Berlin,
Paris and London and the Western mainstream
news media.
This is why Frau Merkel’s
haughty admonishment of Japan over its
wartime past rings not only hollow – it is
rank uber-hypocrisy.