Soros: America Needs “De-Nazification”

George Soros spoke with a group of reporters at Davos a few days ago and made the following remarks about the political scene in America:

The United States is now recognizing the errors it had made in Iraq, he said, adding, “To what extent it recognizes the mistake will determine its future.” Mr. Soros said Turkey and Japan were still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history, and contrasted that reluctance to Germany’s rejection of its Nazi-era past.

“America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany,” he said. “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.”

I understand what Soros was trying to say here: namely that America must take a brutally honest look at its history if it hopes to move on and not repeat the same mistakes.  No doubt, Soros was drawing on his personal history as a European Jew when he mentioned "de-Nazification".  Still, it was unfortunate that he tried to draw an analogy between the US today and the de-Nazification of postwar Germany.

De-Nazification was imposed on Germany from the outside victorious powers, and for the most part it was a failure. Historian Rebecca Boehling points out in her book A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reform and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany that – particularly in the American-occupied zone – concerns about maintaining "law and order" outweighed ideological purity in choosing local officials to assume control.  The outcome was that many former Nazi party members and sympathizers kept their positions, salaries, pensions, etc.  American "re-education" efforts in Germany, using questionnaire, films, lectures, etc. were clumsy and ineffective, leading to resentment and cynicism among Germans.

A better analogy for what American needs would be the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission where both victims and perpetrators of violence came forward with testimony. Yes, we need to confront the deception that led to the Iraq invasion, but first we should reexamine the Vietnam war, since it was our failure to confront the historical truth of that war which allowed us to repeat the mistake again in 2002-2003. Otherwise we will be condemned to follow the course which Robert Lowell outlined in the final stanza of his poem Waking Early Sunday Morning:

Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;
peace to our children when they fall
in small war on the heels of small
war – until the end of time
to police the earth, a ghost
orbiting forever lost
in our monotonous sublime.

UPDATE: George Soros now regrets his terminology and agrees with me!

As regards my use of the term "de-Nazification," I am not too proud to admit this was a bad choice of words. I certainly do not put the United States and Nazi Germany in the same moral category. What I meant was that the United States needs to engage in a profound soul searching about the harm the war in Iraq has done to others and ourselves. Post-war Germany underwent such a process to its lasting benefit. Perhaps truth and reconciliation would have been a more felicitous expression, although it is also inaccurate because we need to be reconciled with ourselves not the terrorists. For the record, I am not equating the U.S. to South Africa either.