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Gendered responsibilities for war and peace. Strategies of political, socio-economic
and psychological reconstruction in post-war Germany
This paper combines a feminist view on the gendered dynamics fostering and
preventing warfare with the experiences of Germans at the end and in the aftermath
of World War II. Even if those historical events happened about 60 years ago, they
have been shaping German societies all along – thus, I believe that a look back
might enhance the understanding of long-term consequences of war and post-war
reconstruction in the still very young feminist debate on sustainable peace-building.
Even if the way of warfare has changed dramatically over the last 60 years – Mary
Kaldor (2001) speaks of new "globalized wars" – there are also overlapping features
of World War II with present-day warfare, especially in the targeting of civilians.
A few weeks ago, I witnessed a debate among a few West Germans in their
thirties about the German post-war situation. Impressions were exchanged about the
hardships of these years, roughly 1945 to 1948, about the hunger, the expulsions of
millions of Germans mostly from Poland and Czechoslovakia, about the violence in
these expulsions – including widespread sexual violence –, about the exhausting
physical reconstruction work, and about the mental disorientation and uprooting. One
woman wondered, however, about the collective refusal to assume any responsibility
for the deeds of the Nazi-regime, and about the self-victimization so prevalent in
German post-war society. Many Germans expressed a sensation of being cheated
and betrayed – not only by the consequences of a lost war, which would be
understandable to a certain extent, but also by everything that had happened before:
the false promises of the Nazis, the sacrifices of the war etc. Another of the
discussants, however, deemed it arrogant to expect a feeling of responsibility for the
war from those millions of Germans who had no influence on high politics, but who
had suffered from war as much as many other nationals. An third opinion found that
Germans were still different from war victims of other nationalities as they had
previously benefited from a regime built on injustice, even if these pre-war benefits
had been erased from their minds.
Discussions and disagreements of this kind have been ongoing in West and
unified Germany (not so much in East Germany
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). They turn around issues that are
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In East Germany, the question was dealt differently – the responsibility for the war was de-
personalized and attributed to fascism and capitalism; as a consequence, a new socialist regime that
had "learned the lessons" was established. Thus, officially, the fascist past did not have anything to do
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