Introduction
The Second World War, fortunately for the whole world, ended in favor of the Soviet Union and resulted in the complete failure of the Nazi regime in Germany and the suicide of Hitler with who the age of horror and totalitarianism ended happily. But the fact was the despite the unwillingness of the majority of the nation to take part in the destructive war that brought about many deaths, genocide, and drama all over the world, the country still lay in ruins and had to pay retribution to all nations that suffered from the inhuman plan of genocide implemented by Hitler.
As a result, Germans face the tragedy of rebuilding their country from nothing under the conditions of shame for their recent past and have to create decent living conditions out of nothing to ensure their country’s further existence. The government together with the German population realized that they needed to restructure the economy in a peaceful, innovative way; they have to create a new, constructive ideological basis that would build a sound basis for the moral, cultural and intellectual development of their children and grandchildren. The moment at which Germany started a new, after-war life, was coined as “Zero Hour” – the starting point of German development and rebuilding under new, democratic, free conditions. The present paper investigates the major changes and improvements that have been undertaken since then in Germany and have shaped its modern state as a country with a developed economy, sound social and cultural climate and a multitude of enhancement opportunities.
The Concept of Zero Hour
The notion of Zero Hour appeared at the end of the Second World War and had several names (also Zero Point), several meanings and several uses – but it had one thing in common, which was the highly informational, optimistic, and symbolic meaning included into this notion (Brockman 8). It was not a simple change, innovation or revolution – it was perceived as a complete disruption of history before the War and the entirely new beginning that marked the emergence of a new state after the War – as Brockman indicates in his work, Germans had much hope and expectations connected with the Zero Hour:
“To speak of a Zero Hour is to invoke rich cultural resonances going back to the creation of the world in Judeo-Christian tradition; to the invention of calendars; to the advent of Christ and Christianity’s division of time itself into the old and the new; to the mathematical acceptance of the number zero, with all its problematic philosophical implications; and to the vague but indispensable concept of modernity itself, with its sweeping away of old traditions and customs” (Brockman 8).
After the completion of WW II and the complete surrender of Germany on May 9, 1945 to the Soviet Union it was finally possible to assess the whole scale of atrocities, genocide and homicide committed by Hitler during the War – captives were freed from concentration camps and the full-scale losses were evaluated by the countries on the territory of which war actions took place. Germany, as the place where the set of final attacks took place lay in complete ruins, with all resources and infrastructure destroyed, the country beheaded – Germany found itself in the absolute zero in 1945. But material losses were not the heaviest burden Germany would have to carry in the subsequent years – as Thomas Mann declared over the whole world after the end of WW II, the overwhelming shame that every member of the German nation would have to feel for the evil committed against humanity was lying on every person living in Germany since then. (Brockman 8-9).
Even under the conditions of the complete failure of Germany and the destructive consequences of the War it experienced, it was clear that the world community could not so easily forget and forgive its guilt before humankind, even under the conditions that the main villains were already punished. The world was seeking justice and found it in accusations directed at Germany that was already destroyed to its very basis by the shame, the hatred of Soviet soldiers who entered the country in the final days of the War and the criticism of thinkers, politicians, writers and speakers all over the world. The guilt of these mistakes was to guide the German nation for many decades hereafter, which can be seen from the speech of Franz Werfel:
“From his exile in California, Werfel, like Mann, wrote about the problem of German collective guilt, which was to be one of the most controversial topics in postwar German culture” (Brockman 9).
But the Zero Hour, though being so symbolic and optimistic for Germans, failed to fulfill its point as the country was deeply ruined by the post-war situation, people were starving and living under strict Soviet control, families were separated and people thought about nothing but food and shelter. All this was aggravated by the painful guilt for everything that happened:
“Far from thinking about new beginnings or even placing the end of Hitler’s Third Reich or of the German Reich itself into the broader philosophical context implied by a term like “Nullpunkt,” most Germans seem to have been largely concerned simply with surviving” (Brockman 12).
Nonetheless, no matter how utopian the ideas of Germans to start everything from the very beginning were, there will be hardly anyone who will doubt the fact that 1945 still marked the beginning of a completely new era in Germany together with the complete change of ideology, economy, culture and thinking. The tragedy in which Germany turned out to be the direct participant left a huge trace in every German’s heart, so the change was steady but constructive, and at the modern period of time, it is possible to assess it as objectively revolutionary.
Economic Revival of Post-War Germany
Van Hook marks that at the present moment Germany is in the state of possessing a stable social market economy, and even being criticized for it, Germany shows the best figures about the budget deficit (lower than 3%) and is an active participant in the EU providing the overall internal and external economic stability. Hence, it is highly relevant to recollect the set of actions taken in the 1940s and 1950s to achieve such profound success and the overall improvement of the situation in the country that took it out from ashes.
The majority of European countries in the state of depression took the strategy of entrusting the government with the recovery of the economy – this way they responded to the “crisis of capitalism” and read the Keynesian economics as a guide to their development (van Hook 3). But Germany decided to act in a completely different way and chose another direction for economic development:
“Reacting against a statist economic tradition that had reached grotesque forms during Nazism, the social market economy celebrated the market, competition, and free trade. Indeed, the economists who supported the social market economy argued that creeping intervention of the state had produced “organized capitalism” that paved the way to Nazism” (van Hook 3).
Thus, following a different path of development in the process of recovery Germany soon managed to achieve profound success in the multiple spheres of its economy. But the 1960s brought about the negative change that shaped the form of German economy in a substantially different way later on:
“This “restoration paradigm”, which came to dominate serious work on West Germany’s economic history by the late 1960s, held that the restoration of capitalism undermined attempts to reform German social structure” (van Hook 5).
For example, Abelshauser stated in his economic research that the German economic development was not the result of economic activity but the natural restoration of development tempos and catching with the world tempos of growth in the 1960s. There are other examples such as Charles Kindleberger’s doubts about the origin of skilled labor forces in the West Germany in the post-War period or the financial research of Frederick G. Reuss and Karl W. Roskamp who found profitable investment opportunities in occupied Germany (van Hook 6-7). But no matter what reasons for the economic miracle was found by the critics, opponents and proponents of the country’s development, it is clear that West Germany managed to successfully overcome the shame and grief of being ruined morally and physically by WW II and managed to become a prosperous and developed country in the context of the 20th century, showing huge potential for development in the 21st century as well.
Ideological and Cultural Revival in Germany
In addition to the material aspects of the country’s recovery, it was necessary to create a sound basis for the country’s intellectual and cultural life – people had to believe in something, to be guided by something that would give them hope for the better and would outline the main directions for action and development. Thus, Norberg admits that the intellectuals of West Germany were responsible for rebuilding the theoretical perspective of the German community’s functioning – they had to formulate the main principles of new, post-war life that would be free from totalitarianism, terror and dogmas (Norberg iii):
“After 1945, German intellectual entrusted with re-educational tasks faced the problem of having to formulate the principles of a community that had been stripped – or relieved – of the supporting myths of a transcendent state or a stable national unity” (Norberg iii).
As a consequent action in response to the moral and intellectual emptiness of the destroyed country, there emerged a great number of thinkers who very actively took the recovery of their motherland and conducted active social, cultural, and enlightenment activities in Germany. Bringing the significant contribution to the development and recovery of their country from the wounds, they
“were prominent voices in the burgeoning public sphere of the late 1940s—a representative sample would include Alfred Andersch, Ernst Bloch, Walter Dirks, Axel Eggebrecht, Wolfgang Harich, Karl Jaspers, Erich Kästner, Alfred Kantorowicz, Maria Luise Kaschnitz, Victor Klemperer, Eugen Kogon, Jürgen Kuczynski, Rudolf Leonhard, Horst Lommer, Georg Lukács, Hans Mayer, Alexander Mitscherlich, Pauline Nardi, Ernst Niekisch, Hans Werner Richter, Dolf Sternberger, Alfred Weber, Günther Weisenborn” (Forner 31).
Conclusion
Paying particular attention to the events that shaped the history of Germany with the Nazi influence that terrified millions of people locally and then, with the thirst for blood that grasped Hitler and moved the Nazi troops to the whole of Europe, it is hard to believe that Germany managed to recover from such ruins and became a worthy actor in the international arena. Nowadays Germany is an active member of the EU, it enjoys influence in the world and has a huge potential for further development. Hence, it is necessary to admit that even though the Zero Hour failed to be implemented in Germany because of the stunning feeling of guilt and the enormous scale of atrocities committed by Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s Germany still coped with the task of recovery perfectly and showed the economic miracle in the middle of the 20th century together with visible improvements in many other spheres that also demanded attention. Nowadays there are many perspectives for the country in a multi-aspect perspective, and in spite of the nation still bearing the guilt of its predecessors, Germany is gradually recovering and restoring its reputation as well as activities in all aspects.
Works Cited
Brockman, Stephen. “German Culture at the “Zero Hour”. Revisiting Zero-Hour 1945: The Emergence of Postwar German Culture. Eds. Stephen Brockman and Frank Trommler, Vol. 1. 1996. Web.
Forner, A. Sean. “Democratic Renewal and Postwar Germans – Immediate pre-Cold War Political Culture As Seen from a post-Cold War Perspective”. Reflections by the 12th group of German Chancellor Scholars 2001/2002. Web.
Norberg, Jacob. “Sociability and its enemies: political theory and literature in West Germany after 1945”. ProQuest LLC. 2008. Web.
Van Hook, James C. Rebuilding Germany: the Creation of the Social Market Economy, 1945-1957. Cambridge University Press. 2004.