Painful Reminiscences

While the victorious Allies have marked V-E day each year with parades and speeches, the enormity of Germany's guilt and shame has imposed an anguished silence upon that country. Last week, 25 years after the Zusam-menbruch (collapse) of the Third Reich, West Germany's first Social Democrat Chancellor broke with tradition. In a 21-minute speech to the Bundestag, Brandt declared that "no one is free from the history he has inherited."

An anti-Nazi who fled Germany in 1933, Brandt said that, while West Germany has become a respected and envied member of the family of nations, "we must not forget that the wounds of war have not vanished everywhere, that mistrust has not vanished everywhere, but indeed can be evoked in some people at the slightest cause." Recalling that the war unleashed by Adolf Hitler cost the lives of "millions of children, women and men of many nations," Brandt said: "We remember them all with reverence. The suffering resulting from the war warns us not to forget the lessons of the past and to regard the securing of peace as the supreme aim of our political actions."

Toward that end, Brandt said that West Germans must recognize that "facts have come into being during the past 25 years that we simply cannot reverse." Thus Brandt emphasized that he would be willing to sacrifice German claims to the lands east of the Oder-Neisse Line, which has demarcated the Polish-German border since the war's end, in return for better relations with Poland. Brandt's words were also intended for the East German Communist regime. Next week East German Premier Willi Stoph is scheduled to meet with Brandt in the West German city of Kassel in the second summit between the two Germanys.

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