Germany’s view of its own history and the world is changing. Instead of being the perpetrator, Germany is portrayed as the victim.
Compact magazine’s most recent history issue is called “The Death Camps of the Americans.” While everyone has focused on Germany’s death camps during the war, the magazine claims the cruelty of America has been overlooked. “The mass death of German prisoners of war on the Rhine meadows was not so-called collateral damage but was deliberately brought about,” it claims. “Responsible for the camps was the commander-in-chief of the United States and Allied forces, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who despised our people beyond measure.”
The message cannot be missed: America hates us and has suppressed us with malicious intent. They had death camps too.
Forgotten are America’s generosities. Also forgotten is the fact that many German war criminals went unpunished, that industrialists continued their businesses, that Germany’s army was allowed to be revived, and that the U.S. protected West Germany from Soviet rule.
Compact is what the German mainstream media calls “far right.” Nonetheless, it has a readership in the tens of thousands, and the party it supports is currently the second-most popular party in Germany—the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
AfD leader Tino Chrupalla told the right-wing blog Sezession on May 11: “Historical guilt should no longer determine the way we act.”
Anti-Americanism is not just a problem among German fringe parties. Thorsten Schulte used to work as an investment banker and was a member of the mainstream Christian Democratic Union for 26 years. In 2017, his book Kontrollverlust (Loss of Control), which criticized the handling of Germany’s migration crisis, topped Spiegel’s bestseller list. Two years later, he wrote Fremdbestimmt (Directed by Others), which claims to unmask “the historiography of the victors, exposes untruths, half-truths and the omission of important facts in our media,” the Amazon description reads. This according to the author is the reason for Germany’s “guilt complex.”
Changing history also changes Germany’s present view of America.
In a June 2022 article, Germany’s Die Welt newspaper highlighted how Germany’s left blamed the Ukraine War at least partly on “U.S. imperialism.” In other words: The U.S. is worse than Russian President Vladimir Putin and the cause for enmity with Russia!
The times when German and Russian cooperation caused the death of millions in Eastern Europe are forgotten. America is blamed. History is being rewritten.
God Himself is holding America accountable for the evil it propagates—and yet Isaiah, along with the book of Nahum and Revelation 17, shows that Germany’s anger and God’s wrath are not the same. Germany may recognize some of America’s flaws, but it resents God’s great purpose for this nation as explained in The United States and Britain in Prophecy. This stirs God’s anger and causes Him to ask, “Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith?” (Isaiah 10:15).
In other words, Who are you to question your Creator’s decision? If I can use you to punish my people, can I not decide the purpose of that punishment?