Abstract
Berlin-born lawyer and head of the German Civilian Administration in Thessaloniki (August 1942 – March 1944), Max Merten had been heavily involved in the deportation of local Jews in 1943. Thessaloniki had the largest Jewish community in Greece and was the most famous Sephardic community in Europe. As the forced deployment of Jewish men from Thessaloniki, starting in July 1942, proved ‘unprofitable’ due to high mortality rates, Merten let the Jewish community pay a ransom for the labourers’ release. 1 Soon after, in late 1942, Berlin began the implementation of the Final Solution in the parts of Greece that were under German administration, including Thessaloniki. From then on, the process moved rapidly, much more quickly than in the countries that were occupied earlier in Europe.
In February 1943, two trusted emissaries of the German Reich, Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner, who had proved efficient in the deportation of Jews from Slovakia and France respectively, arrived in Thessaloniki and contacted Merten who raised ‘no objections’. 2 The deportations of over 50,000 Thessaloniki Jews thus began without further delay. 3 Jewish homes and warehouses were looted and eventually many Jewish properties were put into the hands of Greek collaborators, as evidenced in the recent historical analyses of the last decade. 4 At this stage, according to archival sources, Merten himself took possession of goods and commodities from over 40 Jewish stores. 5 Merten was not a passive Nazi bureaucrat; he actively sought to enrich himself at the expense of Jewish deportees and considered himself the unofficial ‘King of Macedonia’. 6 Personal accounts from Holocaust survivors and the Italian Consul General Guelfo Zamboni underscore Merten's willingness to supersede his official duties in order to confiscate Jewish property. 7
After the war, the Greek administration took a number of steps that, on paper, looked like they should contribute to the material reconstruction of the Holocaust survivors. About 96% of Thessaloniki Jews were murdered in the Holocaust but the 2000 survivors were at the forefront of initiatives regarding reparations. The Greek government significantly impeded the retribution process and reconstruction of Jewish communities in Greece, a fact that for decades has been silenced in Greek cultural memory. Additionally, with the single exception of Merten, Greek authorities took no active steps towards punishing the war crimes committed by Nazis and their collaborators against the Jews of Greece. And even in the case of Merten, the half-hearted attitude of the Greek authorities took many Holocaust survivors by surprise. 8
In our article, we correlate the multidirectional attitudes in the geopolitical context of the Cold War with how, through the Merten Affair, internal and external power elites in the West deliberately departed from the concept of transitional justice in order to serve their own political interests. 9 First, we discuss the historical development of the Merten Affair from the aftermath of World War II up to the closure of his case in 1968. It is not our aim to go into detail regarding Merten's whereabouts and activities since such details have already been well documented by historians and social scientists. 10 Rather, based on the thorough research of newspaper coverage and political archives from Greece, West Germany, Britain and the United States, we analyse the power mechanisms that were mobilised in the political and public discourses.
Finally, we contrast the Western perspective with Czechoslovak media coverage of the Merten Case in order to illustrate communist discourses in the East Bloc. Comparisons with other countries can also be drawn; however, although public discourse around Merten in such countries was similar to that of Czechoslovakia, there are some particularities, e.g., in the East German and Hungarian contexts, that require detailed research beyond the scope of this article. While Hungary, for example, was connected to the Merten case through his Hungarian-born wife,
11
East Germany's link to the Merten case was, on the one hand, through its possession of relevant archival records that were not available to any other country and, on the other, as a former part of the
Czechoslovakia was similar to Greece in two ways: (1) They both had a rich Jewish history and a Jewish minority of similar size and proportion to the non-Jewish population, and (2) they held geopolitically strategic positions in the Cold War power struggle on the East-West border. Although seemingly unrelated to the Holocaust in Greece, post-war Czechoslovakia – appealing to Jewish witnesses from Greece, among others – became the first country to issue the death penalty to Dieter Wisliceny, one of the SS (Schutzstaffel) soldiers in Thessaloniki and Bratislava, who they executed in 1948. Additionally, as a country in Moscow's orbit, Czechoslovakia accepted about 12,000 communist Greek Civil War refugees in the name of solidarity, framing it as part of its ‘antifascist struggle’, thus manipulating the term ‘fascism’ into the anti-West position it took during the Cold War. 13 Drawing on the interplay between the Eastern and Western discourses, we argue that rather than the just condemnation of war crimes and their perpetrators, both communist and anti-communist power elites amidst the ‘memory wars’ (a term generally coined much later, used especially in the context of the Euro-Russian cultural struggle 14 ) were concerned with the politics of memory (or the silencing) of the wartime atrocities.
Even if the Greek elites were at the centre of the Merten scandal in 1960, the Greek press did not focus on the memory of wartime collaboration and atrocities to the same degree as the Czech press. In Greece, as in West Germany, the Merten case functioned more as a way of fighting the internal political struggle than as a way of dealing with the dark past or with the competition between the East and the West. As bystanders in the East watching the scandal unfold, the alleged revelation that Greek officials were collaborators served as a catalyst for criticising the West and its corrupt politicians. Ultimately, the Czech press used the scandal to their own advantage by weaving it into the hegemonic state-narratives of the time.
Merten and the post-war period
At the end of the war, American forces arrested Merten, who was returning home, at the German-Austrian border and they interned him in Dachau. In 1946, American authorities twice offered to extradite him to Greece, but Athens refused, stating that ‘Merten had nothing to answer for in Greece’, 15 thus denying his responsibility for the Auschwitz deportations. In Germany, Merten was acquitted in 1948. After that he continued living his civil life, established his own law practice in Berlin, engaged in business and politics and for a time, even served at the Ministry of Justice. 16 When Merten's former interpreter Arthur Meissner called him in 1957 to get Merten's help in settling legal matters in Greece, Merten contacted the Greek Consulate in Bonn and the West German Embassy in Athens to see if there were any potential obstacles to his intervention on Meissner's behalf; there were no objections to Merten potentially making a trip to Greece. 17
In fact, Merten himself was cautiously optimistic about his visit since there was a general disinterest by the post-war Greek authorities in locating and prosecuting former members of the Nazi party. Article 131 of the Basic Law that was passed in West Germany on 11 May 1951, which ended the denazification process, drew a line between the post-war government and Germany's dark past, ultimately formalising a general sentiment that would prevail amongst the Allies and the West German officials. 18 In the same vein, Konrad Adenauer stated in 1952, ‘I think we now need to finish with this sniffing out of Nazis.’ 19 Putting the wartime past behind the two respective countries led to a substantial increase in Greek tobacco exports to West Germany. Between 1950–1952, West German imports of Greek tobacco increased by nearly 50% thus making West Germany the most important destination for Greek exports. 20 Although West Germany was willing to be ‘responsible for [the] investigation and prosecution of Germans accused of committing war crimes in Greece’, 21 they had not actually moved forward with the prosecution process.
In Athens, the death of Prime Minister Alexandros Papagos in 1955 led to the surprise selection of Constantine Karamanlis as the new conservative leader in Greece. Karamanlis and his National Radical Union (ERE) party did not bring significant change to domestic or international policy. Like his predecessor, Karamanlis was a strident anti-communist, who maintained the marginalisation and repression of leftist supporters from the Civil War (1946–1949) and was reluctant to prosecute wartime collaborators. However, by 1957, the reparations negotiations between Greece and West Germany prompted the Greek government to change its position regarding war crimes and Nazi perpetrators. Unbeknownst to Merten, the Greek government was determined to use the prosecution of German war criminals to their negotiating advantage. 22
The situation came to a head when Greece started demanding compensation from West Germany for the civil victims of the occupation. An unfortunate coincidence for Merten, the Greek government decided to re-establish the prosecution of war criminals in the spring of 1957, which happened to coincide with his travel plans to Athens. Before appearing in front of the Greek examining magistrate, Merten personally visited the German embassy to ensure that there were no potential problems with his plans. The embassy was not apprised of the change in the Greek government's position and therefore its assurances to Merten were incorrect. When Merten presented himself to give his statement for Meissner on 26 April 1957, he was arrested for war crimes on the spot. 23 Although Greek Prosecutor General, Andreas Tousis, was not acting on orders from the Karamanlis government, 24 the subsequent chain of events symbolically demonstrated the judicial power of Greece.
The Greek Ministry of Justice quickly published the details of Merten's crimes, including information about his participation in the deportation of Thessaloniki Jews. This incited a substantial response amongst Greek society and the Jewish community in particular. 25 The local daily press not only wrote about the Merten case, but also about the wider context of post-war Greek-German relations. 26 Gustav von Schmoller, West German Embassy Counsellor in Greece, noted that the articles were not of a generally anti-German nature but they did reopen wounds from the past. 27 The enormous amount of press coverage faded only when, in response to objections voiced by the German Embassy, the Greek authorities issued a ban on covering the investigation. 28
By February 1959, Merten was tried on 20 counts, including ‘the murder or deportation of 46,000 Jews, the Freedom Square incident (i.e., the forced deployment of Thessaloniki Jews), and the murder of 680 Greek hostages.’ 29 The case was followed by a large audience, especially Holocaust survivors in Greece, and it drew considerable attention in the Greek and German press. The trial coverage in the press, however, was rather sensational and scandalous than in-depth. 30 Ironically, in previous trials of Greek collaborators, those who participated in the Holocaust were never charged. In March 1959, Merten was sentenced to 25 years in prison. 31
While Merten was in custody and the trial was about to begin, Bonn commenced informal meetings with the Greek government regarding reparations for the victims of Nazism. Bonn acknowledged the compensation claims presented by the Greek government and tried to use them as the basis for negotiations that would lead to Merten's extradition. 32 The outcome of the meetings, along with an agreement to a 200-million DM loan to Greece (Nov 1958), 33 was the 115 million DM reparations payment that was finally agreed upon in March 1960. Despite Merten's conviction, Athens proceeded to arrange Merten's release from prison and his return to West Germany. Merten was transferred to Munich, and – almost simultaneously – laws against the prosecution of Nazi war crimes were adopted by the Greek parliament (the so-called Merten Laws, which the leftist Greek press characterised as giving amnesty to Nazi war criminals). 34 The bill was worded in such ways as to include Merten, but it contained the provision that Merten was prohibited from ever returning to Greece. 35 One year after Merten's extradition, Athens and Bonn signed an agreement for the recruitment of Greek workers into West Germany; in autumn 1961, Greece received the first two instalments of compensation for civil victims, including Holocaust survivors in Greece. 36
West German–Greek relations
Despite having returned to West Germany and received compensation for his time in prison, Merten had no intention of letting the matter rest. Merten's professional career and political ambitions in Germany had been heavily compromised, and he intended to make officials in both countries pay for it. According to confidential German consular reports, Merten was personally motivated to ‘take revenge on the governments of Bonn and Athens, which he holds responsible for his conviction in Greece, in the desire to clear his name.’
37
As a result, Merten brought the names of top Greek and German politicians into play, most importantly, State Secretary [Staatssekretär] Hans Globke, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's right-hand man.
38
In the autumn of 1960, Merten's campaign for vindication beleaguered West German-Greek relations. From mid- to late-September, the newspaper
These unsubstantiated accusations highlighted Karamanlis's role as a collaborator during the war, and the implications of these accusations set off a firestorm that had the potential to undermine Karamanlis's political leadership. According to the CIA, the newspaper
At that point, government officials in both countries – represented by the conservative ERE in Greece and Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in West Germany – had little interest in collaborating on the matter. For them, the memory of wartime complicity was best kept in the past. Domestically, both the ERE and the CDU sought to maintain power and focus on economic recovery and growth. Nevertheless, the scandal remained in the forefront in Greece when the Ministry of Interior Makris (who was directly implicated in the scandal) tried to buy all the copies of the
In Greece, the local and national press was initially quite reserved in their approach to the incendiary articles. The leading newspapers explored their options for publication so as to avoid any legal consequences. Many anti-left political correspondents of the Athens-based press, including journalists at the centrist-conservative newspaper
It was also rumoured that ‘a list of Greeks who collaborated with the Germans’ could be found in the British archives. Allegedly, Dieter Posser, Merten's lawyer, SPD member and later Finance Minister for North Rhine-Westphalia (1978–1988), had access to this material. Both the Germans and the Greeks were immediately interested in its whereabouts. 52 Bonn decided to send an archivist to London. British authorities acceded to the German request; however, they agreed not to give the matter any publicity and were ‘to deny the existence of any such list, if possible.’ 53 The German archivist left London with empty hands. As a sign of cooperation and transparency, British diplomats officially informed their allies that, should such a list be uncovered, they would be notified immediately. 54 Subsequently, British authorities provided copies of the Merten files from their archives to both Athens and Bonn. Again, no list of collaborators was found. 55
Despite the lack of evidence regarding Karamanlis's collaboration, both national newspapers,
What emerges from our examination of the Merten Affair's press coverage in Greece is the Karamanlis government's intense need to downplay the memory of wartime collaboration. During the post-war period, the repression of the political left in Greece allowed state narratives to dominate wartime and Civil War memories. Calling attention to Karamanlis's alleged collaboration undermined the legitimacy of such state narratives. Most conspicuous in the Greek press's discourse is an absolute disregard for the suffering and destruction of the Jewish communities. While Karamanlis was indirectly linked to the suffering and destruction of the Jews in Greece by profiting from their demise, greater emphasis by the press was placed on his collaboration with the Germans. Ultimately, press coverage in Greece weaponised the memory of collaboration in order to orchestrate Karamanlis's fall from power, and less so to open a full-scale debate on Greek collaborators and perpetrators of wartime violence.
US-Greek relations
While the accusations levelled against Karamanlis caused a stir, the timing of Merten's slanderous press campaign was especially problematic for Karamanlis for three reasons. First, national elections were already on the horizon for 1961, and the conservative ERE party was facing challenges from the political centre-left and the left. A growing sector of the population felt it had been overlooked in the economic recovery of the country and began organising protests against the government. Merten's accusations of Karamanlis's wartime collaboration would only galvanise political protest and governmental opposition and could lead to a possible defeat for the ERE party at the polls. For both Karamanlis and the US government, it was clear that the political benefactor in the ERE's electoral defeat would be the EDA. The EDA appealed to Greek workers by blaming Karamanlis and the ERE for the general ‘conditions of chronic unemployment, low living standards and lack of economic opportunities.’ 59
For government officials in Athens and Washington, the EDA's rising popular appeal, together with their ‘total identification with Soviet foreign policy objectives under the guise of a thinly veiled pacifism and neutralism,’ 60 made them a potential threat to conservative political rule during a tense period of the Cold War. 61 In terms of the United States’ foreign policy objectives, the geographical location of Greece made it ‘an ideal position to prevent [the] extension of Soviet control over the eastern Mediterranean,’ while Soviet officials considered the country ‘a weak link in the Western defense line along the southern border of the bloc.’ 62 The publication of incriminating articles proved to be a serendipitous opportunity for the EDA and its pro-communist political agenda. At an EDA meeting on 20 October 1960, officials of the party, including senior EDA functionary Dimitrios Dimitriou, discussed the Merten Affair and how best to exploit it. EDA leaders wished to leverage the accusations against Karamanlis in order to topple the ERE government, and ‘replace it with a regime that will accept a Balkan agreement and the establishment of a Balkan denuclearised zone.’ 63 In order to bolster the accusations, EDA members attempted to secure a list of wartime collaborators from former police chief Angelos Evert. Evert ‘had promised a pro-Communist individual that he [was] willing to turn over the photostats of these documents.’ 64 This information would then be relayed to Merten's lawyer, Gustav Heinemann, a German SPD official and the future President of West Germany (1969–1974), to subsequently help undermine Adenauer and his conservative ruling party, the CDU. 65
The second reason Merten's allegations were problematic for Karamanlis was that the EDA was not the only group actively using the Merten Affair to undermine Karamanlis: Right-wing followers of General George Grivas in Cyprus were as well. Grivas was the leader of the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters (EOKA) which he founded himself in 1955 in order to rid the island of British control. From 1955 through 1974, Grivas continued his guerrilla tactics to unify Cyprus with Greece. Disappointed with the 1959 Agreement that established Cyprus as an independent state, Grivas blamed Karamanlis for this outcome. He sought to capitalise on the Merten crisis in order to revive his extremist agenda of Cypriot unification with Greece. Grivas and his supporters used Karamanlis's ‘betrayal’ of Hellenism as a means of recruiting others to their mission. As would be seen throughout the 1960s, EOKA and its later manifestation EOKA-B (1971–1974) would destabilise intercommunal relations in order to push
Grivas had enlisted the support of EOKA's former deputy chief and the transitional minister for the Makarios government, Antonis Georgiadis, to further his mission. Georgiadis was a student living in Germany in close contact with
The third reason rests on a broader international level, sparked by a significant fear that Adenauer's and Karamanlis's names would be mentioned during the Adolf Eichmann trial that was set to begin in Israel in April 1961. The Greek government was extremely concerned that Karamanlis would be listed as a Nazi collaborator during the trial. A diplomatic representative of Jewish background, who was following the case on behalf of the Greek government, became aware of a document that listed Greek agents working for the German occupiers, which included Karamanlis. The government in Athens took immediate steps to prevent the submission of the document in the Eichmann trial, which proved successful. 69
From the outset, Karamanlis himself immediately understood the implications of the
Additionally, the Merten Affair compounded a similar concern for events developing in West Germany with State Secretary Hans Globke, accused of Nazi collaboration by Merten. Although Globke's cooperative appearance during the post-war Nuremberg trials provided him a respite from being prosecuted as a war criminal in any form, his roles as co-author of the Nuremberg Racial Laws, Nazi Party member and his connection to the Holocaust as a
For the United States, both the West German and Greek governmental crises were most unwelcome. According to the CIA, prominent American officials actively assisted Globke and Karamanlis. 74 By early 1961, movements by the West German and Greek governments progressed toward a confidential resolution whereby Merten would be compensated handsomely and possibly have his sentence reviewed ‘with the intervention and strong support of the Greek government’. 75 A final compromise was indeed secured, and both Karamanlis and Globke resumed their positions. Karamanlis won reelection later in 1961 and would remain prime minister until his resignation in 1963, the same year Adenauer resigned as Chancellor. The biggest casualty in the compromise were the Jews of Greece. Not only did they receive little compensation for their losses and suffering, but Merten was also never again held accountable for his actions during the occupation. Merten thus somewhat profited from his campaign of bribery, extortion and revenge.
Merten in the Czechoslovak newspapers
While in Greece and West Germany, Karamanlis and Globke's alleged wartime collaboration was used both politically and publicly as a means for bringing down the ruling parties, the CDU and the ERE, there was a reluctance by the media and political officials to open up a wider discussion of wartime atrocities and collaboration. The highly polarised West German and Greek political landscape, however, still allowed for a plurality of public voices, a reality unthinkable in the Eastern Bloc countries. In contrast, the Czechoslovak communist press exploited the memory of wartime collaboration and atrocities to its fullest extent. The Merten Affair was seen as an opportunity to demonstrate the evilness of the West, especially West Germany, as a Cold War political issue rather than a matter of justice. The press releases from Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite, are telling in this context and allow us both to follow the discourse of the ruling communist elites and to hear the minority voices, particularly of the Greek Civil War Refugees and the Holocaust survivors, in this regard.
In the Czech national and regional dailies, especially in the
In the coverage by the national and regional dailies, we can identify two narrative phases of documenting the Merten case. The first deals with the trial of Merten as a Nazi perpetrator, from his arrest in Athens to his extradition to Germany. It reflects on how Merten had long been allowed to evade justice in the Western system, which according to the press, had been brutalising innocent subjects in a similar vein as the Nazi regime had done during the war. The second phase centres on the accusations against Hans Globke and Constantine Karamanlis (along with other Greek officials accused of Nazi war crimes) of complicity and collaboration. In this period, covering the Karamanlis and Adenauer administrations from the time of the Eichmann trial (1961) and ending with the Auschwitz trials (1965), the Czech press outlets point to the corruption of the Western system as a whole, and West Germany and royal Greece in particular, as a nest of criminals and collaborators. Throughout both phases, however, there runs a clear line of communist solidarity with the unjustly persecuted leftist opponents, symbolically epitomised by the repeatedly persecuted Greek freedom fighter and political representative of the EDA, Manolis Glezos (1922–2020), in the Eastern Bloc countries a symbol of the leftist resistance in the West. 76
The first snippet of information about Merten appeared in the RP's section on international news two days after his arrest. It was placed next to an article on an extraordinary session of the Greek Parliament on Cyprus and a piece that criticised the Adenauer government's position on nuclear armament. At the bottom of the page, an article entitled ‘Arresting a War Criminal’ stated that Merten is ‘responsible for the execution of 600 Greek patriots in Thessaloniki and 72 other Greeks in other places’. This framing fed both the heroic communist narrative of partisan struggle and the cult of national victimhood, glorifying the suffering of the Greek nation as a whole. 77 While physical violence against the Greeks was emphasised, Jews were only mentioned in connection with the Jewish properties that were confiscated. According to the RP, Merten had ‘arrested and tortured Greek citizens without justification’ and was involved ‘in the theft of Jewish and Greek property worth 1.5 million Gold Pounds Sterling.’ His trip to Greece, as described by the main Czechoslovak daily, clearly shows ‘the boundless insolence of these criminal elements in West Germany’, a rotten community to which Merten belonged. 78
A similar narrative was presented two days later by the
Between the time of Merten's arrest and his extradition to West Germany, only three short news posts were issued on the verdict from the trial in Athens.
Although the Greek law that suspended the prosecution of German citizens accused of war crimes had already been issued, there is only one indirect reference to the law that suspended the prosecution of the accused German citizens in
In 1960, with accusations against Eichmann, Globke and other Nazi collaborators from the rank of Greek officials, the Merten Affair took another turn in both the Western and Eastern blocs, including Czechoslovakia. The first to come was an RP article titled ‘Globke also has Greek Jews on his conscience’,
90
printed only a few days after Merten's accusations of Hans Globke were published in the
Surprisingly, the first report on Merten's accusations against Greek collaborators did not come from Greek leftist or refugee reports, but from a Czech reporter based in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. 93 For Greek officials, the RP used the label ‘German agents’, a clear reference to Western secret services. 94 By far the longest article regarding the matter, almost half a page, was an opinion piece by Bohumil Schneider, who connects Eichmann and others with crimes committed during the war, ‘monsters who have their hands covered in the blood of innocent people from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy, France and other countries’. 95 Strikingly, all countries listed were either in the Eastern Bloc or had strong communist parties in 1960. Through Merten, Eichmann, Globke and others, Schneider makes clear for his readership not the transnational dimension of the Holocaust but rather what was to be expected from West Germany: revanchism, revisionism and expansionism.
From Schneider's example, we can bring closer the nuances of the journalistic profession in Communist Czechoslovakia. Thanks to his position in Berlin (1957–1960) as the sole RP foreign reporter, Schneider, unlike anyone else in Czechoslovakia, had insight into both East and West German politics. He admitted, however, that not all information came first-hand. As usual in the journalistic practice of the time, Schneider transcribed news from German newspapers if he did not have access to it himself. What was most important, though, was that all articles had to pass through censorship regulations, which accepted only topics and opinions that corresponded with the USSR directives. 96 Among the themes apparently in line with the state apparatus and Moscow were German conspiracies such as the ‘Fascist International’, 97 corruption in the form of the ‘secret funds of Globke’, 98 profit and nuclear armaments.
Unlike West Germany, which was exclusively framed as ‘fascist’ in its entirety, the RP differentiated between the Greek ruling elite and the left-wing opposition that was supported by ordinary people, portrayed as generally poor and devastated. 99 For the Czech press, Merten was an example par excellence for the double standards of Greek (and Western) justice in which war criminals were being set free, while leftist freedom fighters – including the elderly, the disabled and women – were being jailed under inhumane conditions. In this way, the newspaper subliminally contrasted Greece and Germany with communist Czechoslovakia so that Czechoslovakia would be portrayed as having better living standards for its people. The RP also repeatedly reminded its readership that ‘tens of thousands of Greeks are still living in banishment because they cannot return to their homeland.’ 100 Although references were made to Greek Civil War refugees who had been living in Eastern Bloc countries since 1948, the Czech daily did not emphasise this fact.
The discourse changes significantly once we look at special-interest magazines for women and youth as well as the more intellectually inclined reviews for criticism and art, such as
While authors in the dailies usually remained anonymous, in the special-interest magazines it was the opposite. Ilias Zgafas, a Greek Civil War refugee, who was educated and living in Czechoslovakia, wrote for
Minority voices
Turning to the Greek Civil War refugee weekly
Although Merten's case made it into the Czech-language press soon after his arrest in April 1957, the
Until mid-November 1960, the alleged collaboration between Greek politicians and the Nazis had been extensively covered in every issue of the
From the autumn of 1960, as in the Czech-language press, Merten regularly appeared in the press regarding the alleged collaboration between leading Greek politicians and the Nazis. As early as 7 October, five days before the topic would appear in the Czech press, the
Most notable in the
The coverage of Merten in
While
Regarding socio-political cleavages, the rhetoric used by Lahav to characterise the Israeli ruling elites is strikingly similar to the rhetoric used in the Czech press to characterise the Greek elites. So, while West Germany was depicted as a fascist state and as the enemy, in the cases of Greece and Israel, we see two rival camps: the ruling elites and their sympathetic press standing against the people vs. the left-wing opposition. While a fair trial was not expected in the Greek and West German case, with Israel and Eichmann – as Lahav described it – fairness was never questioned. Finally, while Lahav identified Merten as the murderer of the Greek Jews, the Czech- and Greek-language newspaper articles published in Czechoslovakia on Merten and Greece avoided the Jews and the Holocaust as a topic altogether.
Conclusion
On 10 November 1961, a verdict for defamation was issued against Merten in Athens. This time, Merten – the only Nazi war criminal accused of Holocaust involvement in Greece – was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment
It took a long time for the consequences of World War II to become the subject of public reflection in both West Germany and Greece. At the same time, the consequences provoked complex power struggles on all sides of the political spectrum and demonstrated that the discursive objectification of collective memory is hardly, if ever, a stable and credible representation of the past. 126 By analysing the Merten case in a geopolitical context, our article has illustrated the multidirectional Cold War-era attitudes towards the past that are now often referred to as memory wars. In these early memory wars, uneasy fraternal alliances were forged between like-minded memory actors, both at the state level and between similarly minded parties. Between the West-East dichotomy, as well as in relation to the ruling parties and their power structures, negotiating memories of the difficult past was virtually impossible.
During the Cold War, in conflicts over the interpretation of the past and present, memory actors in the East and West armed themselves by deliberately using the terms ‘anti-fascism’ and ‘anti-communism’ in public discourse, 127 giving vent to the ‘long Second World War’. 128 In the countries formerly occupied by the Nazis, their own complicity was silenced, and their experience was summarised into categories of victimhood and heroism. 129 What is more, by discursively labelling political opponents – both internal and external – with terms clearly loaded by the recent past, the political opposition in both Greece (EDA) and West Germany (SPD) also exploited the difficult past for their own political benefit and ideologically populist agenda.
Footnotes
Funding
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