Germany is holding the UEFA Euro 2024 men’s football tournament right in the middle of what has been called the country’s “super election year”. People are voting at the local, regional and European levels, amid renewed protests over Germany’s relationship with its Nazi past.
The European elections were marked by a notable rise in right-wing populism across the bloc. However, the shadow of National Socialism means that the far-right’s advances in Germany will inevitably attract more attention.
Debates about difficult periods in the national afterlife tend to focus on the lines left in the built environment. Overtly Nazi statues and symbols were removed shortly after the defeat of the Third Reich. However, many of the regime’s vast monuments buildings are still in use.
On July 14, 2024, photos of the Euro 24 final will be broadcast to the world from the Olympiastadion, Berlin’s Olympic stadium built in 1936. With the rise of the German far-right and its effective use of TikTok and old disinformation, historians and activists interested in how the Nazi afterlife is presented will have to find new tactics to counter their rhetoric.
Spectators in 1936. Bundesarchiv/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
The politics of the past
Despite the protests, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party gained ground. The number of members is at an all-time high. He won 15. 9% of the vote in the European Parliament elections, coming second. And he will most likely win three federal elections in September.
Prominent members of the AfD have stirred controversy by invoking the Nazi past. Former co-leader Alexander Gauland has been accused of trivializing the Nazi era by calling it a “bird. “Björn Höcke, head of the Thuringia section, was fined twice for Nazi language. And the former leading candidate, Maximilian Krah, was expelled from the party’s delegation to the European Parliament after telling an Italian newspaper that SS members were not necessarily criminals.
This has led to the consideration that history lessons, which the Federal Republic has long been proud to learn, have been as effective as previously thought.
Propaganda apparatus
The built surroundings were key to the Nazi propaganda apparatus. The buildings were designed to convey Nazi ideology. And they were widely published in newspapers and magazines in the 1930s and 1940s as proof of the new regime’s strength and self-assurance.
The Olympic Stadium designed by German architect Werner March for the so-called “Peace Olympics” of 1936, which the Nazis used to assuage developing foreign fears about German militarism and mask the growing persecution of Jews, conflicting political parties, and other groups they described. as “undesirable”.
The discobolus through Karl Albiker (1936). Clare Copley, CC BY-NC-ND
Hitler took an active interest in the design of the stadium. Its monumentality and stone cladding express the strength and durability of the Third Reich. The design of the stadium, columns, and sculpture collection allude to the regime’s intended connection to antiquity.
The individual sculptures convey Nazi ideas, adding the supremacy of healthy Aryan structure and the connection between play and war. The bell tower that dominates the site sits above Langemarck Hall, a monument that originally contained bloodstained soil from the 1914 battlefield. . The aim is to integrate the Olympic site into the Nazi cult of the dead.
The Olympic Stadium in 1936. Bundesarchiv/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Critical engagement
After World War II, the British Allies established their headquarters in the northern component of the Olympic complex and returned the rest to the West Germans. The stadium became the home of the Hertha BSC football team in 1963. It subsequently became a popular venue for sporting and entertainment events.
For decades, architects, historians and politicians have called for a more critical engagement with the history of the Olympic Stadium. They deplored the lack of information about its origins and symbolism.
It wasn’t until Germany’s (failed) bid for the 2000 Olympics and the (successful) 2006 World Cup that those calls began to attract more attention and, more importantly, money. There was debate about whether the sculpture collection should be removed, covered or left alone.
In the end, the Berlin Senate agreed that the most effective way to approach the history of the place was to preserve it and provide visitors with data that would allow them to reflect on it independently and critically. of forty-five explanatory panels has been evolved through a panel of experts.
The resurgence of far-right activity in recent years has exacerbated fears that this is enough and reignited debates about statue removal. Volkwin Marg, one of the architects who renovated the Olympic Stadium in 2004, described the data forums as “icy little forums. “”, “little publicized” and “impotent”.
The far-right has demonstrated an amazing ability to convey its messages through TikTok. A recent study by the Anne Frank Training Center found that four of the platform’s five most sensible political influencers in Germany belonged to the AfD. This shows that Tiktok is being used to spread right-wing ideology and generate abundant among young people.
The report’s authors warn that those who want to counter far-right concepts will have to overcome their “technophobia” and exploit similar communication techniques.
This is a big challenge for those who use more classic strategies to teach other people about the past. The creators of the former address of the Olympic Stadium proposed that it be announced in a more obvious way and complemented through an app. Also Marg in her call for the structure of an exhibition in the Langemarck room and to increase the staff destined for public education.
Others call for more avant-garde approaches. Some would like to see the sculpture collection challenged through a counter-exhibition of photographs depicting the types of bodies the Nazis sought to eradicate.
The governments of Germany and Berlin have allocated 403,000 euros to artistic and cultural projects that, in the words of the Minister Delegate for Culture, Claudia Roth, reflect “the symbol of a brilliant, varied and inclusive society, of a democratic Germany”. sports outreach programs and an exhibition on football under Nazism jointly organized through the World Jewish Congress, the Berlin Sports Museum and What Matters, which will be held near the stadium at the Olympic venue of Euro 2024.
This is part of a much wider project on football and memory, led by What Matters, the Cultural Foundation of the German Football Association and the World Jewish Congress. This will allow memorial sites and museums throughout Germany to host events and exhibitions for Germans and foreigners. visitors on persecution and the game under Nazism at Euro 2024.
Some Germans will return to the polls in September for regional elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg. It remains to be seen whether or not these measures will affect the AfD’s expected successes.
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