Liberation without liberators

“Exercise domestic authority”

The explicit exclusion of the ambassadors and other Russian and Belarus diplomats from the commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the war had already caused a stir at the beginning of April. At that time, a strictly confidential handout from the German Foreign Ministry addressed to the federal states, districts and municipalities had been made public. According to this document, “no invitations should be extended to Russian and Belarus diplomats to attend commemorations at federal, state and local levels.”[1] To substantiate this, the German Foreign Ministry warned against “propaganda, disinformation and historical revisionist falsification.“ However, at the Federal Press Conference, a government spokesperson was unable to give any examples of diplomats of one of the accused states being guilty of such provocations at commemorative ceremonies.[2] The Foreign Ministry's handout also demands that should diplomats of the two states “appear unannounced”, the organizers of the respective commemoration could “make use of their domestic authority.” Thus, the ministry approved of the removal of diplomats from countries that had suffered an unprecedented number of victims during Germany’s war of extermination – presumably 27 million in the case of the Soviet Union, whose successor state is Russia and a quarter of the Belarus population.

Explicitly Disinvited

In practice, the Berlin directive, which had still been issued by former Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), was only partially implemented. On April 16, Russian Ambassador Sergei Nechaev was able to take part in the official commemoration of the Battle of the Seelow Heights. The battle launched the Red Army's last major offensive to liberate Berlin, in which more than 33,000 Soviet soldiers were killed. Nechaev could also attend the commemorations in Torgau, where Soviet and US soldiers shook hands for the first time during the liberation of Germany on April 25, 1945.[3] The Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, however, politicized the commemoration by accusing Russia of being guilty for the war in Ukraine. On May 4, Nechaev and his Belarusian counterpart were not allowed to attend the official commemorations at the Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps, which had been liberated by the Red Army in late April 1945. The Russian ambassador had been explicitly disinvited, according to the director of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, Axel Drecoll; if he does come, “we will enforce our domestic authority – in close coordination with security forces”.[4]

The Club of the Aggressors

The Russian and Belarus ambassadors are also not allowed to attend today’s commemoration in the German Bundestag. However, according to parliamentary information, The ambassadors of all other nations represented in Berlin have been invited,[5] including the other victorious powers of World War II, to whom Berlin owes its liberation from the Nazi regime, just as much as to the Soviet Union and its successor nation. The fact that the United States – among others – waged a war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 has not impinged on the US ambassador’s participation. The ambassadors of France and Great Britain have not been excluded in reference to their aggression against Libya in 2011. The fact that the organizer of the commemoration – the German Bundestag, itself, – had voted overwhelmingly in favor of the aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 in violation of international law, has no consequences on today’s commemoration. As far as the invited Ukrainians are concerned, we are told that they cannot be expected to commemorate the end of the war together with Russian diplomats. No one ever asked the invited diplomats from Iraq, Libya, and Serbia how they might feel about attending the commemoration alongside diplomats of the USA, France, Great Britain and Germany.

No Entitlement to Respect

Only former Bundestag President (currently Chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation – KAF), Norbert Lammert (CDU) has voiced criticism of Russia’s exclusion. He is “not sure,” whether official guidelines such as the above-mentioned Foreign Ministry’s handout are appropriate, said Lammert on ZDF TV. In any case, there can be no reasonable doubt that regardless of current developments, as painful, as depressing, as brutal as they may be, the victims of the war“ – Lammert is referring to the Soviet victims of WW II – “are entitled to respect.”[6] The Foreign Ministry and the Bundestag have a different opinion in the cases of Russia and Belarus.

“The Brutality of the Red Army”

Russia and Belarus’ exclusion from Berlin’s commemoration of the end of World War II is accompanied by attempts to reframe the Soviet Union’s actions during the war as well as after Germany’s liberation from Nazi rule. For example, over the past few days, leading media organs have begun depicting May 8^th not as the day marking the end of the war, but rather as the starting point for what happened afterwards – particularly regarding the resettlement of the German-speaking populations of Eastern Europe, especially from Poland and Czechoslovakia. There was not only mention of particular “brutality of the Red Army,” “even if it played a decisive role in the liberation from Nazi terror,” as the NDR, for example, acknowledged.[7]

The Russian-Imperial Complex

Last week, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that with regards to the resettlement, “power-political” plans of the Soviet Union in “the long tradition of great Russian imperialism” had played a very important role. For example, the paper continued, “East Prussia or Upper Silesia would have sufficed as mere compensation” for the “loss of eastern Polish territories” as a result of Eastern Europe’s reorganization. The fact that even more of the German Reich’s eastern territories were transferred to Poland is “solely due to Stalin’s cunningly and treacherously working toward his objective.[8] The historian Manfred Kittel, lecturer at the Regensburg University, alleges that “the expulsion of millions of people into what was left of Germany” provided “the Kremlin with the opportunity“ to “create an overpopulated hotspot in the heart of Central Europe.” According to the Russian plans, the “eastern expellees” were supposed to “embody a fermentation of disorder and social disintegration.” “The Russian-imperial context” had been “central throughout the concrete diplomatic initiation phase and later in the practical implementation phase of the resettlement as well. “Great Russian Imperialism” Kittel continues, had existed “already long before Hitler” – and it continues to exist “even without Hitler still today,” for example “in the form of the ongoing war of annihilation” against Ukraine.

“Forever an Enemy”

From Kittel’s perspective of an epoch-spanning Russian-Soviet “imperialism,” cooperation with Russia can only occur in periods of relative Russian weakness – for example in the 1990s and the 2000s, when the Federal Republic of Germany gained access to the immense Russian natural gas deposits through a certain degree of cooperation with Moscow. Conflict becomes inevitable as soon as Russia regains strength. This idea coincides with what Germany’s new Foreign Minister, Johann Wadephul told two Russian pranksters in a telephone conversation about the war in Ukraine: “No matter how the war with Russia ends – Russia will always be our enemy.”[9]

[1] Nicolas Butylin: Geheime Handreichung: Baerbock will keine Russen bei Kriegs-Gedenken. berliner-zeitung.de 04.04.2025.

[2] Florian Warweg: Die fragwürdige Begründung des Auswärtigen Amts für Ausladung russischer Diplomaten vom Gedenken an den 8. Mai. nachdenkseiten.de 11.04.2025.

[3] Kretschmer erinnert russischen Botschafter an Kriegsschuld. spiegel.de 25.04.2025.

[4] Michael Sauerbier: Brandenburg droht Putins Botschafter mit Rauswurf. bild.de 22.04.2025.

[5], [6] Andreas Kynast: 8. Mai: Russen müssen draußen bleiben. zdf.de 03.05.2025.

[7] Henning Strüber: Ende April 1945 dringt die Rote Armee in den Nordosten vor. ndr.de 28.04.2025.

[8] Manfred Kittel: Der russische Imperialismus und die Vertreibung der Deutschen. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 30.04.2025.

[9] Streich mit Johann Wadephul. rutube.ru.