Letter out of Mannheim Prison: Ernst Zundel's Take on German Soccer

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Remember how Judge Meinerzhagen objected to the German anthem being 
sung in a Zundel hearing in Mannheim not all that long ago in honor 
of Ernst's Holocaust debunking efforts?  I have been told it upset 
the judge to no end.  He thought it was improper and showed 
"disrespect" for what was being said and done in Germany's Holocaust 
Heresy Trial.

Against that backdrop, consider the following, stitched together from 
various letters I received during the month of June from my husband:

=====

I promised in the previous letters to illuminate some evolving and, I 
believe, historically significant stations of the cross on the way to 
German freedom via self-liberation.  Soccer, or Football, as the 
English like to call it, is perceived to be a safe area, not as 
dangerous an area as the political arena.  Ingrid, my dear wife - at 
some point in life everything becomes political up to a point!  Thus, 
valuable lessons can and will be learned.

German people, it seems, are in a football euphoria - a state of mind 
I can relate to, since I, too, had my first real bonding with what 
this essence is that ties one to one's Volk. There is a best-selling 
book and a blockbuster film out about an historic event, referred to 
as the "Miracle of Bern", when nine years after World War II the 
Germans shook off at least the worst of the trauma of the defeat and 
began to reassert themselves in the family of European nations. 
Eighty to ninety millions of Germans spread all over the European 
heartland felt relieved, as if a stone had been lifted off their 
chests.  It was a wonderfully uplifting feeling, almost like a 
"having been born again" feeling must be for Christians.

The soccer world was then purely European.  Other nations had not yet 
been [caught] by the football fever.  This world championship was 
held in Bern, where Germany's national "eleven" met the equally 
qualifying Hungarians for the World Championship.  My schoolmates and 
I fevered along with the rest of the nation.  At the time, we German 
children played amongst the devastation and ruins of our fatherland. 
The ruins were our stage set.

I have discussed that period with many thousands of Germans all 
around the world, and all who were old enough to feel and think for 
themselves about national issues - all, to a man, and even we, who 
were youths at the time - felt the same.  Something in our psyche had 
changed!  One 90-minute soccer game had accomplished what the 
writers, poets, singers - and, even more so, what the 
Allied-appointed and beholden politicians had not even come near to 
achieving:  A soccer game gave the German nation and its traumatized 
people back their self-confidence.

Ingrid, as strange as it may seem to others soul-wise, maybe even to 
you 5,000 km away from all this action, today we may well be 
experiencing an almost tectonic shift similar to the one I described 
to you above, because this feeling is only the outward expression of 
something going on at a much deeper level - deep, deep down inside 
the bowels of this churning, rumbling German soul volcano. Volcanos 
are interesting spectacles, mainly observed and studied by geologists 
and volcanologists equipped with their seismographic devices that are 
capable of detecting, mapping and interpreting these tremors and 
cataloguing their behavior patterns.  Because of their specialized 
training and knowledge, they can see things and predict what will 
most likely happen within a certain time period to a long-dormant 
volcano.

We, the knowing, who have specialized expertise acquired over decades 
of intensive study and relying on a roadmap of this specific German 
volcano called "historical events" - Ingrid, we are like these 
scientist who are climbing all over the mountain slopes or are flying 
over its gas-and-ashes-venting, cauldron-like peak. What we see 
taking place is what percolates to the top, and for the moment at 
least vents only as harmless gas with a whiff of noxious fumes and 
some bothersome ashes that settle over the German political 
landscape.  We see many things and detect even more with our 
soul-detecting instruments what the German political volcano is up 
to.  We, in fact, are ideally suited for this job.  We understand our 
volcano because we are an intimate and integral part of it.  That's 
why our predictions and projections, our intrinsic insights, are of a 
quality for which intelligence agency employ highly priced 
intelligence assessment and evaluation teams.

Ingrid, I believe our volcano is active, deep down, because the 
internal pressure of these primeval forces that have been building 
for decades have to vent, have to find some form of release - and if 
it is not to explode in a violent fury one more time, it would be 
better to allow it to vent steam, gases, and even some lava along 
harmless secondary eruption channels in order not to blow its whole 
peak, like Mount St. Helens did over 20 years ago.

This soccer world championship is allowing the Germans [to vent] 
collectively and individually as shouting, dancing and screaming 
spectators wearing the new, harmless uniform of identity - an endless 
sea of T-shirts with German flags and patriotic slogans shouted very 
often in English, if you can imagine that scenario.  These mostly 
younger Germans, many of them girls, are letting off steam and 
pressure that built for a long time.

These young soccer players were born while I was struggling in my 
court cases.  One very young 22-23 year old defended the players who 
had draped their arms over each other's shoulders as they sang the 
national anthem, which one TV commentator mentioned to the former 
Leftist Interior Minister Schily - undoubtedly responsible, in part, 
for my fate! - that he had never before heard the whole stadium erupt 
in such a loud rendering of the national anthem, which Schily sourly 
acknowledged and took credit for because of the generation of 1968 
[of which he was a part], their immigration reforms etc.

Even mainstream commentators are now detecting [this venting].  One 
of them said it succinctly:  "The German are no longer uptight." 
They are liberating themselves for the moment in a seemingly 
innocuous way, by means of T-shirts with patriotic slogans or with 
shawls with sentences from the German national anthem on it - to be 
safe!  Others signal their patriotism with buttons, by dyeing their 
hair in black-red-gold, even painting their faces and soccer boots.

Claudia Schiffer, hardly a champion of German virtues and 
nationalism, recently appeared in England in a Brigitte Bardot type 
public appearance photo shoot, draped only in a German flag.  People 
are coming off the fences, as it were.  There is something in the 
air, and I am not alone feeling it and commenting on these definite 
seismic shifts in the public stance of Germans.  It is not just the 
identification with that flag - that alone for a German of that 
generation is an unheard-of, almot career suicide step - but what she 
said just about knocked me for a loop.

"It's time to clear out the cliches about Germany."

Ingrid, in press conference after press conference, Germany's 
national trainer, Jürgen Klinsmann, a former national champion of 
great acclaim who lives with his wife and children in Malibu, 
California, recounts how Americans also celebrate their Day of 
Independence [the Fourth of July] with gusto, [honoring] their Stars 
and Stripes.  He explains how on the 4th of July in America everybody 
hangs out their flags, drapes their cars, drives around waving the 
Stars and Stripes - joyfully and absolutely naturally!  He says it's 
the most logical thing to do!  And he repeats this in Swabian-tinged 
English for the interviewers from the BBC, CNN etc.  Can you see the 
dynamic at work?  Not only are 80 million Germans hearing common 
sense explanations from the trainer of the national team - the rest 
of the world hears it also!  When Klinsmann decided to strike a 
patriotic pose, he told a foreign reporter how he joined in [an 
American 4th of July celebration] by raising the German flag!  And 
this German with a Swabian accent spoke to an audience of over 500 
million soccer fans around the world of the need for [a healthy 
national identity].

Klinsman said, according to one of Germany's largest newspapers, 
Süddeutsche Zeitung:  "Young players and aggressive tactics are going 
to get us in our own land the world championship.  We want to show 
the world who we are."  Ingrid, he sounds like a football 
revisionist.  That is the gospel of self-liberation.

=====

This world championship started subdued enough, with the customary 
German masochistic demeanor which had spread over the nation's psyche 
like a World War I poison gas cloud.  Everybody played down any 
patriotic notions.  It was a sad spectacle to observe for an 
intuitive type like myself.

Then came the criticism leveled against Klinsmann - the Swabian from 
California.  That was the acid mood, tangible to those who can detect 
and feel nuances of human behavior.  Ingrid, I know you don't follow 
sports, but Klinsmann was the team captain under Franz Beckenbauer, 
who was and is the legendary figure in German soccer, its former team 
captain, then national trainer of German soccer of almost three 
decades.  That's why they call him "Der Kaiser" - the Emperor of 
German soccer.

Beckenbauer, too, had escaped to America because the football 
establishment was overly bureaucratic, hidebound in traditions, and 
ailing - he was called back, or should I say lured back to German 
with promises of lots of money and a free hand at doing things his 
way, not unlike Klinsmann was to be lured back from sunny California 
where he has lived for the last eight years on the beach of Malibu 
with his wife, Debby, and his children.

Ingrid, how often have I written and talked about this beneficial mix 
of American largesse and yet simplicity in doing things and tackling 
problems that might seem to the Germans living in Germany 
insurmountable because of their induced fear of daring to soar with 
the eagles instead of being stuck with the turkeys in the barnyard. 
I am pleased to show you that with all my scholastic limitations and 
handicaps I was right - and sensing what was missing and is still a 
stumbling block, namely the willingness to be free in spirit, to 
shake off centuries of limiting conventions, unwritten rules, taboos 
- to challenge long passé dogmas which are the curse of the 
establishment.  These limitations are like mental handcuffs for a 
people and its state institutions.  Germany, my dear Ingrid, is the 
classic case.

One of the reporters wanted to know what all this new-found 
"togetherness" was all about, and Klinsman said defiantly, staring 
into the world media's cameras, "Š a dash of patriotism is good and 
can never hurt!"  Ingrid, in 60 years I have only heard such words 
from the mouths of [those believed to be out of touch]!

I promised you some images of how the new generation is trying to 
normalize their soul-condition.  They may not have exactly the 
in-your-face courage to assert themselves in an organized way 
politically.  The system has devised the ways and means to prevent 
that so far, but look at the ages and the faces - the "released" 
faces!

Ingrid, as I write these lines I am watching the NTV 5 p.m. news on 
Sunday, 18 June and the patriotism debate - "Šit is dangerous to show 
so much releasing flag waving" and "is German nationalism rising?" 
where one young, 25-year-old German says, "We have much to catch up 
on as regards patriotism.." That's against the background of a sea of 
waving flags filling the TV screen and as far as the cameras can 
focus - hundreds of thousands of young Germans "showing their flag," 
umembarrassed, as you can see even from these few photos.

Look at the girl in the center, Ingrid - she is of the "generations 
yet unborn" for which I undertook that arduous task when I told 
American and Canadian interviewers in answer to the question, "Why do 
you subject yourself to all this vilification, these dangers, this 
painstaking effort?"  My answer always was, "I do it for the wartime 
generation who have no advocate, no one to protect them, no one to 
speak for them - and I do it for the generations yet unborn!"  Here 
is that generation - then not yet born!  This girl was born around 
the time of my arrest, her parents during the time of my first trials 
and tribulations.  That's history in the making!

First, they will free themselves emotionally, and as they mature 
politically, those who can still think, from which the new generation 
of leaders will come, will draw the proper conclusions.  This is the 
information age, as I have stated a thousand times, that will break 
the stranglehold of the hidden censors, the lobbyists in key 
positions, via the democratization of information.

That age is now upon us.  It is, of course, different from what some 
of us, and the chattering political classes, have expected. History 
does not ever repeat itself in exactly the same way.  But consider 
this:  German T-shirt and flag makers have had to start nightshifts 
to fill the demand!  This is, in fact, a street revolution which has 
taken everybody by surprise.  It is no repeat from our father's 
methods and ways.  It is more innocent, and less threatening to those 
who need to fear replacement.  That is the way it should be. 
Patriotic feelings should be positive feeling - just like America's, 
celebrating the Fourth of July.

The Mannheimer Morgen of June 9 quotes the World Soccer Federation 
President, Joseph Blatter, aying that 32 Billion viewers will watch 
these world championships.  180 countries are involved and organized 
in this association.  Ingrid, this is the most important sports event 
ever!  That's why the imagery is important - and the transformation 
of these young Germans will start an image change.  Every game where 
the German team can hang in here will mean that more firmly the new 
images and feelings will be embedded in people's minds.

Even if the German team, coached by this American Swabian Klinsmann, 
should be knocked out of the competition along the way, the far more 
significant victory, politically speaking, has already been achieved 
- and that is that Klinsmann's unconventional ways, his questioning 
of old habits and dogmas, of importing the almost naïve, boyish 
self-confidence of youth has achieved [a transformation] of the 
German football mythology that will be strengthened and heightened 
with every game this young team can hang on to.  Every game, even the 
most insignificant games against teams which are given little chance, 
are important to this process now at work, which is the release of 
the German Volk psyche - the relaxing, the freeing of the collective 
psychic cramps which have held the German national spirit in a 
straitjacket for almost three generations.  One has to see and watch 
this process unfold  like a filmed time lapse sequence in one of 
those science films about blossoms opening after a desert rain shower 
- the faces of those boys and girls, adorned with the ever-present 
T-shirt and jeans, clothing geared to exuberance, carefreeness. It is 
the unmistakeable thumb print of the "American way".

A kind of fashion streamlining has taken place which turns, by the 
message it carries, into an instant political statement or 
mini-billboard.  Since these soccer championships are watched by 
billions of viewers, an incredible propaganda value is achieved 
because TV needs close-ups to be effective in communicating passion, 
joy, exhuberance - that is the quality which has been already 
achieved:   the voluntary identification with one's team and one's 
national colors, its symbols and one's Volk.

Thus are idols born!  Liberators of the spirit! Klinsmann's soccer 
team is a tool for German self-liberation.  Our young people are 
declaring their innocence and are dancing their way to a new tomorrow 
- one soccer game at a time!  Ingrid, this is the defining image 
which kicked off the patriotism debate.  That's how they sang the 
national anthem in the stadium. I spent 30 years being virtually the 
only one in the English speaking world saying that at every 
opportunity.  And now photo models and actresses are saying it 
publicly at press conferences.

A new generation is taking over.  No telling what this generation 
will talk about at press conferences and on talk shows.  This being a 
censored letter, I will leave it at that.

Ernst Zundel