After a year of diplomatic back-and-forth, the official history of the Second World War has been re-written. On 18 September the European parliament passed a resolution on ‘the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe’ to replace previous political statements on human rights in relation to that conflict. The motion, B9‑0100/2019, was conceived as a spirited statement against all forms of political extremism. Glossing the language, it sounds more than reasonable at first. The text reaffirms “the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law” while calling on all EU institutions “to do their utmost to ensure that horrific totalitarian crimes against humanity are remembered” and “guarantee that such crimes will never be repeated.”
One has to ask though: what does this new resolution really add to the continent’s political mythology? The EU already condemns totalitarianism through numerous memorials and rituals, such as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism each 23 August, as well as lending its support to the diverse commemorative traditions of the various member states. Resolutions confirming such commitments, like B6‑0171/2009} RC1, have been in place for over a decade. The reality is, on closer inspection, that this latest text, is not the neutral, democratic eulogy that it presents itself to be. For all its apparently admirable sentiment, a deeply problematic form of historical revisionism lurks beneath the surface.
“European integration has, from the start, been a response to the suffering inflicted by two world wars and by the Nazi tyranny that led to the Holocaust, and to the expansion of totalitarian and undemocratic communist regimes”, reads the text. Is it really fair, though, to draw such swift comparisons between Nazism and other authoritarian systems of the modern era? The resolution is undeniably correct in its assertion that “Nazi and communist regimes carried out mass murders, genocide and deportations and caused a loss of life and freedom in the 20th century on a scale unseen in human history”. Treating the two as equal, though, particularly as regards the unfolding of the war itself, is to grossly oversimplify the history of that period and, ultimately, the continent’s return to peace.
