CDU boss calls for accuracy
Merz criticizes comparisons with the Wannsee Conference
January 21, 2024, 4:41 p.m
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Hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets in Germany this weekend to protest against right-wing extremism. Demonstrators, but also politicians, see similarities with the Wannsee Conference of 1942. Friedrich Merz rejects the comparison and calls for historical accuracy.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz rejected comparisons between the recently announced meeting of right-wing extremists in Potsdam and the Wannsee Conference of the National Socialists as unhistorical. Merz wrote about the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 in his newsletter: “There weren’t a few lost spirits sitting together, that’s what they were; but above all they were the main criminals of the SS state, which was firmly in the hands of the National Socialists .”
There, “the systematic expulsion and murder of Jews in Europe, which had long since begun, was accelerated again” and the transition to “genocidal gassing” was decided. In this context, Merz referred to the work “Weltenbrand” by the British historian Richard Overy. At the Wannsee Conference 82 years ago, high-ranking Nazi officials discussed the systematic murder of up to eleven million Jews in Europe. The aim of the meeting in a villa on Wannsee was to accelerate the implementation of the genocide.
Danger of historical relativization
After revelations by the Correctiv research center about a meeting of right-wing extremists on November 25, 2023, in which AfD politicians as well as individual members of the CDU and the very conservative Values Union took part in Potsdam, the Wannsee Conference was repeatedly recalled in the debate. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that the meeting reminded her of this – but at the same time made it clear that she did not want to equate the two.
Merz now wrote that every comparison with the Nazi regime not only puts the Holocaust and the horrors of the murder of six million Jews into perspective. In addition, the comparisons also led to the wrong conclusions. Unlike in the Weimar Republic, today there is a well-fortified democracy. The many people at the anti-right demonstrations in recent days are proof of this. Even if the AfD is at 30 percent or more, two thirds of citizens voted for a democratic party.