User:AHsem2/Heimkehrerdenkmal

The Heimkehrerdenkmal (also referred to as the Heimkehrermahnmal) is a monument in Friedland, Germany, dedicated to German prisoners of war during the Second World War. Both Heimkehrerdenkmal and Heimkehrermahnmal translate to Monument to Homecomers in English. It is significant as one of the only monuments in Germany dedicated to Germans who served as soldiers in the war. The monument was commissioned by the Verband der Heimkehrer, Kriegsgefangenen und Vermisstenangehörigen Deutschlands (Association of Returnees, Prisoners of War and Relatives of the Missing - VdH), which was founded in 1950 to represent the interests of German veterans. While only few of the monuments remain, the VdH commissioned around 1800 monuments dedicated to German POWs. When the monument was inaugurated in 1967, representatives of the German federal government declined to attend because of the monument's controversial focus on German victimhood. The monument has been subject to vandalism, including graffiti referring to German concentration camps.

Design
The Heimkehrerdenkmal consists of four concrete panels representing the suffering of Wehrmacht soldiers. At 28 meters high, "automobilists using the Bundesautobahn 38 from Göttingen to Halle cannot fail to see" the Heimkehrerdenkma.l   The monument sits atop a small hill, surrounded by grass and trees just outside of Friedland, Germany. While the monument does not heroize the German soldiers of World War II, it does conflate the suffering of the soldiers with the German citizens who lost their lives to the war. The monument also makes no mention of the suffering caused by the Wehrmacht soldiers and the Nazi regime. Scholars have argued that the Heimkehrerdenkmal is “claiming that fighting on the German side in World War II was just as patriotic a duty as fighting on the other sides of the war, veterans could imbue their experiences and memories with meaning.” Yet, the Heimkehrerdenkmal is one of the only examples of a German memorial to its soldiers that fought in the Second World War and is largely unknown by Germans today. The inscription on the monument lists the number of German soldiers (2,892,000), civilians (2,846,000), and prisoners of war (1,250,000) who died during the Second World War. The following sentence of the inscription lists the numbers of missing German soldiers in combat (1,163,600), prisoners of war (100,300) and civilians (1,089,000) because of the Second World War.

Construction
Construction on the Heimkehrerdenkmal began in 1966 and finished in 1967 in Friedland, Germany. The monument was constructed in Friedland near the Friedland Transit Camp, the site which saw the final group of returnees from the war. The memorial was commissioned by the VdH and children of former POWs were instrumental in the commissioning and erecting of the memorial. In 1967, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer initiated the memorial as an official site honoring the memory of Germany.

Association of Returnees, Prisoners of War and Relatives of the Missing (VdH)
Verband der Heimkehrer, Kriegsgefangenen und Vermisstenangehörigen Deutschlands translates to the Association of Returnees, Prisoners of War and Relatives of the Missing (VdH). The VdH had the primary goal of  “working more effectively than before for the interests of homecomers”. By 1961, the VdH had 160,000 members advocating for German prisoners of war and veterans. The VdH spread its messages and posted missing soldier ads through the newspaper Der Heimkehrer: Stimme der Kriegsgeneration (roughly translated to “The Homecomer: Voice of the War Generation”). The VdH requested compensation for soldiers whose return had been delayed by the Soviet Union and successfully advocated for the release of prisoners of war who remained in the Soviet Union. Because of the VdH, Chancellor Adenaur traveled to Moscow in 1955 to negotiate the release of and bring home 10,000 German prisoners of war. The association also collaborated with other German organizations such as the German Red Cross to bring home German soldiers.

Controversy
The Heimkehrerdenkmal is primarily controversial for its lack of mention of the German guilt in causing the bloodshed of its own citizens and of the fifty million people killed worldwide during the Second World War. “This is a view one encounters more often in conversations with people from the former DDR,” for there is the feeling “that in the DDR they at least had the moral decency to understand these facts in terms of German guilt instead of in terms of victimhood.” The Heimkehrerdenkmal was also the first monument of its kind in Germany. As German military historian Jörg Echternkamp explains in his book Postwar Soldiers: Historical Controversies and West German Democratization, 1945–1955, “Monuments from the 1950s, usually conceived of in a figurative formal language and featuring local references, recalled the consequences of the war such as imprisonment, flight, and expulsion; the resistance of 17 June 1953; or German partition. After 1967, however, a central monument dedicated to the war and its effects came into existence for the first time.”   Yet, the Heimkehrerdenkmal remains largely unknown in Germany today and is one of the only monuments dedicated to German World War Two soldiers.