German Magazine Accused Over Historical Views

FRANKFURT â€" The Waffen-SS is widely seen as one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust, but not in the pages of Der Landser, a weekly German pulp magazine.

In one recent issue, members of the feared World War II military unit were portrayed as just a bunch of good-natured soldiers doing their jobs and, between battles, sharing rounds of local plonk with Greek villagers grateful to have been invaded. “We conquered them, and they’re still a friendly folk,” remarked one member of the squad, which belonged to Hitler’s personal bodyguard.

That jarring view of history, in a magazine published by one of Germany’s largest news media companies and available for download on Amazon and Apple iTunes, has come under fire from a prominent American Jewish group. Acting on what it said were several recent complaints, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles invoked German laws against Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denials in asking Berlin last week to shut down Der Landser.

German Interior Ministry officials said they took the Wiesenthal Center complaint “very seriously” and would investigate. But in the meantime, companies that publish and distribute Der Landser said they would continue doing so, noting that previous legal challenges had failed to find fault with the editorial stance of the magazine, whose relatively small circulation belies its lightning-rod role in Germany.

The new focus on Der Landser is the latest incarnation of a debate â€" one that has lasted decades â€" over the balance between free speech and efforts in Germany to eradicate the neo-Nazi movement and tamp down anti-Semitism. And in an era when any publication, no matter how obscure, can be disseminated far and wide via the Internet, the controversy sharpens the focus on the question of whether companies like Amazon and Apple are responsible for scrutinizing what is being sold through their digital channels.

The magazine, which advertises that it is based on true events but also clearly includes fictional elements, studiously avoids mentioning the word “Nazi” and does not overtly propagate anti-Semitism. But critics say Der Landser, with its failure to acknowledge atrocities and displaying little sense of regret for the deaths of tens of millions of people, is stuck in a World War II time warp that ignores efforts by broader German society to come to terms with Nazi crimes.

Even if Der Landser technically stays within legal bounds, critics contend, it nourishes a violence-prone, far-right subculture that is particularly strong in eastern Germany, where a rightist party has seats in the state Parliament of Saxony. The law enforcement authorities in Dresden, the capital of Saxony, said they often found copies of Der Landser when they raided homes of those suspected of being neo-Nazis.

“The way they interpret it, everyone in the Wehrmacht was just like in the American Army or the Canadian Army or the British Army,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Wiesenthal Center, using the term for the German armed forces at that time. “They forget the most important point. People in this army were thugs and murderers who almost brought down Western civilization.”

He called Amazon’s refusal to stop selling the magazine “preposterous.”

Der Landser, named for a term describing common soldiers in World War II and founded by a German Luftwaffe veteran in 1957, has already survived numerous frontal assaults by critics over the years. It has been the subject of several critical academic studies and reports in the German news media, and individual issues of the magazine have been sanctioned by a government office that vets news media content that could harm young people.

But even some experts skeptical of its pseudo-historical tales of military heroics and camaraderie among German forces question whether the magazine violates the prohibition against glorifying Nazism or denying the Holocaust.

“Legally, there is not much to grab on to,” said Peter Conrady, a retired professor of literature at the University of Dortmund who has studied Der Landser. Mr. Conrady said the magazine subtly promotes nationalism by portraying German soldiers, even from the S.S., as sympathetic everymen who were morally superior to their enemies.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 29, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.