 ‘We may allow ourselves a brief moment of rejoicing.’ (Winston Churchill) Victory in Europe Day 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War 2 in Europe and the final defeat of the sociopathic Nazi regime and its European allies. I try to imagine how that must have felt, in particular for those on the frontlines and especially in the Soviet Union with its staggering estimated 27 million dead. Winston Churchill captured and expressed the mood in Britain brilliantly, even though as a temporary reprieve whilst the war in the East still raged on. A harsh, dark, almost 6-year winter of the most brutal world conflict imaginable was at last approaching its bitter end. There was a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel even though, at that time, few dared imagine how the war with Japan would finish, when and at what cost. The first nuclear weapons were yet to be dropped and a scared and weary world held its breath in dreadful anticipation. That was the time, the context, in which Churchill made that rousing speech. By providential coincidence, in a deep spiritual book I was reading this morning, Christopher Chapman speaks of transition from winter to spring in our own daily lives and experience. In such in-between times, ‘Winter is more than a memory; more cold weather lies ahead yet spring is here, not so much removing winter as rising within and through it. Hope rises this way, not dispelling our struggles but emerging within and through them.’ I like that. Discover hope, now.
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 'We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.' (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) At a time when much of the democratic West is shifting politically to the right, I had a very harrowing experience today – visiting Konzentrationslager Flossenbürg, a former Nazi concentration camp in southern Germany. Despite dedicating much of my adult life to trying to prevent the conditions that allow such destructive ideologies to take hold, nothing could have prepared me for the overwhelming weight of such a place. Standing before the memorial stones, each marked with a different flag, I read the staggering numbers – lists of people from various countries who were shot, hanged and burned within its barbed wire walls. I felt again an indescribable horror at the sheer brutality of the Nazi regime. A hard question haunted me: ‘How on earth did things get this bad?’ And equally disturbingly, ‘How is it that we, as humans, are capable of such evil?’ Because this isn’t just history and it isn’t just about them. It’s about us and now. This evening, back in my room, I turned on the TV news. More headlines about the growing success of the AfD in Germany – then Starmer appeasing MAGA Trump by increasing UK weapons spending, whilst deftly slashing the foreign aid budget. (He clearly misunderstood Robin Hood as a child). Rising nationalism. 'Us first' ethnocentrism. Crackdowns on free speech. Preparations for war. Does any of this sound familiar? 
‘When we know people whose lives are being destroyed and there seems to be no way of reaching them; when people are in impossible situations and there are no words to help them…hold them at the centre of prayer, where the divine Christ dwells, and expose them to the rays of his love.’ (Iain Matthew) Friedensgebet (‘prayers for peace’) felt even more earnest this evening than last time I was here. As we entered the church, each person lit a candle and placed it on a silver cross before a figure of the crucified Christ. It felt like holding the suffering of the world before one who knows what it is to endure pain. The candle I lit barely flickered at first, as if struggling to spark itself into even the tiniest glimmer of a flame. Hope, too, can sometimes feel like that. Those present reflected on certain parallels in German society today with those that preceded the rise of the Nazis so many years ago now. That was an unspeakably dark period in German history which, at times like this, still surfaces, smoulders and burns in the people’s collective psyche. I could feel their sense of concern and anguish about the forthcoming general election. Would Germany learn from its history, or would it find itself condemned to repeat it? As we prayed, I recalled Iain Matthew’s soulful spiritual wisdom: ‘Feel the way to the wound that is in us, to the place of our need. Go there, take it, name it; hold it before Christ. Feel our way to the wounds of this world, to those people or situations in dire need of healing. Go there, take them, name them; and hold them before him. Go there, not to dictate to Christ what the answer should be or what he should do about it; but to hold the wound before him.’ Yes.  ‘In years and generations down the line, there's going to be a right and wrong side of history, and I certainly want to be on the right side’. (Duncan Robinson) Shortly after the end of World War 2 at the Nürnberg War Trials, Hermann Göring, a leading Nazi figure, attempted to absolve himself by claiming, ‘The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.’ It’s as if the accusations levelled against him for the horrific atrocities of the Nazi regime and, therefore, the necessity for him to defend himself now on trial, were a consequence of the Allies winning the war and the Nazis losing it. It was an attempt to deflect personal responsibility, to re-present historical facts as politically-construed by the victors. No-one can know for sure if Göring actually believed his own cynical rationalisations. We do, however, know that Adolf Hitler was driven by a similar sentiment at the end of World War 1. He felt a seething resentment that, after all he and his comrades had endured during that war, Germany was now presented to the world as the undisputed guilty party and aggressor. The Allies were able to console themselves that their suffering during the war had been worth it, to defeat the evil enemy. The Germans had no such consolation. They were on the wrong side – and lost. This week, I was in Germany and visited the preserved remnants of the infamous Berlin Wall. I spoke with a friend, Alex, who shared some of his own experiences of visiting this place just after the Wall came down. For some people with whom he spoke in the (now former) Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), they had the feeling of being on the wrong side in World War 2 under the Nazis, and then again under the Eastern (Communist) Bloc. It’s hard existentially to carry a cultural history, an international portrayal, a feeling of guilt: to have been on the wrong side. ‘To the victims of violence and betrayal, in the hope of an enduring peace.’ (Willy Brandt) Angelika gave me a gift this year of a shiny German 2 Euro coin. It was minted in 2020 to commemorate 50 years since West German Chancellor Willy Brand’s legendary ‘Kniefall’. I had heard of Willy Brandt but, I must confess, not the act that has, since, gripped my imagination. The German word Kniefall means, quite literally, to fall to one’s knees. I’m especially indebted to Valentin Rauer’s exceptional social-psychological study, Symbols in Action (2009), of what took place in that extraordinary moment in world history. I’m curious about what it meant and what made it so powerful. Brandt visited Warsaw in Poland, 25 years since the end of World War 2, on a mission to seek post-war reconciliation. Poland, including its Jewish population, had suffered horrific genocidal brutality at the hands of the Nazis. At the Monument to the Heroes of the Jewish Ghetto Uprising (against their Nazi oppressors in 1943), with a crowd of media reporters watching, Brandt suddenly and unexpectedly fell to his knees. He stayed there, in silence, as those around him looked on in amazement. It was an astonishing example of an action speaking far louder than words. At a political level Brandt, as Chancellor, represented West Germany. At a personal level, during the war, Brandt had been an anti-Nazi activist. The imagery of Brandt’s Kniefall, as an act of penitent humility that acknowledges guilt and seeks ‘forgiveness for an unforgivable past’ (Rauch), resonated deeply in a prevailing Christian culture. The symbolism of ‘the innocent (who) takes up the burden of the collective’s sin, thus redeeming the nation’ (Rauer) reflected Jesus Christ’s death on the cross. Brandt was in the square from which Jews were deported to concentration camps. For me, the most striking and moving dimension of this event was Brandt’s own reflection on the spontaneity and authenticity of his act: ‘Faced with the abyss of German history and the burden of the millions who had been murdered, I did what people do when words fail us.’ It paints the picture of a human being, beyond the public trappings of a politician, who allowed himself to feel empathy and brokenness, to take undefended responsibility and to reach out in peace. It transformed the trajectory of Cold War politics then. How desperately we need leaders like that now.  ‘Life is like the harp string. If it is strung too tight it won't play, if it is too loose it hangs. The tension that produces the beautiful sound lies in the middle.’ (Gautama Buddha) In World War 2, when faced with a critical decision on how to respond to the Nazi threat, one of Winston Churchill’s advisers argued forcefully that ‘organisation is the enemy of improvisation’. This wasn’t a diatribe against the power of organisation per se. It was, however, deeply rooted in a belief that the UK’s main chance of success would be to act in ways that would capitalise on its own agile cultural traits – and leave the highly-organised German war machine disorientated and defeated. I’ve noticed there are parallels in learning a second language too. Students are often taught in highly-organised ways – focusing on vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing. It can provide them with a useful foundation, yet can also leave them completely paralysed in free-flow conversation. I’ve concluded that, at least in this respect, ‘Accuracy is the enemy of fluency.’ Remove the expectation to get everything right, distract from fears of making a mistake, and the words will start to flow. That said, I need to beware of unhelpful polarisation. Early in my OD career, I worked alongside an experienced HR consultant, Chris Rowe, who introduced me to a tight-loose principle. I had argued instinctively that an organisation needed to let go of its highly-organised, stifling structures and processes to become more flexible, responsive and innovative. Chris challenged me: there is a time for tight and a time for loose – and wisdom in knowing which, where, when and for whom.  ‘Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.’ (Arthur Ashe) My first political act, with a capital P, was at the age of 14. I wrote to my MP (Member of Parliament) during the General Election that year to express my concern about the UK’s practice of retaining records that meant completed voting slips could be traced back to specific voters. It struck me as a profoundly anti-democratic practice, since a secret ballot was an important way of safeguarding freedom of political expression. My MP wrote back to explain that the practice was designed to track allegiance to extremist, anti-democratic far-right groups. That didn’t reassure me. Didn’t that mean we were adopting similarly anti-democratic practices too? He didn't respond. My next political act, this time with a small P, was to stand up in a Trade Union meeting, aged 19, in a packed town hall, and to challenge its politburo-style leadership. I was immediately shot down in flames by the enraged Union leader which, in spite of my trembling hands and voice as I spoke, simply confirmed my view that the Union had become thoroughly corrupt. It spurred me on to organise an organisation-wide petition aimed at reforming the Union by calling for a return to its political-ideological roots and values and to ensure greater fairness. I was confronted by apocalyptic warnings, by words like ‘you are playing with fire’, yet pressed on with the petition nonetheless. By age 22, my vision had turned international. I campaigned against the unspeakably violent actions of oppressive right-wing regimes in Central America that murdered the poor and vulnerable for daring to speak out. I was perplexed by the passivity or tacit collusion of those in power in the UK, US and beyond. Why weren’t we learning from history, from the sociopathic savagery of the Nazi regime through to the sick brutality of Vietnam? Why weren’t we more principled, more angry, more determined to stand up for what is right? I burned myself out with powerless passion. Yet learning to love would prove to be a harder challenge. The corruption I saw out there is also here in me. Few images have more powerful emotional resonance for me than that moment at which the WW2 Allies detonated explosives under a huge marble swastika at the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nürnberg, Germany. It was the place where, just before the war, Hitler and his followers had held their infamous Nazi rallies. The rallies had proved a potent propaganda weapon, convincing Nazi supporters of their own ‘supremacy’ and intimidating their enemies into fearful submission. The public destruction of this infamous symbol marked the impending final demise of the deranged Nazi myth and its psychopathic regime, and the end of by far one of the worst eras in human history. I can only imagine how it must have felt for those who had suffered so terribly to witness, at last, this emerging glimmer of hope. Similar evocative and symbolic moments were soon to follow with a Soviet flag over the German Reichstag and an American flag raised on Iwo Jima. There’s something about these images-as-symbols that capture and express a wider human story and experience. They carry and convey powerful psychological, cultural and emotional meaning for those who understand and identify with what they represent. Other well-known examples of symbols include the Christian cross as a sign of God’s love and salvation through Jesus Christ or, conversely, ominous ‘Z’ insignia on Russian military vehicles during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. What symbols have a particular resonance for you – and why? |
Nick WrightI'm a psychological coach, trainer and OD consultant. Curious to discover how can I help you? Get in touch! 
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