The Question of German Guilt

We must not let the divergence faze us, the sense of being worlds apart. We want to find the way to each other, to talk with each other, to try to convince each other. Let us visualize a few typical differences.

There were our conceptions of events, differing to the point of irreconciliability: some went through the whole disrupting experience of national indignity as early as 1933, others after June 1934, still others in 1938 during the Jewish pogroms, many in the years since 1942, when defeat became probable, or since 1943 when it became certain, and some not until it actually happened in 1945. For the first group, 1945 was the year of delivery and new chances; for others these days were the hardest, since they brought the end of the supposedly national Reich.

Some radically sought the evil’s source and took the consequences. They desired intervention and invasion by the Western powers as early as 1933; for they saw that now, with the gates slammed on the German prison, delivery could only come from outside. The future of the German soul depended on this liberation. If its destruction was not to be completed, it had to be freed as soon as possible by sister nations of Western bent, acting on a common European interest. This delivery did not take place. The way led on to 1945, to the most fearful destruction of all our physical and moral realities.

But this view is by no means general among us. Aside from those who saw or are still seeing the Golden Age in National-Socialism, there were opponents of National-Socialism who were convinced nonetheless that a victory of Hitler’s Germany would not result in the destruction of Germanism. Instead, they foresaw a great future based on such a triumph, on the theory that a triumphant Germany—whether immediately or after Hitler’s death—would rid itself of the party. They did not believe the old saying that the power of a state can only be maintained by the forces which established it; they did not believe that terrorism would, in the nature of things, be unbreakable precisely after a victory—that after a victory, with the army discharged, Germany would have become a slave nation held in check by the SS for the exercise of a desolate, destructive, freedomless world rule in which all things German would have suffocated.

Another difference lies in the way of the ordeal which, although common to all of us, is extraordinarily varied in the kind and degree of its particular appearance. Close relatives and friends are dead or missing. Homes lie in ruins. Property has been destroyed. With everybody experiencing trouble, severe privations and physical suffering, it is still something altogether different whether one retains a home and household goods or has been ruined by bombs; whether he sustained his suffering and losses in combat at the front, at home, or in a concentration camp; whether he was a hunted Gestapo victim or one of those who, even though in fear, profited by the régime. Virtually everyone has lost close relatives and friends, but how he lost them—in front-line combat, in bombings, in concentration camps or in the mass murders of the régime—results in greatly divergent inner attitudes. Millions of disabled are seeking a way of life. Hundreds of thousands have been rescued from the concentration camps. Millions are being evacuated and forced to roam. The greater part of the male population has passed through the prisoner-of-war camps and gathered very dissimilar experiences. Men have come to the limits of humanity and returned home, unable to forget what really was. Denazification throws countless numbers out of their past course. The suffering differs in kind, and most people have sense only for their kind. Everyone tends to interpret great losses and trials as a sacrifice. But the possible interpretations of this sacrifice are so abysmally different that, at first, they divide people.

The loss of a faith makes a tremendous difference. All of us have somehow lost the ground under our feet; only a transcendently founded religious or philosophical faith can maintain itself through all these disasters. What used to count in the world has become brittle. The believing National-Socialist, his thoughts even more absurd now than they were during the days of his rule, can only snatch at feeble dreams, while the nationalist helplessly stands between the immorality of National-Socialism, through which he sees, and the reality of the German situation.

Equally vast is the difference in kind and degree of our guilt. No one is guiltless. We shall take up this question later.

But no one is beyond the pale of human existence, provided he pays for his guilt.

True, it is sensible for the individual, depending on his past, to curb and resign himself—it applies to individuals, not to the many, that they should perhaps be silent now, for the time being.