The Question of German Guilt

The answer lies in the draft of the ethos which is left to us—and if it were the ethos of a people deemed a pariah people in the world today.

Introduction

Almost the entire world indicts Germany and the Germans. Our guilt is discussed in terms of outrage, horror, hatred and scorn. Punishment and retribution are desired, not by the victors alone but also by some of the German emigrés and even by citizens of neutral countries. In Germany there are some who admit guilt, including their own, and many who hold themselves guiltless but pronounce others guilty.

The temptation to evade this question is obvious; we live in distress—large parts of our population are in so great, such acute distress that they seem to have become insensitive to such discussions. Their interest is in anything that would relieve distress, that would give them work and bread, shelter and warmth. The horizon has shrunk. People do not like to hear of guilt, of the past; world history is not their concern. They simply do not want to suffer any more; they want to get out of this misery, to live but not to think. There is a feeling as though after such fearful suffering one had to be rewarded, as it were, or at least comforted, but not burdened with guilt on top of it all.

And yet, though aware of our helplessness in the face of extremity, we feel at moments an urgent longing for the calm truth. The aggravation of distress by the indictment (of the German people) is not irrelevant, or a mere cause of anger. We want to see clearly whether this indictment is just or unjust, and in what sense. For it is exactly in distress that the most vital need is most strongly felt: to cleanse one’s own soul and to think and do right, so that in the face of nothingness we may grasp life from a new authentic origin.

We Germans are indeed obliged without exception to understand clearly the question of our guilt, and to draw the conclusions. What obliges us is our human dignity. First, we cannot be indifferent to what the world thinks of us, for we know we are part of mankind—are human before we are German. More important, however: our own life, in distress and dependence, can have no dignity except by truthfulness toward ourselves. The guilt question is more than a question put to us by others, it is one we put to ourselves. The way we answer it will be decisive for our present approach to the world and ourselves. It is a vital question for the German soul. No other way can lead to a regeneration that would renew us from the source of our being. That the victors condemn us is a political fact which has the greatest consequences for our life, but it does not help us in the decisive point, in our inner regeneration. Here we deal with ourselves alone. Philosophy and theology are called on to illumine the depths of the question of guilt.

Discussions of the guilt question often suffer from a confusion of concepts and points of view. To arrive at truth, we must differentiate. I shall begin by drafting a scheme of distinctions that will serve to clarify our present German situation. The distinctions are, of course, not absolutely valid. In the end, what we call guilt has one all-embracing source. But this can be clarified only by what is gained by means of the distinctions.

Our darkest feelings do not mind being trusted out of hand. Though immediacy is the true reality, the presence of our soul and our feelings are not simply there like given facts of life. Rather, they are communicated by our inner activities, our thoughts, our knowledge. They are deepened and clarified in the measure that we think. Feeling as such is unreliable. To plead feelings means to evade naively the objectivity of what we can know and think. It is only after we have thought a thing through and visualized it from all sides, constantly surrounded, led and disturbed by feelings, that we arrive at a true feeling that in its time can be trusted to support our life.

Scheme of Distinctions

FOUR CONCEPTS OF GUILT

We must distinguish between:

(1) Criminal guilt: Crimes are acts capable of objective proof and violate unequivocal laws. Jurisdiction rests with the court, which in formal proceedings can be relied upon to find the facts and apply the law.

(2) Political guilt: This, involving the deeds of statesmen and of the citizenry of a state, results in my having to bear the consequences of the deeds of the state whose power governs me and under whose order I live. Everybody is co-responsible for the way he is governed. Jurisdiction rests with the power and the will of the victor, in both domestic and foreign politics. Success decides. Political prudence, which takes the more distant consequences into account, and the acknowledgment of norms, which are applied as natural and international law, serves to mitigate arbitrary power.