The Question of German Guilt

It is nonsensical, too, to lay moral guilt to a people as a whole. There is no such thing as a national character extending to every single member of a nation. There are, of course, communities of language, customs, habits and descent; but the differences which may exist at the same time are so great that people talking the same language may remain as strange to each other as if they did not belong to the same nation.

Morally one can judge the individual only, never a group. The mentality which considers, characterizes and judges people collectively is very widespread. Such characterizations—as of the Germans, the Russians, the British—never fit generic conceptions under which the individual human beings might be classified, but are type conceptions to which they may more or less correspond. This confusion, of the generic with the typological conception, marks the thinking in collective groups—the Germans, the British, the Norwegians, the Jews, and so forth ad lib.: the Frisians, the Bavarians, men, women, the young, the old. That something fits in with the typological conception must not mislead us to believe that we have covered every individual through such general characterization. For centuries this mentality has fostered hatred among nations and communities. Unfortunately natural to a majority of people, it has been most viciously applied and drilled into the heads with propaganda by the National-Socialists. It was as though there no longer-were human beings, just those collective groups.

There is no such thing as a people as a whole. All lines that we may draw to define it are crossed by facts. Language, nationality, culture, common fate—all this does not coincide but is overlapping. People and state do not coincide, nor do language, common fate and culture.

One cannot make an individual out of a people. A people cannot perish heroically, cannot be a criminal, cannot act morally or immorally; only its individuals can do so. A people as a whole can be neither guilty nor innocent, neither in the criminal nor in the political (in which only the citizenry of a state is liable) nor in the moral sense.

The categorical judgment of a people is always unjust. It presupposes a false substantialization and results in the debasement of the human being as an individual.

A world opinion which condemns a people collectively is of a kind with the fact that for thousands of years men have thought and said, “The Jews are guilty of the Crucifixion.” Who are “the Jews”? A certain group of religious and political zealots whose relative power among the Jews of that time, in cooperation with the Roman occupation authorities, led to the execution of Jesus.

That such an opinion will become a matter of course and overpower even thinking people is so amazing because the error is so simple and evident. One seems to face a blank wall. It is as though no reason, no fact were any longer heard—or, if heard, as though it were instantly and ineffectively forgotten.

Thus there can be no collective guilt of a people or a group within a people—except for political liability. To pronounce a group criminally, morally or metaphysically guilty is an error akin to the laziness and arrogance of average, uncritical thinking.

(c) There must be a right to accuse and indict. Who has the right to judge? Whoever does so, exposes himself to questions about the source of his authority, the end and motive of his judgment, and the situation in which he and the man judged confront each other.

No one needs to acknowledge a worldly tribunal in points of moral and metaphysical guilt. What is possible in close, human relationships which are based on love is not permitted to distantly cold analysis. What is true before God is not, therefore, true before men. For God is represented by no authority on earth—neither in ecclesiastic nor in foreign offices, nor in a world opinion announced by the press.

If judgments are passed in the situation of a decided war, that on political liability is the absolute prerogative of the victor who staked his life on a decision in his favor. But one may ask (to quote from a letter): “Does a neutral have any right to judge in public, having stayed out of the struggle and failed to stake his existence and his conscience on the main cause?”

When the individual’s moral and metaphysical guilt is discussed among people sharing a common fate—today among Germans—one feels the right to judge in the attitude and behavior of him who judges. One feels whether or not he speaks of a guilt weighing also upon himself—whether he speaks from within or from without, self-enlighteningly or accusingly, as an intimate seeking a way to the possible self-enlightenment of others or as a stranger and mere assailant, as friend or as foe. It is always only in the first instance that his right is unquestionable; in the second it is doubtful and in any case limited to the extent of his charity.