The Question of German Guilt

Unlike the case in World War I when we Germans did not need to admit specific crimes committed by one side only (a fact eventually recognized by scientific historic research even on the part of Germany’s enemies), today the crimes committed by the Nazi government—in Germany before the war, everywhere during the war—are evident.

Unlike the case in World War I when the war-guilt question was not decided against one side by the historians of all nations, this war was begun by Hitler Germany.

Unlike World War I, finally, this war really became a world war. It struck the world in a different situation and in a different knowledge. Its import, compared with earlier wars, entered another dimension.

And today we have something entirely new in world history. The victors are establishing a court. The Nuremberg trial deals with crimes.

The primary result is a clear delimitation in two directions:

First, not the German people are being tried here but individual, criminally accused Germans—on principle all leaders of the Nazi régime. This line was drawn at the outset by the American member of the prosecution. “We want to make it clear,” Jackson said in his fundamental address, “that we do not intend to accuse the whole German people.”

Second, the suspects are not accused indiscriminately. They are charged with specific crimes expressly defined in the statute of the International Military Tribunal.

At this trial we Germans are spectators. We did not bring it about and we are not running it, although the defendants are men who brought disaster over us. “Indeed the Germans—as much as the outside world—have an account to settle with the defendants,” Jackson said.

Many a German smarts under this trial. The sentiment is understandable. Its cause is the same which moved the other side to blame the whole German people for the Hitler régime and its acts. Every citizen is jointly liable for the doings and jointly affected by the sufferings of his own state. A criminal state is charged against its whole population. Thus the citizen feels the treatment of his leaders as his own, even if they are criminals. In their persons the people are also condemned. Thus the indignity and mortification experienced by the leaders of the state are felt by the people as their own indignity and mortification. Hence their instinctive, initially unthinking rejection of the trial.

The political liability we have to meet here is painful indeed. We must experience mortification if required by our political liability. Thereby, symbolically, we experience our utter political impotence and our elimination as a political factor.

Yet everything depends on how we conceive, interpret, appropriate and translate our instinctive concern.

One possibility is outright rejection of indignity. We look for reasons, then, to deny the right, the truthfulness, the purpose of the whole trial.

(1) We engage in general reflections: There have been wars throughout history and there will be more. No one people is guilty of war. Wars are due to human nature, to the universal culpability of man. A conscience which proclaims itself not guilty is superficial. By its very conduct such self-righteousness breeds future wars.

Rebuttal: This time there can be no doubt that Germany planned and prepared this war and started it without provocation from any other side. It is altogether different from 1914. Germany is not called guilty of war but of this war. And this war itself is something new and different, occurring in a situation unparalleled in the past history of the world.

This objection to the Nuremberg trial may be phrased in other ways, perhaps as follows: It is an insoluble problem of human existence that what must be settled by invoking the judgment of God, keeps pressing time and again for a decision by force. The soldier’s feelings are chivalrous, and even in defeat he has a right to be offended if treated in an unchivalrous manner.

Rebuttal: Germany, throwing all chivalry overboard and violating international law, has committed numerous acts resulting in the extermination of populations and in other inhumanities. Hitler’s actions from the start were directed against every chance of a reconciliation. It was to be victory or ruin. Now we feel the consequences of the ruin. All claims to chivalry—even though a great many individual soldiers and entire units are guiltless and themselves have always acted chivalrously—is voided by the Wehrmacht’s readiness to execute criminal orders as Hitler’s organizations. Once betrayed, chivalry and magnanimity cannot be claimed in one’s favor, after the fact. This war did not break out between opponents alike in kind, come to a dead end and chivalrously entering the lists. It was conceived and executed by criminal cunning and the reckless totality of a destructive will.