The Question of German Guilt

For in human affairs reality is not yet truth. That reality, rather, is to be confronted with another. And the existence of this other reality depends upon the human will. Every man, in his freedom, must know where he stands and what he wants.

From this point of view it may be said that the trial, as a new attempt in behalf of order in the world, does not grow meaningless if it cannot yet be based on a legal world order but must still halt within a political framework. Unlike a court trial, it does not yet take place in the closed order of a state.

Hence Jackson’s frank satement that “if the defense were permitted to deviate from the strictly limited charges of the indictment, the trial would be prolonged and the court enmeshed in insoluble political disputes.”

This also means that the defense does not have to deal with the question of war guilt and its historical premises, either, but solely with the question who began this war. Nor does it have the right to adduce or judge other cases of similar crimes. Political necessity limits discussion. But this does not make everything untruthful. On the contrary, the difficulties, the objections, are candidly, if briefly, expressed.

There is no denying the basic situation: that success in combat, not the law alone, is the governing starting point. It is true in big as well as little things that—as ironically said of military offenses—you are not punished because of the law but because you got caught. But this basic situation does not make man unable to transform his power, after success and on the strength of his freedom, into a realization of the right. And even if this is not entirely accomplished, even if right ensues only to some extent, a great stride has been made on the way to world order. Moderation as such creates a zone of reflection and examination, a zone of clarity, and thereby makes men more fully aware of the lasting import of force as such.

For us Germans, the advantages of this trial are its distinction between the definite crimes of the leaders and its very failure to condemn the people as a whole.

But the trial means a great deal more. For the first time, and for all times to come, it is to make war a crime and to draw the conclusions. What the Kellogg-Briand pact began shall be realized for the first time. There is no more doubt of the greatness of this undertaking than of the goodwill of many who have a hand in it. The undertaking may appear fantastic. But when the stakes become clear to us, the event makes us tremble with hope. The only difference is whether we gloat nihilistically, assuming that it could not but be a sham trial, or whether we passionately wish that it might succeed.

It all depends on how the trial is run, on its contents, its outcome, on the reasons adduced to the verdict—on the overall impression of the proceedings, in retrospect. It depends on whether the world can admit the truth and the right of what was done there, on whether even the vanquished cannot help concurring, on whether history later will see its justice and truth.

Yet this will not be decided in Nuremberg alone. The essential point is whether the Nuremberg trial comes to be a link in a chain of meaningful, constructive political acts (however often these may be frustrated by error, unreason, heartlessness and hate) or whether, by the yardstick there applied to mankind, the very powers now erecting it will in the end be found wanting. The powers initiating Nuremberg thereby attest their common aim of world government, by submitting to world order. They attest their willingness really to accept responsibility for mankind as the result of their victory—not just for their own countries. Such testimony must not be false testimony.

It will either create confidence in the world that right was done and a foundation laid in Nuremberg—in which case the political trial will have become a legal one, with law creatively founded and realized for a new world now waiting to be built. Or disappointment by untruthfulness will create an even worse world atmosphere breeding new wars; instead of a blessing, Nuremberg would become a factor of doom, and in the world’s eventual judgment the trial would have been a sham and a mock trial. This must not happen.

The answer to all arguments against the trial is that Nuremberg is something really new. That the arguments point to possible dangers cannot be denied. But it is wrong, first, to think in sweeping alternatives, with flaws, mistakes and failings in detail leading at once to wholesale rejection, whereas the main point is the powers’ trend of action, their unwavering patience in active responsibility. Contradictions in detail are to be overcome by acts designed to bring world order out of confusion. It is wrong, secondly, to strike an attitude of outraged aggressiveness and to say no from the start.