The Question of German Guilt

Whoever has not yet found himself guilty in spontaneous self-analysis will tend to accuse his accusers. For instance, he may ask whether they are better than the ones they censure, or whether they do not share the guilt of events, because of acts which could not but promote such possibilities.

Among us Germans the tendency to hit back at present indicates that we have not yet understood ourselves. For the first thing each of us needs in disaster is clarity about himself. The foundation of our new life must come from the origin of our being and can only be achieved in unreserved self-analysis.

This does not mean, however, that we must close our eyes to the facts and to truth in regarding the other nations, to which Germany owes its final liberation from the Hitler yoke and to whose decision our future is entrusted.

We must and we may elucidate to ourselves how the others’ conduct has made our situation more difficult, on the domestic and on the foreign scene. For their past and future actions come from the world in which we, entirely dependent on it, are to find our way. We must shun illusions and come to a correct overall evaluation. We must yield neither to blind hostility nor to blind hope.

If we use the words, “guilt of the others,” it may mislead us. If they, by their conduct, made events possible, this is political guilt. But in discussing it we must never for a moment forget that this guilt is on another level than the crimes of Hitler.

Two points seem essential: the political acts of the victorious powers since 1918, and their inactivity while Hitler’s Germany was organizing itself.

(1) England, France and America were the victorious powers of 1918. The course of world history was in their hands, not in those of the vanquished. The victor’s responsibility is his alone, to accept or to evade. If he evades it, his historical guilt is plain.

The victor cannot be entitled simply to withdraw to his own narrower sphere, there to be left alone and merely watch what happens elsewhere in the world. If an event threatens dire consequences, he has the power to prevent it. To have this power and fail to use it is political guilt. To be content with paper protests is evasion of responsibility. This inaction is one charge that may be brought against the victorious powers—although, of course, it does not free us from any guilt.

In discussing this further, one may point to the peace treaty of Versailles and its consequences, and then to the policy of letting Germany slide into the conditions which produced National-Socialism. Next, one may bring up the toleration of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria—the first act of violence which, if successful, was bound to be copied—and the toleration of Mussolini’s act of violence, the Ethiopian campaign of 1935. One may deplore the policy of England which in Geneva defeated Mussolini through the League of Nations and then let its resolutions stay on paper, lacking the will and the strength required to destroy Mussolini in fact, but also lacking the clear radicality to steer an opposite course, to join him and, while slowly changing his regime, stand with him against Hitler to insure peace. For Mussolini then was ready to side with the Western powers against Germany; as late as 1934 he mobilized his forces and delivered a threatening, since forgotten speech as Hitler wanted to march into Austria. The result of these half-measures was the alliance of Mussolini and Hitler.

However, it must be pointed out here that no one knows what further consequences different decisions might have had. And above all: British policy also has moral aspects—a fact which National-Socialism actually included in its calculations, as British weakness. The British cannot unrestrainedly make any decision that is politically effective. They want peace. They want to utilize every chance of preserving it before they take extreme measures. They are not ready to go to war until war is obviously inescapable.

(2) There is a solidarity not only among fellow-citizens but also among Europeans and among mankind. The responsibility of the inactive bystander ranges from the mutual one of fellow-citizens to one that is universally human.

Rightly or wrongly, once the gates had shut on our German prison we were hoping for European solidarity.

As yet we had no idea of the last horrible consequences and crimes. But we saw the utter loss of liberty. We knew that now the arbitrary tyranny of those in power was given free rein. We saw injustice, saw outcasts, though all of it was still harmless in comparison with later years. We knew about concentration camps, though ignorant still of the cruelties going on there.