The Question of German Guilt
Language: English
Pages: 0
ISBN: B00L3NWN2G
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Were it not for the media coverage of some of today’s refugees—in Kosovo, for instance, or East Timor—prosperity would make it almost impossible to imagine the trauma that gripped Europe after the Second World War. The raw suffering on all sides—in the lands that Hitler’s armies invaded and within Germany itself—seemed only to confirm the blanket verdict that had been of necessity very simple and without nuance in order to sustain the energies needed for the war effort: in the judgment of the
are indispensable. They turn idealistic youths into upright, morally reliable, politically lucid German men acquiescing in their lot as now cast. (c) By partial approval of National-Socialism, by straddling and occasional inner assimilation and accommodation, moral guilt was incurred without any of the tragic aspects of the previous types. The argument that there was some good to it, after all—this readiness to a supposedly unbiased appraisal—was widespread among us. Yet the truth could be only
might think that, as a man must answer for his choice of the beloved to whom marriage binds him in a lifelong community of fate, a people answers for whomever it meekly obeys. Error is culpable; there is no escape from its consequences. Precisely this, however, would be the wrong approach. The unconditional attachment to one person which is possible and proper in a marriage is pernicious on principle in a state. The loyalty of followers is a non-political relationship limited to narrow circles
each one finds in himself, as far as this is possible by restitution, by atonement, by inner renewal and metamorphosis. We shall come to that later. First we shall glance at some of the tendencies which are tempting us to evade purification. Lured by false impulses and instincts, we not only leave the way that might cleanse us but add to confusion by unclean motivations. DODGING PURIFICATION Mutual Accusations We Germans differ greatly in the kind and degree of our participation in, or
lightly pronounces sentence: German history is past; the Moscow-Washington era is beginning. So greatly, longingly devised a history as the German one does not simply say, amen, to such academic resolutions. It flares up; in deeply excited resistance and attack, in a savage tumult of faith and hatred it plunges to its doom.” Thus, in the summer of 1945, a young man who has my highest personal esteem wrote in a confusion of dismal feelings. All this is indeed not purification but further