German collective guilt

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German collective guilt is a term describing the responsibility of German citizens regarding atrocities made by Germany during Second World War[1] ]

Background

File:Einsatzgruppen-Killingfull.jpg
Einsatzgruppe D death squad at work in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1942

During Second World War Germany engaged in massive genocidal operations whose victims included several nations, often classifed by German state as "subhuman". Nationalities subject to German agression such as Jews or Poles were to be exterminated in the name of "Tausendjähriges Reich". German goals included elimination of almost 50 milion people in Central and Eastern Europe to make room for German nation, perceived by them as "master race" in Generalplan Ost and extermination of Jewish people in Holocaust in accordance with the policy of Final Solution. To accomplish that goal German state used industrial means of genocide such as gas chambers, concentration camps, death camps, mass executions, artificial famine and other means. Those atrocities were accompanied by complete disregard of human life when it came to people branded as 'subhmans', as even animals in German Reich had higher rights and received higher protection then Jewish or Polish people(for example protection from medical experiments). After the war due to perceived overwhelming support for Nazi Regime among German population, the term appeared as description of responsibility of German people regarding those atrocities, as citizens of German community.

Support among German population for Nazism

Support for Nazism among German population was of significant level in pre-war times and in March 1933 German elections NSDAP received 43.9 % of votes while its political ally and coalition partner the nationalist DNVP gained 8 % of votes, meaning that together they had won the support of over half ot the voting population, that is 51,9 % of votes. Even when Germany lost the war, the Nazi ideology was supported by large portions of German society; in 1947 in a poll made in American German occupation zone 58% of Germans stated that Nazism was a "positive ideology"(similar attitude existed in other zones)[2], while 37% supported genocide of Jewish and Polish nations as "justified"[3] 62 years after the war, in a poll from 2007, 40% of German people expressed a view that Nazi ideology had "good sides"[4].

Origins of Nazi planning

File:RomanichildrenAuschwitz.jpg
Romani children in Auschwitz, victims of medical experiments.

The plans of Nazi Germany in Second World War concerning ethnic cleansing in Central Europe were based on earlier designs by German Empire in First World War [5], which envisioned expulsion of milions of Poles and Jews from annexed territories in Poland and Lithuania[5]. While the term subhuman was used by the Nazis to describe Poles who were to be eliminated from German territories[6][7], the politician who led the creation of an unified German state, Otto von Bismarck already compared in 1861 Poles to animals that one should exterminate in order to live[8] In 1887 Bernhard von Bülow, the future Chancellor of the German Empire, hoped for a military conflict that would allow to remove Polish population from Polish territories gained by Germany[9] Some historians thus point out at historical development of German political goals and policies as reasons for atrocities in WW2 rather then just limit them to Nazi's existance[5].

Resistance

While there was a resistance against Nazi government in Germany it only reached its highest point in 1944 at the time when Germany was losing the war. Despite desiring to topple Hitler such leading figures in resistance like Claus von Stauffenberg were nationalists and supported such Nazi policies as slave labour[10][11] or German colonisation of Poland[12]. Opposition to Nazi regime that didn't support some of its goals also existed, for example White Rose movement which counted 6 people during the war. In non-German countries such movements were larger, for example in Poland the Polish Home Army] counted 400,000 members[13], while the resistance in France circa 200,000[14].

German minority support for Nazi agression

In Poland and Czechoslovakia German minority organisations actively supported Nazi agression[3],[4]. In Poland out of 740,000 Germans living there pre-war[15], 100,000 joined Selbstschutz[[16], which engaged in organised genocide of Polish intellectual elites in Operation Tannenberg. In the early years of German occupation 90% of Polish citizens who were sent to concentration camps, were sent there from list made by local Germans[17] After the war the cooperation of German minority in genocide and Nazi agression was one of the reasons to transfer German population from most territories that were germanised to Germany.[18](however some territories that underwent germanisation remained part of German state). Additonaly a large part of those Germanised areas where majority of population voted for NSDA(see map:Votes for Nazis in Germany 1933 was re-assigned to Poland and Soviet Union after the war. Descendants of German colonists. migrants and settlers from those regions that were sent to Germany formed various organisations representing their interests. Those organisations concentrated in so called Bund der Vertriebenen or Federation of Expellees. It's first president was a former Nazi Ortsgruppenleiter Hans Krüger, who during the war worked as judge in Nazi occupied Poland. It has also been revealed that of circa 200 high-ranking members of the BdV prior 1982, more then a third more than a third can be found in the members index of NSDAP or are associated in other ways with Nazi regime. Those numbers include three former general secretaries and several vice-presidents[5]. Actions of organisations such as BdV remain an issue of conflict and hostility between Germany and its eastern neighbours, Poland and Czech Republic.

Attitude of German soldiers

Attitude towards German policies in WW2 was also studied among German soldiers, by using photos and correspondence left after the war.

Photos serve as valuable source of knowledge as making them and albums about persecution of Jews was a popular custom among German soldiers. These photos aren't official propaganda of German state and represent personal experience. Their overall attitude is antisemitic[19]. German soldiers as well as police members took pictures of Jewish deportations, executions, humiliation, abuse to which they were subjected. The photographs indicate the consent of the photographers to the abuses and murders committed[19]. Archival evidence as to reaction to policies of racial extermination can also be traced in various letters that remained after the war[19]. Many letters from Wehrmacht soldiers were published in 1941 and entitled "German Soldiers See the Soviet Union, this publication includes authentic letters from soldiers on the Eastern front. Researchers Judith Levin and Daniel Uziel quote a German soldier writing:

"The German people is deeply indebted to the Fuehrer, because if these animals, our enemies here, had reached Germany, murders of a nature not yet witnessed in the world would have occurred.... No newspaper can describe what we have seen. It verges on the unbelievable, and even the Middle Ages do not compare with what has transpired here. Reading Der Stuermer and observing its photos give only a limited impression of what we have seen here and of the crimes committed here by the Jews."

Judith Levin and Daniel Uziel state that this type of writing and opinion was very common in correspondence left by German soldiers, especially on the Eastern Front[19].

Another sample are German soldier's letters that were sent home and copied during the war by special Polish Home Army cell that infiltrated German post system to collect possible intelligence assets[20]. Those letters have been analyzed by historians and the picture they paint is similiar to views expressed by Judith Levin and Daniel Uziel. Most soldiers write openly about extermination of Jews and are proud of it. Support for "untermensch" and "master race" concepts are also part of the attitude expressed by German soldiers[20]. Presented examples reflecting this trend include samples such as :"I'm one of those who are decreasing number of partisans. I put them against the wall and everyone gets a bullet in his head, very merry and interesting job", "My point of view:this nation deserves only the knaut, only by it they can be educated; a part of them already experienced that;others still try to resist. Yesterday I had possibility to see 40 partisants, something like that I had never encountered before. I became convinced that we are the masters, others are untermenschen"[20].

Much more evidence of such trends and and thoughts among Wehrmacht soldiers exists and is subject to research by historians[19].

End of denazification

On 5th of May 1946 the future chancellor of Germany, Konrad Adenauer during a public speech expressed his opposition to de-nazification[3]. He demanded to leave alone "sympathizers of nazism". Two weeks later on CDU forum, he repeated his demands. With the beginning of Cold War, efforts of de-nazification were abandoned. In 1949 authorities of newly created Federal Republic of Germany made a decision to end all investigations into the past of officials in civil and military departments. In Bavaria alone in 1951 former Nazis made 94 % of all judges and prosecutors, 77 % of workers in Bavarian Ministry of Finance, 60 % of all workers in Ministry of Agriculture[3]. In 1952 one out of three people employed in German Ministry of Foreign Affairs was a former Nazi. 48 % of people in diplomatic corps were former SS members and 17 % former members of SD and Gestapo[3]. Some former high ranking Nazi officials remained in post-war positions of authority. Hans Globke who helped Adolf Hitler gain unlimited dictatorial powers and wrote a law commentary on the The Nuremberg Laws became Director of the Federal Chancellory of West Germany between 1953 and 1963 and was one of the closest aides to Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the Chief of Police in Rhineland-Palatinate Wilhelm Hauser was a former obersturmführer responsible for massacres in Belarus during the war[3], Heinz Reinefarth responsible for massacres of thousands during Wola Massacre became a politician and mayor of a German town of Westerland. Many war crimes comitted during Second World War by the German forces have remained unpunished. The role of former Nazis in German society and politics has led to serious social debate and conflict in Germany during 1968 events[3].

The issue of German collective guilt remains political; issues such as uniqueness of the Holocaust, Neo-Nazism and the question of whether Germany has done enough to atone for the past form components of political discourse both within the country and elsewhere.[citation needed]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "In his famous work The Question of German Guilt, in which he discusses German guilt in the Second World War,Karl Jaspers explicitly advocates the thesis of German collective guilt. He grounds this belief in the collectivity of guilt in the fact that such a regime became possible in the spiritual conditions of German life. The text was written only a few months after the war was over. At that time, Germany was profoundly defeated: an ideological, moral, economic ruin. Jaspers did not wait for Germans to get on their feet in order to face them with their guilt, but neither did he take on the role of their judge. He wanted to see a "conversation," in which everyone will be both the judge and the accused, and try to look at things from the other's and not only from their own perspective. The objective of this conversation, he wrote, was common welfare". Nenad Dimitrijevic "The Past, Responsibility and the Future" Eurozine 2001-07-04
  2. ^ Rocznik Polsko-Niemiecki Tom I "Polska a Niemcy:Ludność, odbudowa, przemiany polityczne w pierwszych latach powojennych" Edmund Dmitrów Warszawa 1992 page 18
  3. ^ a b c d e f "Zapłata Prawda o denazyfikacji" Tony Judt Dziennik "EUROPA" 2005-11-16, page 5
  4. ^ "Niemcy: Nazizm miał również dobre strony" Dziennik 2007-02-11
  5. ^ a b c Imannuel Geiss, Der polnische Grenzstreifen 1914-1918. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Kriegszielpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg, Hamburg/Lübeck 1960
  6. ^ Hitlers plans for Eastern Europe Selections from Janusz Gumkowkski and Kazimierz Leszczynski Poland Under Nazi Occupation
  7. ^ Volker R. Berghahn "Germans and Poles 1871–1945" in "Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identities and Cultural Differences", Rodopi 1999
  8. ^ Katharine Anne LermanHe(Bismarck) wrote(...):"We can do nothing other then exterminate them if we want to exist; the wolf also cannot help the fact he is created by God as he is and yet we shoot him dead when we can can" Bismarck,2004 Pearson Education. Page 94
  9. ^ Herbert Arthur Strauss, "Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism 1870-1933-39 Germany - Great Britain-France", Walter de Gruyter 1993
  10. ^ Martyn Housden,"Resistance and Conformity in the Third Reich" Routledge, 1997 page 100: "He was endorsing both the tyrannical occupation of Poland and the use of its people as slave labourers"
  11. ^ [1] Die Bevölkerung ist ein unglaublicher Pöbel, sehr viele Juden und sehr viel Mischvolk. Ein Volk, welches sich nur unter der Knute wohlfühlt. Die Tausenden von Gefangenen werden unserer Landwirtschaft recht gut tun(The population here are unbelievable plebs; a great many Jews and half-breeds. A folk that only feels good beneath the knout. The thousands of POW's will be very good for our agriculture.)
  12. ^ Stauffenberg was plased(...)"It is essential that we begin a systemic colonisation in Poland. But I have no fear that this will not occur". Peter Hoffman "Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905-1944 page 116 2003 McGill-Queen's Press
  13. ^ "A Concise History of Poland" Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki Published 2006 Cambridge University Press
  14. ^ "The Desert Fox in Normandy: Rommel's Defense of Fortress Europe" Samuel W. (Jr.) Mitcham 1997 Praeger/Greenwood page 65
  15. ^ [2]
  16. ^ Rezensionen
  17. ^ Tadeusz Piotrowsk "Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947" page 23 1998 McFarland & Company
  18. ^ "Polacy - wysiedleni, wypędzeni i wyrugowani przez III Rzeszę", Maria Wardzyńska, Warsaw 2004". Created on order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the organization called Selbstschutz carried out executions during "Intelligenzaktion" alongside operational groups of German military and police, in addition to such activities as identifying Poles for execution and illegally detaining them
  19. ^ a b c d e Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Photos" Judith Levin and Daniel Uziel Yad Vashem Institute Yad Vashem Studies, No. 26
  20. ^ a b c Niemieckie listy ze wschodu Polityka - nr 51 (2483) 18-12-2004; Jerzy Kochanowski, Marcin Zaremba
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