On German Guilt

In 1947 the German philosopher Karl Jaspers gave a lecture on his meditations concerning the consequences of aligning oneself with, living in, voting for, and benefiting from the German government while under National Socialist control. In particular, he concentates on how the individuals that made up this collective bore a responsibility and then what kind of burden of guilt accompanied this.  A German guilt that needed to be addressed and put into a context, the necessity for which was precipitated by the growing animosity towards the Allies and their conditions that the surviving Germans were living under. These living conditions that were difficult considering the immediate post-war context, in which many of the cities had been bombed to rubble (Cologne was between 70-80% destroyed), millions of refugees were arriving daily from the East, and the winter had caused a scarcity of food and their utter dependency upon the Allies for their survival.

Jaspers begins with a request to the German people to accept the decision of the Allies, whether it seem just or not, as a first step towards acknowledging responsibility for the war. An acknowledgment that was necessary in order for the German people to move on and be able to rebuild the nation. It is also important to note that he does not consider all Germans to carry this burden of guilt, specifically those who were not the decision makers or upon the front lines, they were not necessarily to be seen to be guilty by their individual actions, but yet for his conclusion, in which he acknowledges their guilt in the political sense – they participated in a political system that when it was corrupted – they refused to do anything to rectify or reject the corruption.

This political guilt discussed above is one of the four types of guilt. The first is individual guilt that was assigned to those in power and it should have been, perhaps, the easiest to decide upon who should be responsible because it was based upon the law. The problem, however, is that the Nazi state had operated in a lawless area and many of the offenses committed were outside the scope of the Nazi codified law, so then he suggests that what is appropriate, is the turn towards natural law. One does not have to think very hard upon whether murder of civilians – one’s own civilians – is right or wrong. These two types of guilt are decided (must be decided) by outside influence, since one may not ever acknowledge what was done if one could get away with it.

The other guilt is characterized by personal perception. Moral guilt is only there in the person who has recognized the offense. For comparison, think of Oskar Schindler and in his recognition of the offenses of the Nazi party, decides that he is morally obligated. In contrast, Adolf Eichmann maintained his innocence at his trial in Jerusalem in 1961 claiming he was only doing his job, his obligation, and by only following orders, he saw himself as not responsible. This is what Hannah Arendt noted as the banality of evil or that those who refuse to become a person are capable of the greatest acts of evil without even a thought to what they are doing, but rather they feel that their conscientiousness in the detail of their undertaking is laudable – no matter the utterly inhumane acts that their actions allows or carry out.  Eichmann’s morality was of a kind that did not plague his conscience, while Schindler’s was one that did – it would seem that the key difference between the two was the ability to feel empathy for those who will suffer from their actions.

The final guilt discussed by Jaspers is one that has unfortunately become more and  more prevalent in our contemporary world and this is the metaphysical guilt, often referred to as survivor’s guilt, felt by those who do not directly suffer the action, nor are they the perpetrators of the offense, but rather they are those who bore witness to its unfolding and feel inexorably enmeshed with the loss of those around them. The question that pervades their  mind is often why me and not the person next to me – for which there is no answer, but the one that a survivor may make for themselves, wresting some sense of meaning from tragedy, often looking towards higher powers in order to rely on faith, blind trust in some ulterior purpose for their own sparing. I once knew a woman who had lost her father when she was about 11, never mind that he was a louse, a drunkard, and a fool, his loss she never overcame, despite her admission that he mattered not, his presence pervades her decisions still. Unable to commit to any serious relationship is the outcome of her loss, relying instead on a group of friends and a steady stream of depressants in order to calm the nerves that scream out in vigilance, keeping her in a constant state of paranoia and anxiety.

The metaphysical can overlap with the moral, just as the political (collective) guilt is not an evasion of individual responsibility, but rather demonstrates its necessity. I believe that the longer one is on this earth, the more that the understanding of these types of guilt become clearer and life itself requires the burden of these the longer one breathes air. It is assumed that the Nazis present us with an extreme case, the sheer industrialization of the murdering process still shocks our modern sensibilities as it makes literal the metaphorical exploitation of labor and the shows that the act of consumption in Imperial Capitalism exacts a heavy human cost. What should guarded against is the loss of guilt, the triumph of unrepetent, and the trouble that will befall those who let themselves be led by the corrupt, the foolhardy and shameless.