Deeds & Misdeeds

"Among the obstacles on the road to 'Europe,' the horrors of memories connected with the name of Hitler are of decisive importance. And Hitler wasn't British and he wasn't French, he was a German."

Such words as these voiced by Germany's influential Protestant weekly Christ und Welt are not often heard in Germany, where the tendency is to ignore so unpleasant a subject, or to dismiss it by saying, "The others weren't any better." Disturbed by the talk of the guilt of "others," Christ und Welt (circ. 61,000) decided it was high time to ask whether postwar Germany "has nothing to forget and nothing to learn." At stake, said the magazine, is more than "posthumous guilt-fixing and vindications . . .

"We should first be clear about the exact nature of 'our Guilt.' Exactly four weeks after becoming Chancellor . . . Hitler [decreed the abolition of] freedom of the press and of congregation, the secrecy of the mails and telephone, and permitted the government to search homes and confiscate . . . What happened thereafter was, to a large extent, no longer 'our guilt.' "

Amoral Management. "It is not for his deeds that we are responsible, but rather for the German leaning to men of his type, to politicians who play about with power and force, and openly despise justice, the law, liberty and tolerance. And that is again the issue in connection with the danger of neo-Nazism. Germany after 1933 was not, so to speak, a firm with associates and employees who were all bad and amoral. But it was a firm with bad and amoral management, and the staff and associates cannot deny that they displayed a disastrous weakness towards men of a brutal and violent type and thus made it easier for the evil management to assume control. For this they can be blamed, not for failing to remove this management later--something which was well-nigh impossible. The question now is not at all whether the others are better or worse than we. It is whether our future sympathies will go to a good or bad management."

Fault Against Fault. "[The destruction by the Allies] of Hamburg and Dresden . . . the transfer of prisoners to the Red army . . . Yalta and Potsdam . . . and the mass expulsions from the East were all mistakes . . . even horrible crimes. But ... no weighing of fault against fault can be done . . . Deeds and misdeeds considered by themselves are one thing. But their motives and the spirit in which they are carried out are quite another. It is one thing to acknowledge human and divine laws but nevertheless violate them; we all do that ... It is quite another to deny these laws as a matter of principle and to replace them by laws offending God and humanity. The views and aims of Hitler and the thinking and aims of the West . . . are not of equal or even comparable value. Man for man, the others were certainly not 'better.' But the values and the order for which they fought were better . . .

"The fear that we may be incorrigible is a paralyzing obstacle on Europe's road into the future. We cannot tell if this fear can be banished by anything which lies in our power to do. But of one thing we are very sure: we have the tremendous responsibility of not adding anew to this obstacle."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.