We feel no desire to accuse the others; we do not want to infect them as it were, to drag them onto our path of doom. But at the distance and with the anxiey of those who stumbled onto it and now come to and reflect, we think: if only the others might not walk in such ways—if only those among us who are of goodwill might be able to rely on them.
Now a new period of history has begun. From now on, responsibility for whatever happens rests with the victorious powers.
Our Purification
The self-analysis of a people in historical reflection and the personal self-analysis of the individual are two different things. But the first can happen only by way of the second. What individuals accomplish jointly in communication may, if true, become the spreading consciousness of many and then is called national consciousness.
Again we must reject collective thinking, as fictitious thinking. Any real metamorphosis occurs through individuals—in the individual, in many individuals independent of or mutually inspiring one another.
We Germans, no matter how differently or even contrastingly, all ponder our guilt or guiltlessness. All of us do, National-Socialists and opponents of National-Socialism. By “we” I mean those with whom language, descent, situation, fate, give me a feeling of immediate solidarity. I do not mean to accuse anyone by saying, “We.” If other Germans feel guiltless, that is up to them—except in the two points of the punishment of criminals for crimes and of the political liability of all for the acts of the Hitler state. Those feeling guiltless are not being assailed until they start assailing. If in considering themselves guiltless they call others guilty, we should, of course, always inquire into the substance of their charges but also into their right to make them here. If, however, continuing the National-Socialist type of thought, they call us un-German—if instead of meditating and listening to reason they blindly seek to destroy others by means of generalized judgments, they disrupt our solidarity and are unwilling to test and develop themselves by talking with each other. For their way of attack they are to be charged with violating human rights.
Among our population a natural insight, thoughtful and’ without pathos, is not rare. The following are samples of such simple utterances.
An eighty-year-old scholar: “I never wavered in these twelve years, and yet I was never satisfied with myself. Time and again I would ruminate whether the purely passive resistance to the Nazis might not be turned into action. But Hitler’s organization was too diabolical.”
A younger anti-Nazi: “After years of bowing to ‘government by fear,’ even though with gnashing teeth, we opponents of National-Socialism also need purification. Thus we dissociate ourselves from the pharisaism of those who think the mere absence of a Party badge makes them first-class people.”
An official in the process of denazification: “If I let myself be pushed into the Party, if I lived in relative comfort, if I adapted myself to the Nazi state and to this extent benefited from it—even though in inner opposition—I have no decent right to complain if now I reap the disadvantages.”
Our use of the word purification in the guilt question has a good sense. We have to purge ourselves of whatever guilt 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 resistance to, National-Socialism. Everyone must reflect on his own internal and external conduct, and seek his own peculiar rebirth in this German crisis.
Another great difference between individuals concerns the starting time of this inner metamorphosis—whether it began in 1933 or in 1934, after the murders of June 30; whether it happened from 1938 on, after the synagogue burnings, or not until the war, or not until the threatening defeat, or not until the collapse.
In these matters we Germans cannot be reduced to a common denominator. We must keep an open mind in approaching each other from essentially different starting points. The only common denominator may be our nationality which makes all jointly guilty and liable for having let 1933 come to pass without dying. This also unites the outer and the inner emigration.
Due to our great diversity, everybody can apparently blame everybody else. This lasts as long as the individual really envisions only his own situation and that of people similar to him, and judges the situation of the others only in relation to himself. It is amazing to observe how we get really excited only when we are personally concerned, and how we see everything in the perspective of our special position. It takes a constant, conscious effort to escape from this perspective.
A recital of the recriminations current among the Germans of today would lead to endless discussions. Only some incidental examples from the present and the recent past are to be mentioned here. We may well falter at times, when our patience threatens to give out in talking with each other and we run up against brusque and callous rejection.
In the past years there were Germans who demanded martyrdom of us other Germans. We should not silently suffer what was going on, they told us; even if our action remained unsuccessful, it still would be like an ethical prop for the entire population, a visible symbol of suppressed forces. Thus I could hear myself rebuked from 1933 on, by friends, men and women.
Such demands were so harrowing because there was profound truth in them, yet a truth insultingly perverted by the manner of its presentation. What man, by himself, can experience before the transcendent, was dragged down to a level of moralizing, if not of sensationalism. Quietude and reverence were lost.
At present, a bad example of dodging into mutual accusation is given in many discussions between emigrants and others who stayed here—between the two groups we have come to describe as outer and inner emigration. Each has its ordeal. The emigrant has the world of a strange language to contend with, and homesickness as in the symbolic story of the German Jew in New York who had Hitler’s picture on the wall of his room. Why? Because nothing short of this daily reminder of the horrors awaiting him here would let him master his longing for the homeland. The trials of the stay-at-home included being utterly forsaken, an outcast in his own country, in constant danger, alone in the hour of need, shunned by all save a few friends whom he endangered in turn, thus suffering anew. Yet if now one group accuses the other, we need but to ask ourselves how we feel about the inner condition and tone of voice of these accusers—whether we are happy that such people feel this way, whether they set an example, whether there is something of an uplift in them, of freedom, of love, which might encourage us. If not, then what they say is not true, either.
There is no growth of life in mutual accusation. Talking with each other actually ceases; it is a form of the severance of communication. And this in turn is always a symptom of untruth, and so an occasion for honest men to search unceasingly where untruth might be hiding. It hides wherever Germans presume to judge Germans morally and metaphysically; wherever the veiled will to compulsion reigns instead of the goodwill to communication; wherever there is zeal to have the other admit guilt; wherever arrogance—“I am not incriminated”—looks down on the other; wherever the feeling of guiltlessness holds itself entitled to hold others guilty.