Excerpts
from
"The Burden of Guilt:
A Short History
of Germany,
1914 - 1945",
by Hannah Vogt,
translated
by Herbert Strauss,
Oxford University Press,
1961
[in the German language],
1964
[in the English language].
Preface
An
eighteen-year-old
boy,
studying for
his high school diploma
in
a German night school,
heard recordings
of Hitler's
and
Goebbels'
speeches
in
his History class.
With the impression
of these speeches
still fresh
in his mind,
he wrote
to
an older acquaintance:
"I cannot
understand it.
If somebody had told me
earlier
that
my father's generation
tortured human beings
to death
merely because
they were Jews,
I would have
slapped his face.
I almost cried
tonight
because
I am
a German ...
We needn't wonder
that foreigners
often don't want to
have anything to do
with us ...
How can it be
that there are
still people today
who
approve
of the crimes
of that period?"
This letter,
though written
by a young man
shaken
by
his first encounter
with Germany's
most recent past,
answers our questions
succinctly.
Nobody
can seriously claim
that today's youth
should be
held responsible
for the events
of German history
and politics
from
1914 to 1945.
But what happened
then
concerns
the
younger generation today,
if merely
because
they have inherited
a divided fatherland,
and
must
understand
the
unchecked
power
politics
which caused
this division.
The past
also concerns
young German people
because
no nation on earth
can live isolated
and on its own.
We cannot
be indifferent
to what others
think about us
as a people,
and it does no good
to close our eyes
to
the disagreeable facts
of this past.
This will not erase
the horror
from the memory
of other nations.
Above all else,
today's German youth
must concern itself
with the past
in order
to avoid
repeating the crimes
of what now lies
definitely
behind us.
From this,
three conclusions
are to be drawn.
We need more,
and more reliable,
information
about this recent past.
What a young person
learns accidently
here or there
is often
full of contradictions.
He sees films
about
General Rommel,
about
Admiral Canaris,
about
the
assassination attempt
of July 20, 1944,
or
about Hitler's life.
He reads memoirs
in which people
who were themselves
involved,
describe their own
small or large
participation
in the events
of the Third Reich,
and not infrequently
try to
justify themselves
or
their activities.
Newspapers
and weeklies
give reports on trials
of former
concentration camp
guards,
physicians,
or Kommandants,
which are
still being conducted,
even at this
late date [1961],
because some of them
have until now
managed to evade
the hands of justice.
On the other hand,
there are also people
who lived through
the Hitler period
at a responsible age,
and say things like:
"We earned
good money then.
Under Hitler
even the common laborer
could take
pleasure tips to Madeira
with the help
of the National Socialist
Strength through Joy
organization.
Hitler had finally put things
in order,
and put an end to
those thirty odd parties
of the Weimar Republic.
And he did away
with unemployment too.
We never heard
of the extermination camp
at Auschwitz
until the war was over.
But it's obvious today
that Hitler
sized up
Bolshevism right
from
the very beginning!
And if it hadn't been
for treason
and sabotage,
we Germans
would certainly
have won the war
too!"
Well, what was it
really like?
How can we
understand
how millions
of Germans
could cheer a man
capable
of ordering
the
cold-blooded murder
of millions
of innocent Jews?
How can we
understand how
he found enough people
to
execute his orders?
Was there only
one guilty person,
namely, Hitler himself?
Or, must we assume
that
the German nation
is more prone
to brutality
and cruelty
than other nations?
Or was it
in the last analysis
those other nations
who were guilty
of the errors
and the misfortunes
of
the German people
because
they failed
to understand us,
as was illustrated,
for example,
in
the
immoderate demands
made
in
the Versailles Treaty?
The answers
to these questions
can only be found
through
a more thorough study
of recent history.
And while this
is being done
let nobody
be deceived
by people
who try to evade
their own responsibility
with arguments
like the following:
"Why not
let the grass
finally grow
over the past!
Why do we keep
soiling ourselves
by talking continually
about those
persecutions of Jews,
concentration camps,
mass gassings,
and
other atrocities?
And is it not unwise
to beat our breast
before the whole world?
The other nations
and their leaders
are guilty
of a few misdeeds
too!"
To sit in judgment
on the history
of one's own nation
is neither
dishonorable
nor injurious
to
national dignity.
We cannot avoid
the responsibility
for examining ourselves
by pointing out
that
other people
have reason
to do likewise.
The responsibility
for dropping
the first atomic bomb
on Hiroshima
has been
discussed critically
before
the American public
often enough
and
nobody criticized
the disastrous
English invasion of Suez
more strongly
than the leader
of
Her Majesty's Opposition,
Hugh Gaitskell.
It is good
that democratic states
do scrutinize
their own policies.
Aside from this,
self-examination
and
a repudiation
of false
political principles
are
the only means
we have
of winning new trust
among those peoples
who were forced
to suffer fearful things
under Hitler's
brutal policy
of force.
Our technical
and
economic efficiency
will win us no friends
as long as other peoples
fear that this efficiency
may once again
be abused
by a criminal.
Only if we draw
the right conclusions
from the mistakes
of the past
and
apply them
to our thought
and action
can we win
new trust.
When one builds
a new house,
he should not put it
on
shaky foundations.
He must know
which parts
of the old house
he will be able to use,
and
which he will have to
discard
because
they are rotten
or worm-eaten.
Then, too,
the discussion
of the past
ultimately serves
the future,
which
must not be
determined
by those
who excuse
or
approve
crimes committed
in
the name of Germany.
Anyone
who makes an effort
to understand
recent political history
will learn
that in politics
not every means is just,
that law
and
the dignity of man
are not
empty phrases,
that force
merely produces
counter-force,
and
that
he who sows
the wind
will
reap
the whirlwind.
As early as 1923,
Albert Schweitzer
made
this statement,
which applies
even more directly
to the world
today:
"Our world cannot make
a really new start
unless we
first become
new men,
even
under the old conditions,
and,
as
a morally re-dedicated
society,
overcome conflicts
between nations
in such a manner
that culture
can rise again.
Anything else
is more or less
lost labor
for then
the seed
does not fall
on
spiritual,
but merely on
material
soil."
+++
Introduction
(by
Gordon A. Craig)
No question, probably,
is raised more frequently
in American discussions
of German affairs
than that
of the attitudes
of contemporary Germans
toward their own past.
Is it not true,
speakers
are likely to be asked,
that Germany's recovery
from the ravages of the war
was too speedy
for its own good
and that
the very success
of the "economic miracle"
prevented the German people
from subjecting themselves
to the kind of
sober self-examination
they sorely needed?
Is it not true that,
in their preoccupation
with material things,
they have succeeded
in shutting the Nazi period
out of their minds
so completely
that
they no longer recognize
any responsibility
for the dreadful things
that were done
in their name
between 1933 and 1945?
And does not
this
convenient amnesia
represent
the gravest danger
to any hope
of establishing
a viable democracy
in Germany
in our own time?
It is difficult to answer
these questions
to the satisfaction
of those who pose them,
for a very simple reason.
Germans
vary in attitude
and opinion
just as much
as Americans do.
It is true
that there are many people
in the Bundesrepublik today --
probably more
than is good
for the political health
of the country --
who have never
reflected seriously
on the fateful course
taken by their nation
after 1933,
or who have succeeded
in persuading themselves
that
it was unavoidable;
there are countless others
who, for various reasons,
resist any discussion of things
that happened in Hitler's time
and would be happy
if the whole Nazi period
could be swept under a rug
and forgotten.
But the number of these people
is certainly matched
and probably exceeded
by those
who,
despite
the comfortable distractions
of economic prosperity,
go on struggling
with the problems
of German history,
seeking to understand
how their people
could have tolerated
the crimes
committed before 1945
by their political leaders,
and insisting
that
only the most
circumstantial revelation
of the brutal facts of the past
will make
such understanding possible.
It is no exaggeration
to say that
one can hardly
attend a church service
or
enter a theater lobby
or
go into a bookstore,
or
even buy a magazine,
in Western Germany today
without
being made aware
of
this preoccupation
with the past.
From pulpits
that were once
pillars
of the established order,
the Dibeliuses
and
the Gollwitzers,
and
many lessor pastors
as well,
invoke the Nazi era
in order
to remind their flocks
of the terrible things
that can result
from
political indifference
or
unquestioning acquiescence
in any decree
handed down
by a government.
In the theaters,
writers like
Max Frisch
and
Rolf Hochhuth
present
dramatic elaborations
of the same theme,
with specific reference
to
the moral capitulation
of
the German people
during
the Hitler period.
The
motion-picture theaters,
in addition to showing
the current productions
of American
and
European studios,
regularly advertise re-runs
of features
like
Die Brucke,
the resistance film
Canaris,
and
the Swedish documentary
Mein Kampf;
and,
as these lines
are being written,
all three of these films
are playing
in little theaters
in the
Lichterfelde,
Steglitz,
and
Charlottenburg districts
of West Berlin.
The display windows
of bookstores
are filled,
not only with
well-established works
like
Karl Bracher et al.,
"The National Socialist
Seizure of Power",
and
the Hitler biographies
of
Walter Gorlitz
and
Alan Bullock
(the latter
in a new
paperback edition),
but also
with a remarkable number
of new books
about Nazi Germany --
J. C. Fest's
"The Face
of the Third Reich",
Gunter Schubert's
"The Beginnings
of National Socialist
Foreign Policy",
and
Hans Berd Gisevius's
"Adolf Hitler:
An Attempt
at an Interpretation",
to mention
only the most important.
Simultaneously,
the most widely read
news-magazine
in Germany,
Der Spiegel,
having touched off
a lively controversy
in its letter columns
by serializing
the Gottingen historian
Percy Schramm's
introduction
to the new edition
of "Hitler's Table Talk",
has now
widened
the field of discussion
by printing those chapters
of
Barbara Tuchmann's
"The Guns of August"
which deal with
the war-guilt question
in 1914.
In doing this,
the magazine's editor,
Rudolf Augstein,
has made it clear
that,
as far as it lies
within his power,
he will
prevent those
who would like the past
to be forgotten
from having their way.
"I consider it
a sacred duty,"
he has written,
"for us
to keep before our eyes
what fearful things
we Germans
have inflicted
on our neighbors
over the past fifty years,
as a result
of
our excessive
self-satisfaction,
our military-technical
perfectionism,
and
our distorted sense
of values."
This evident willingness
to view the past
with a critical spirit
may perhaps
give some measure
of reassurance
to those
who suffer
recurring doubts
about the prospects
of German democracy.
Yet it is questionable
whether this kind
of artistic
and
journalistic activity
can
by itself
have much positive effect
upon
the future political behavior
of the German people.
Of much greater
significance
in that regard
will be
the nature
of
historical instruction
in
the elementary
and
secondary schools.
How good a job
are
the German schools
doing today
in presenting
a fair picture
of
the "fearful things
the
Germans
have inflicted
on their neighbors"
in the recent past?
On
more than
one occasion,
Herr Augstein
has not only
expressed doubts
about the quality
of their performance
but
has intimated
that there is
in the country
active
and
strong
resistance
to attempts
on the part of the schools
to do better.
He is not alone
in holding this view.
In a speech
given two years ago
in the
Paulskirche
in Frankfurt am Main,
Hans Graf von Lehndorff
said,
"I keep hearing the opinion
that we
shouldn't burden
the younger generation
with
the so-called guilt question.
Youth,
it is said,
should have
the privilege
of being able
to think and act
without prejudice,
and
we should not
deprive them of that.
Life is hard enough,
and
we shouldn't make it
harder for the young.
And whenever
I hear
that sort of thing,
I always ask myself:
in whose interest
is this
really
being said?
Do the young
really
resist this burden?
Or is it not
really
we older people
who would like
to hide
behind the young
in order
not to have to
admit
our own mistakes?"
In the first years
after the war,
there is no doubt
that the attitude
described
by Count von Lehndorff
was effective
in delaying
and,
in some parts of Germany,
blocking
not only
much needed changes
in school curricula
but also
the vitally important task
of
revising old history texts
and
finding new ones
that would
meet the requirements
of
the new
German democracy.
Despite the fact
that
the national
teacher's organization
had noted
the inadequacy
of
available
teaching materials
as early as 1947,
the
correction of this situation
was slow
and
uneven
for over a decade.
It was not, indeed,
until 1959
that reform
of history instruction
was taken up
in earnest,
and that
was because
a sudden outburst
of anti-Semitic incidents
in Cologne
and
other parts
of the country
shocked people
into realizing
that failure to deal
adequately
with Germany's past
in the schools
was already having
a deleterious effect.
It was leaving
young people
dangerously susceptible
to the myths
of neo-Nazism
and
the rationalizations
of those
who had an interest
in blaming
Germany's present plight
upon
anyone but the real culprits.
The sobering experience
of
seeing swastikas
smeared
on synagogue walls
put an end
to attempts
to prevent history instruction
in the schools
from going
beyond the end
of the nineteenth century.
In February 1960
the
Federal Conference
of Ministers of Education
declared
that instruction
in the history of Germany
in the modern period
should be
made part of the curriculum
of all elementary
and secondary schools;
and
in the subsequent period
those Landerregierungen
which had not already done so
began to take the necessary step
to implement that declaration.
One of the first effects
of this
was
an accelerated effort
to provide the schools
with readable
and
objective
textbooks
dealing with
the Weimar
and
National Socialist
periods.
The progress
that has been made
in this respect
was described last year
by Grace Richards Conant
in an excellent brief report
published
in The Saturday Review.
Mrs. Conant pointed out
that, not only have new books
been provided quickly,
but, in a country
that had been notorious
for the extreme nationalism
of its historical scholarship,
publishers of school books
have fallen into the habit
of submitting manuscripts
to
the
International
School Book Institute
at
Braunschweig
for
analysis
and
correction
of
bias
and
error,
while state governments
have demonstrated
their willingness
to withdraw books
from use
which failed
to meet the standards
of that organization.
The results
of this
revolutionary procedure
have been
heartening.
After examining
ten
of the most
widely adopted
history texts,
Mrs. Conant found them
free
of the kind of distortion
that marred
German school books
in the interwar period
and
noted that,
without exception,
they
"contained
drastic judgments
of
German national policy"
after 1933
and
provided detailed accounts
of the brutalities
practiced
by the Nazi government
against fellow Germans
before 1939
and
of the horrors
of
the Final Solution
pursued during the war years.
Hannah Vogt's
"Schuld oder Verhangnis?"
here published
under the title
"The Burden of Guilt",
is representative
of this new type
of German school text
and
is not only
one
of the most widely used
books of its kind
but
one
of the most interesting
in its method.
Its author
is not
a
professional historian,
but rather
a civil servant
who
has specialized
in problems
of civic education.
For six years
a town councilor
in the city of Gottingen,
Miss Vogt
has been connected
since 1954
with
the
Landeszentrale
fur politische Bildung
in the state of Hessen,
and
during these years
she has travelled
all over
Western Germany,
as well as
a good part
of the United States,
visiting elementary
and secondary schools,
holding seminars
with young people
and
talking to
adult education classes,
and
constantly seeking
new methods
of stimulating discussion
of contemporary
and recent history
and making it
contribute
to the political education
of future citizens.
Her previous books
include
an introduction
to legal history
and education,
a Handbook
for the Citizen,
and
an
anthology of selections
from the writings
of Friedrich Naumann,
one of the founders
in 1919
of the Democratic Party
and
a man who sought,
throughout his life,
to alleviate class conflict
and
awaken
political responsibility
in his country.
"The Burden of Guilt"
was
in a real sense
the result
of
the
anti-Semitic outrages
of 1959.
Those incidents
not only gave
Miss Vogt
the idea of writing
a book of this kind
but also prompted
the Diesterweg Press
to ask her
to write it,
after the press
in its turn
had been stimulated
by
parliamentary demands
for a speedy
re-examination
of historical instruction
in
the Hessen school system.
The book was written
with
commendable dispatch,
was published in 1961,
and
was an immediate success,
400,000 copies being sold
in the first two years.
The Minister of Education
in Hessen
made it
prescribed reading
in all final classes
in
the Volksschulen;
it was
put on the approved lists
of ten other
Ministries of Education
and
of the Senat
of West Berlin;
and
it enjoyed
a respectable sale
in the commercial market,
thousands of copies
being bought
by ordinary adult readers.
This book's success
is to be explained
in part
by the clarity
and directness
of Miss Vogt's style --
qualities uncommon
in German academic writing --
and
by the happy wedding
of text and illustration.
But even more important
in this respect
is the way in which
Miss Vogt
approaches her material.
She is less intent
upon writing
a detailed narrative history
of the past half-century
than she is
upon dealing with
the problems
which she has heard
most frequently raised
in discussion groups,
with the questions
students ask
(or would like to ask)
their parents and teachers,
and
with the rationalizations
and half-truths
that one hears
in private conversation
and
in the speeches
of the
less responsible politicians.
How many times a day,
for example,
is it not said
somewhere in Germany
that
the country's
present misfortunes
really stem
from the First World War,
a conflict
forced upon Germany
by envious powers,
who wished to encircle her,
and
which she would
nevertheless have won
if her armies
had not been betrayed
by subversive forces
on the home front?
Miss Vogt
asks her readers
whether there
is any support
for these beliefs
and
proceeds
to demonstrate
that
there is not,
by an analysis
of the pre-war policies
of Germany
and her neighbors
and
by an examination
of the war situation
in 1918.
How many times a day
does not someone
say
that Hitler
was doubtless
a very bad man
but
that
he would never have
come to power
in Germany
if it had not been for
the iniquitous
Versailles Treaty?
Miss Vogt
asks her readers
to consider this theory
in the light
of the Weimar period
and
to ask themselves
whether
there were not
many other factors
as important
in bringing support
to Hitler
as the Versailles Treaty,
and
whether
the most important
were not
"lack of judgment
and
inadequate willingness
to assume responsibility
on the part
of specific groups
of Germans themselves."
How many Germans
still believe
(and are willing
to say so
in public-opinion polls)
that the Nazi period
was
the most comfortable,
prosperous,
and
presumably happy
period of their lives?
To the children
of
parents
who feel this way,
Miss Vogt points out,
in the section
called
"Life in the Third Reich,"
what
a questionable judgment
that is,
at whose cost
the comforts
of the average German
were purchased,
and
what frightful
political consequences
followed
from his enjoyment
of them.
As a work
of
historical analysis,
his volume
is not free
of faults.
Specialists
in German history
will note
that Miss Vogt
has a tendency
to see things
in black and white
and that,
in her desire
to reveal Hitler
for what he was,
she has been
somewhat uncritical
of
some
of his predecessors,
notably
Stresemann
and
Bruning.
But even
the specialists --
and this
is not a book for them
anyway! --
will admire
the thoroughness
with which the author
has gone about
demolishing
the kinds of myths
that have distorted
German historical
instruction
in the past:
the stab-in-the-back
legend,
the myth
of the legality
of Hitler's
assumption of power,
the theory,
now
being propagated
by certain people
in our own country,
that the Fuehrer
was a sincere
lover of peace
and
that war came
against his will
and
as a result
of the blunders
or
the schemes
of
certain
foreign statesmen,
and
the thesis
that Germany
would really
have won
the Second World War
if only this
or
that
had,
or
she has avoided the mistake
of presenting
a purely negative picture
of the past,
and
the persuasiveness
with which
she has demonstrated,
in her treatment
of the Weimar Republic
and her chapter
on the German resistance
to Hitler,
that
among the dark pages
of their history
there are others
upon which
today's generation
can find examples
of
courage
and
steadfastness
and
of the kind of values
that must be cultivated
if Germany's
new democracy
is to survive.
During
their serialization
of Schramm's
introduction
to "Hitler's Table Talk",
the editors
of Der Spiegel
received some letters
from readers
who seemed fearful
lest too much
writing about Hitler
serve merely
to
advertise neo-Nazism,
and
one letter
from a reader
who asked querulously,
"Why don't you
and younger ones
thanked them
for having thrown
more light
upon the troubled past,
and one girl
wrote firmly,
"It is a bitter necessity
for us to go on
working away
at
the Hitler phenomenon,
because,
inseparable from it,
It was for these
last correspondents
and
all
their contemporaries
who are trying
to come to terms
with their country's past
that Miss Vogt's book
was written.
By Americans,
"The Burden of Guilt"
can be read
simply
as a good brief account
of German history
from Wilhelm II
to Hitler.
It will assume
greater interest,
however,
if it is seen
for what it really is --
a document of our times,
a weapon
in the continuing struggle
for German democracy.
and Berlin-Dahlem
April 1964
[These excerpts
were drawn
from pages
v to xviii]
+++
from
"The Burden of Guilt:
A Short History
of Germany,
1914 - 1945",
by Hannah Vogt,
translated
by Herbert Strauss,
Oxford University Press,
1961
[in the German language],
1964
[in the English language].
Preface
An
eighteen-year-old
boy,
studying for
his high school diploma
in
a German night school,
heard recordings
of Hitler's
and
Goebbels'
speeches
in
his History class.
With the impression
of these speeches
still fresh
in his mind,
he wrote
to
an older acquaintance:
"I cannot
understand it.
If somebody had told me
earlier
that
my father's generation
tortured human beings
to death
merely because
they were Jews,
I would have
slapped his face.
I almost cried
tonight
because
I am
a German ...
We needn't wonder
that foreigners
often don't want to
have anything to do
with us ...
How can it be
that there are
still people today
who
approve
of the crimes
of that period?"
This letter,
though written
by a young man
shaken
by
his first encounter
with Germany's
most recent past,
answers our questions
succinctly.
Nobody
can seriously claim
that today's youth
should be
held responsible
for the events
of German history
and politics
from
1914 to 1945.
But what happened
then
concerns
the
younger generation today,
if merely
because
they have inherited
a divided fatherland,
and
must
understand
the
unchecked
power
politics
which caused
this division.
The past
also concerns
young German people
because
no nation on earth
can live isolated
and on its own.
We cannot
be indifferent
to what others
think about us
as a people,
and it does no good
to close our eyes
to
the disagreeable facts
of this past.
This will not erase
the horror
from the memory
of other nations.
Above all else,
today's German youth
must concern itself
with the past
in order
to avoid
repeating the crimes
of what now lies
definitely
behind us.
From this,
three conclusions
are to be drawn.
We need more,
and more reliable,
information
about this recent past.
What a young person
learns accidently
here or there
is often
full of contradictions.
He sees films
about
General Rommel,
about
Admiral Canaris,
about
the
assassination attempt
of July 20, 1944,
or
about Hitler's life.
He reads memoirs
in which people
who were themselves
involved,
describe their own
small or large
participation
in the events
of the Third Reich,
and not infrequently
try to
justify themselves
or
their activities.
Newspapers
and weeklies
give reports on trials
of former
concentration camp
guards,
physicians,
or Kommandants,
which are
still being conducted,
even at this
late date [1961],
because some of them
have until now
managed to evade
the hands of justice.
On the other hand,
there are also people
who lived through
the Hitler period
at a responsible age,
and say things like:
"We earned
good money then.
Under Hitler
even the common laborer
could take
pleasure tips to Madeira
with the help
of the National Socialist
Strength through Joy
organization.
Hitler had finally put things
in order,
and put an end to
those thirty odd parties
of the Weimar Republic.
And he did away
with unemployment too.
We never heard
of the extermination camp
at Auschwitz
until the war was over.
But it's obvious today
that Hitler
sized up
Bolshevism right
from
the very beginning!
And if it hadn't been
for treason
and sabotage,
we Germans
would certainly
have won the war
too!"
Well, what was it
really like?
How can we
understand
how millions
of Germans
could cheer a man
capable
of ordering
the
cold-blooded murder
of millions
of innocent Jews?
How can we
understand how
he found enough people
to
execute his orders?
Was there only
one guilty person,
namely, Hitler himself?
Or, must we assume
that
the German nation
is more prone
to brutality
and cruelty
than other nations?
Or was it
in the last analysis
those other nations
who were guilty
of the errors
and the misfortunes
of
the German people
because
they failed
to understand us,
as was illustrated,
for example,
in
the
immoderate demands
made
in
the Versailles Treaty?
The answers
to these questions
can only be found
through
a more thorough study
of recent history.
And while this
is being done
let nobody
be deceived
by people
who try to evade
their own responsibility
with arguments
like the following:
"Why not
let the grass
finally grow
over the past!
Why do we keep
soiling ourselves
by talking continually
about those
persecutions of Jews,
concentration camps,
mass gassings,
and
other atrocities?
And is it not unwise
to beat our breast
before the whole world?
The other nations
and their leaders
are guilty
of a few misdeeds
too!"
To sit in judgment
on the history
of one's own nation
is neither
dishonorable
nor injurious
to
national dignity.
We cannot avoid
the responsibility
for examining ourselves
by pointing out
that
other people
have reason
to do likewise.
The responsibility
for dropping
the first atomic bomb
on Hiroshima
has been
discussed critically
before
the American public
often enough
and
nobody criticized
the disastrous
English invasion of Suez
more strongly
than the leader
of
Her Majesty's Opposition,
Hugh Gaitskell.
It is good
that democratic states
do scrutinize
their own policies.
Aside from this,
self-examination
and
a repudiation
of false
political principles
are
the only means
we have
of winning new trust
among those peoples
who were forced
to suffer fearful things
under Hitler's
brutal policy
of force.
Our technical
and
economic efficiency
will win us no friends
as long as other peoples
fear that this efficiency
may once again
be abused
by a criminal.
Only if we draw
the right conclusions
from the mistakes
of the past
and
apply them
to our thought
and action
can we win
new trust.
When one builds
a new house,
he should not put it
on
shaky foundations.
He must know
which parts
of the old house
he will be able to use,
and
which he will have to
discard
because
they are rotten
or worm-eaten.
Then, too,
the discussion
of the past
ultimately serves
the future,
which
must not be
determined
by those
who excuse
or
approve
crimes committed
in
the name of Germany.
Anyone
who makes an effort
to understand
recent political history
will learn
that in politics
not every means is just,
that law
and
the dignity of man
are not
empty phrases,
that force
merely produces
counter-force,
and
that
he who sows
the wind
will
reap
the whirlwind.
As early as 1923,
Albert Schweitzer
made
this statement,
which applies
even more directly
to the world
today:
"Our world cannot make
a really new start
unless we
first become
new men,
even
under the old conditions,
and,
as
a morally re-dedicated
society,
overcome conflicts
between nations
in such a manner
that culture
can rise again.
Anything else
is more or less
lost labor
for then
the seed
does not fall
on
spiritual,
but merely on
material
soil."
+++
Introduction
(by
Gordon A. Craig)
No question, probably,
is raised more frequently
in American discussions
of German affairs
than that
of the attitudes
of contemporary Germans
toward their own past.
Is it not true,
speakers
are likely to be asked,
that Germany's recovery
from the ravages of the war
was too speedy
for its own good
and that
the very success
of the "economic miracle"
prevented the German people
from subjecting themselves
to the kind of
sober self-examination
they sorely needed?
Is it not true that,
in their preoccupation
with material things,
they have succeeded
in shutting the Nazi period
out of their minds
so completely
that
they no longer recognize
any responsibility
for the dreadful things
that were done
in their name
between 1933 and 1945?
And does not
this
convenient amnesia
represent
the gravest danger
to any hope
of establishing
a viable democracy
in Germany
in our own time?
It is difficult to answer
these questions
to the satisfaction
of those who pose them,
for a very simple reason.
Germans
vary in attitude
and opinion
just as much
as Americans do.
It is true
that there are many people
in the Bundesrepublik today --
probably more
than is good
for the political health
of the country --
who have never
reflected seriously
on the fateful course
taken by their nation
after 1933,
or who have succeeded
in persuading themselves
that
it was unavoidable;
there are countless others
who, for various reasons,
resist any discussion of things
that happened in Hitler's time
and would be happy
if the whole Nazi period
could be swept under a rug
and forgotten.
But the number of these people
is certainly matched
and probably exceeded
by those
who,
despite
the comfortable distractions
of economic prosperity,
go on struggling
with the problems
of German history,
seeking to understand
how their people
could have tolerated
the crimes
committed before 1945
by their political leaders,
and insisting
that
only the most
circumstantial revelation
of the brutal facts of the past
will make
such understanding possible.
It is no exaggeration
to say that
one can hardly
attend a church service
or
enter a theater lobby
or
go into a bookstore,
or
even buy a magazine,
in Western Germany today
without
being made aware
of
this preoccupation
with the past.
From pulpits
that were once
pillars
of the established order,
the Dibeliuses
and
the Gollwitzers,
and
many lessor pastors
as well,
invoke the Nazi era
in order
to remind their flocks
of the terrible things
that can result
from
political indifference
or
unquestioning acquiescence
in any decree
handed down
by a government.
In the theaters,
writers like
Max Frisch
and
Rolf Hochhuth
present
dramatic elaborations
of the same theme,
with specific reference
to
the moral capitulation
of
the German people
during
the Hitler period.
The
motion-picture theaters,
in addition to showing
the current productions
of American
and
European studios,
regularly advertise re-runs
of features
like
Die Brucke,
the resistance film
Canaris,
and
the Swedish documentary
Mein Kampf;
and,
as these lines
are being written,
all three of these films
are playing
in little theaters
in the
Lichterfelde,
Steglitz,
and
Charlottenburg districts
of West Berlin.
The display windows
of bookstores
are filled,
not only with
well-established works
like
Karl Bracher et al.,
"The National Socialist
Seizure of Power",
and
the Hitler biographies
of
Walter Gorlitz
and
Alan Bullock
(the latter
in a new
paperback edition),
but also
with a remarkable number
of new books
about Nazi Germany --
J. C. Fest's
"The Face
of the Third Reich",
Gunter Schubert's
"The Beginnings
of National Socialist
Foreign Policy",
and
Hans Berd Gisevius's
"Adolf Hitler:
An Attempt
at an Interpretation",
to mention
only the most important.
Simultaneously,
the most widely read
news-magazine
in Germany,
Der Spiegel,
having touched off
a lively controversy
in its letter columns
by serializing
the Gottingen historian
Percy Schramm's
introduction
to the new edition
of "Hitler's Table Talk",
has now
widened
the field of discussion
by printing those chapters
of
Barbara Tuchmann's
"The Guns of August"
which deal with
the war-guilt question
in 1914.
In doing this,
the magazine's editor,
Rudolf Augstein,
has made it clear
that,
as far as it lies
within his power,
he will
prevent those
who would like the past
to be forgotten
from having their way.
"I consider it
a sacred duty,"
he has written,
"for us
to keep before our eyes
what fearful things
we Germans
have inflicted
on our neighbors
over the past fifty years,
as a result
of
our excessive
self-satisfaction,
our military-technical
perfectionism,
and
our distorted sense
of values."
This evident willingness
to view the past
with a critical spirit
may perhaps
give some measure
of reassurance
to those
who suffer
recurring doubts
about the prospects
of German democracy.
Yet it is questionable
whether this kind
of artistic
and
journalistic activity
can
by itself
have much positive effect
upon
the future political behavior
of the German people.
Of much greater
significance
in that regard
will be
the nature
of
historical instruction
in
the elementary
and
secondary schools.
How good a job
are
the German schools
doing today
in presenting
a fair picture
of
the "fearful things
the
Germans
have inflicted
on their neighbors"
in the recent past?
On
more than
one occasion,
Herr Augstein
has not only
expressed doubts
about the quality
of their performance
but
has intimated
that there is
in the country
active
and
strong
resistance
to attempts
on the part of the schools
to do better.
He is not alone
in holding this view.
In a speech
given two years ago
in the
Paulskirche
in Frankfurt am Main,
Hans Graf von Lehndorff
said,
"I keep hearing the opinion
that we
shouldn't burden
the younger generation
with
the so-called guilt question.
Youth,
it is said,
should have
the privilege
of being able
to think and act
without prejudice,
and
we should not
deprive them of that.
Life is hard enough,
and
we shouldn't make it
harder for the young.
And whenever
I hear
that sort of thing,
I always ask myself:
in whose interest
is this
really
being said?
Do the young
really
resist this burden?
Or is it not
really
we older people
who would like
to hide
behind the young
in order
not to have to
admit
our own mistakes?"
In the first years
after the war,
there is no doubt
that the attitude
described
by Count von Lehndorff
was effective
in delaying
and,
in some parts of Germany,
blocking
not only
much needed changes
in school curricula
but also
the vitally important task
of
revising old history texts
and
finding new ones
that would
meet the requirements
of
the new
German democracy.
Despite the fact
that
the national
teacher's organization
had noted
the inadequacy
of
available
teaching materials
as early as 1947,
the
correction of this situation
was slow
and
uneven
for over a decade.
It was not, indeed,
until 1959
that reform
of history instruction
was taken up
in earnest,
and that
was because
a sudden outburst
of anti-Semitic incidents
in Cologne
and
other parts
of the country
shocked people
into realizing
that failure to deal
adequately
with Germany's past
in the schools
was already having
a deleterious effect.
It was leaving
young people
dangerously susceptible
to the myths
of neo-Nazism
and
the rationalizations
of those
who had an interest
in blaming
Germany's present plight
upon
anyone but the real culprits.
The sobering experience
of
seeing swastikas
smeared
on synagogue walls
put an end
to attempts
to prevent history instruction
in the schools
from going
beyond the end
of the nineteenth century.
In February 1960
the
Federal Conference
of Ministers of Education
declared
that instruction
in the history of Germany
in the modern period
should be
made part of the curriculum
of all elementary
and secondary schools;
and
in the subsequent period
those Landerregierungen
which had not already done so
began to take the necessary step
to implement that declaration.
One of the first effects
of this
was
an accelerated effort
to provide the schools
with readable
and
objective
textbooks
dealing with
the Weimar
and
National Socialist
periods.
The progress
that has been made
in this respect
was described last year
by Grace Richards Conant
in an excellent brief report
published
in The Saturday Review.
Mrs. Conant pointed out
that, not only have new books
been provided quickly,
but, in a country
that had been notorious
for the extreme nationalism
of its historical scholarship,
publishers of school books
have fallen into the habit
of submitting manuscripts
to
the
International
School Book Institute
at
Braunschweig
for
analysis
and
correction
of
bias
and
error,
while state governments
have demonstrated
their willingness
to withdraw books
from use
which failed
to meet the standards
of that organization.
The results
of this
revolutionary procedure
have been
heartening.
After examining
ten
of the most
widely adopted
history texts,
Mrs. Conant found them
free
of the kind of distortion
that marred
German school books
in the interwar period
and
noted that,
without exception,
they
"contained
drastic judgments
of
German national policy"
after 1933
and
provided detailed accounts
of the brutalities
practiced
by the Nazi government
against fellow Germans
before 1939
and
of the horrors
of
the Final Solution
pursued during the war years.
Hannah Vogt's
"Schuld oder Verhangnis?"
here published
under the title
"The Burden of Guilt",
is representative
of this new type
of German school text
and
is not only
one
of the most widely used
books of its kind
but
one
of the most interesting
in its method.
Its author
is not
a
professional historian,
but rather
a civil servant
who
has specialized
in problems
of civic education.
For six years
a town councilor
in the city of Gottingen,
Miss Vogt
has been connected
since 1954
with
the
Landeszentrale
fur politische Bildung
in the state of Hessen,
and
during these years
she has travelled
all over
Western Germany,
as well as
a good part
of the United States,
visiting elementary
and secondary schools,
holding seminars
with young people
and
talking to
adult education classes,
and
constantly seeking
new methods
of stimulating discussion
of contemporary
and recent history
and making it
contribute
to the political education
of future citizens.
Her previous books
include
an introduction
to legal history
and education,
a Handbook
for the Citizen,
and
an
anthology of selections
from the writings
of Friedrich Naumann,
one of the founders
in 1919
of the Democratic Party
and
a man who sought,
throughout his life,
to alleviate class conflict
and
awaken
political responsibility
in his country.
"The Burden of Guilt"
was
in a real sense
the result
of
the
anti-Semitic outrages
of 1959.
Those incidents
not only gave
Miss Vogt
the idea of writing
a book of this kind
but also prompted
the Diesterweg Press
to ask her
to write it,
after the press
in its turn
had been stimulated
by
parliamentary demands
for a speedy
re-examination
of historical instruction
in
the Hessen school system.
The book was written
with
commendable dispatch,
was published in 1961,
and
was an immediate success,
400,000 copies being sold
in the first two years.
The Minister of Education
in Hessen
made it
prescribed reading
in all final classes
in
the Volksschulen;
it was
put on the approved lists
of ten other
Ministries of Education
and
of the Senat
of West Berlin;
and
it enjoyed
a respectable sale
in the commercial market,
thousands of copies
being bought
by ordinary adult readers.
This book's success
is to be explained
in part
by the clarity
and directness
of Miss Vogt's style --
qualities uncommon
in German academic writing --
and
by the happy wedding
of text and illustration.
But even more important
in this respect
is the way in which
Miss Vogt
approaches her material.
She is less intent
upon writing
a detailed narrative history
of the past half-century
than she is
upon dealing with
the problems
which she has heard
most frequently raised
in discussion groups,
with the questions
students ask
(or would like to ask)
their parents and teachers,
and
with the rationalizations
and half-truths
that one hears
in private conversation
and
in the speeches
of the
less responsible politicians.
How many times a day,
for example,
is it not said
somewhere in Germany
that
the country's
present misfortunes
really stem
from the First World War,
a conflict
forced upon Germany
by envious powers,
who wished to encircle her,
and
which she would
nevertheless have won
if her armies
had not been betrayed
by subversive forces
on the home front?
Miss Vogt
asks her readers
whether there
is any support
for these beliefs
and
proceeds
to demonstrate
that
there is not,
by an analysis
of the pre-war policies
of Germany
and her neighbors
and
by an examination
of the war situation
in 1918.
How many times a day
does not someone
say
that Hitler
was doubtless
a very bad man
but
that
he would never have
come to power
in Germany
if it had not been for
the iniquitous
Versailles Treaty?
Miss Vogt
asks her readers
to consider this theory
in the light
of the Weimar period
and
to ask themselves
whether
there were not
many other factors
as important
in bringing support
to Hitler
as the Versailles Treaty,
and
whether
the most important
were not
"lack of judgment
and
inadequate willingness
to assume responsibility
on the part
of specific groups
of Germans themselves."
How many Germans
still believe
(and are willing
to say so
in public-opinion polls)
that the Nazi period
was
the most comfortable,
prosperous,
and
presumably happy
period of their lives?
To the children
of
parents
who feel this way,
Miss Vogt points out,
in the section
called
"Life in the Third Reich,"
what
a questionable judgment
that is,
at whose cost
the comforts
of the average German
were purchased,
and
what frightful
political consequences
followed
from his enjoyment
of them.
As a work
of
historical analysis,
his volume
is not free
of faults.
Specialists
in German history
will note
that Miss Vogt
has a tendency
to see things
in black and white
and that,
in her desire
to reveal Hitler
for what he was,
she has been
somewhat uncritical
of
some
of his predecessors,
notably
Stresemann
and
Bruning.
But even
the specialists --
and this
is not a book for them
anyway! --
will admire
the thoroughness
with which the author
has gone about
demolishing
the kinds of myths
that have distorted
German historical
instruction
in the past:
the stab-in-the-back
legend,
the myth
of the legality
of Hitler's
assumption of power,
the theory,
now
being propagated
by certain people
in our own country,
that the Fuehrer
was a sincere
lover of peace
and
that war came
against his will
and
as a result
of the blunders
or
the schemes
of
certain
foreign statesmen,
and
the thesis
that Germany
would really
have won
the Second World War
if only this
or
that
had,
or
had not,
intervened.Nor will they deny
the skill with whichshe has avoided the mistake
of presenting
a purely negative picture
of the past,
and
the persuasiveness
with which
she has demonstrated,
in her treatment
of the Weimar Republic
and her chapter
on the German resistance
to Hitler,
that
among the dark pages
of their history
there are others
upon which
today's generation
can find examples
of
courage
and
steadfastness
and
of the kind of values
that must be cultivated
if Germany's
new democracy
is to survive.
During
their serialization
of Schramm's
introduction
to "Hitler's Table Talk",
the editors
of Der Spiegel
received some letters
from readers
who seemed fearful
lest too much
writing about Hitler
serve merely
to
advertise neo-Nazism,
and
one letter
from a reader
who asked querulously,
"Why don't you
leave the dead
in peace?"
in peace?"
Other writers,
however,and younger ones
thanked them
for having thrown
more light
upon the troubled past,
and one girl
wrote firmly,
"It is a bitter necessity
for us to go on
working away
at
the Hitler phenomenon,
because,
inseparable from it,
is the phenomenon
of the German people."It was for these
last correspondents
and
all
their contemporaries
who are trying
to come to terms
with their country's past
that Miss Vogt's book
was written.
By Americans,
"The Burden of Guilt"
can be read
simply
as a good brief account
of German history
from Wilhelm II
to Hitler.
It will assume
greater interest,
however,
if it is seen
for what it really is --
a document of our times,
a weapon
in the continuing struggle
for German democracy.
Gordon A.Craig
Stanford, Californiaand Berlin-Dahlem
April 1964
[These excerpts
were drawn
from pages
v to xviii]
+++
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