Collective guilt

Collective guilt means that the guilt for an act is not blamed on the individual perpetrator (or offender), but on a collective , all members of his group, e.g. B. his family, his people or his organization. This therefore also includes people who were not involved in the act themselves. The criminal law of modern democracies is fundamentally based on individual responsibility, so that collective guilt is not legally relevant. Article 33 of the Geneva Convention IV provides that no person may be convicted of a crime that they did not personally commit. A collective punishment presupposes collective guilt. According to Article 87 (3) of the Geneva Convention III and Article 33 of the Geneva Convention IV, collective penalties are war crimes.

The term collective guilt refers, for example, to the (actual or alleged) allegation of collective guilt of all men for gender discrimination, all Germans for the crimes of National Socialism , all white Australians for violations of Aboriginal human rights or all Americans for supporting Social policies that promote social inequality.

In the German context, the terms “collective guilt” and “collective guilt thesis” are usually used in the context of the Nazi past. This is done, for example, by progressive forces in order to avoid stereotyping and to obtain a differentiated, holistic picture. However, these terms are also used as political catchphrases by right-wing and far-right groups.

Collective liability

In contrast to collective guilt, there is the legal concept of collective liability, which imposes liability on the member of a group for the damage which organs of the whole group have caused through their actions. With collective liability z. B. in international law justifies the liability of a state for damage caused by illegal acts of its organs. This also includes the obligation to pay reparations to an opponent who was defeated in the war and who has replaced the older international law claim to tribute payments . A collective allocation of obligations to pay damages against states is considered problematic, because they ultimately harm natural persons economically who could not choose their affiliation to a state or a people, but to whom it was attributed by origin and birth. In the context of war and armed conflict, collective liability has repeatedly led to human rights violations and is considered a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Ethics and law

The assumption of collective guilt is justified with a moral responsibility by belonging to the group, not by the individual attribution of guilt. In Western societies this is incompatible with morality and the law. So z. B. the modern criminal law in European states on the principle of an individual responsibility. In many parts of the world and earlier also in Europe, however, collectivist thinking was widespread, according to which the individual is part of a collective (family, clan, people) and for deeds e.g. B. can be punished by family members.

Debate on collective guilt on war and the Holocaust

Allied allegations

“These atrocities: your fault!” One of the posters for the collective guilt campaign.

Exhumations of the dead and transport of corpses by the population around Neunburg

German child at the sight of victims of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Nammering

After the war, which led Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF by a collective guilt campaign: for example, with posters and films like Death Mills . The allied collective guilt directive was later repealed because it hampered the new goal of democratization.

Directive No. 1 from Robert A. McClure , head of the Information Control Division and specialist in psychological warfare , to the US Army Group Press explains the procedure:

"The first steps of re-education will be strictly limited to presenting the Germans with irrefutable facts in order to create an awareness of Germany's war guilt and collective guilt for such crimes as were committed in the concentration camps."

The ideas of collective guilt and collective punishment did not emerge among the US and British people, but rather at higher levels of politics. It was only towards the end of the war that the American public began to assign collective responsibility to the German people. The main political document containing elements of collective guilt and collective punishment is JCS 1067 from early 1945.

As early as 1944, prominent opinion leaders in the United States had initiated a propaganda campaign (which continued until 1948) for a hard peace for Germany with the aim of ending the apparent American habit of viewing the National Socialists and the German people as separate entities. In connection with this, Vansittartism was of great importance to the Western Allies. Such views created anti-Western sentiments against capitalism and materialism within parts of the resistance against National Socialism , such as the Kreisau Circle and the conspirators surrounding the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 , which, according to Axel von dem Bussche , also happened with Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg is said to have been the case.

The Psychological Warfare Division ran a psychological propaganda campaign to develop a German collective responsibility.

On July 20, 1945 - the first anniversary of the failed attempt to kill Hitler - the assassination attempt was not mentioned at all. This was because it was believed that if the German people were reminded that there was active German resistance to Hitler, it would undermine Allied efforts to instill a sense of collective guilt in the German people.

According to Norbert Frei , the collective guilt thesis was supported by the Western Allies in the post-war period - apart from individual measures such as forced visits to sites of Nazi crimes such as the Buchenwald concentration camp - but not practiced. On the contrary, each time individual guilt was examined in the denazification proceedings .

German reactions

While in 1946 78 percent of the population of the western zones still felt that the first Nuremberg trials after the Second World War were fair, this high approval rate had fallen to 38 percent four years later, according to surveys by American opinion polls . The internment practice of the Allies, the forced confrontation with the remains of the concentration camps , the denazification of former representatives of the Nazi regime, and the criminal proceedings before civil and military courts were increasingly perceived as victorious justice . The Nuremberg trials, in which selected top representatives of the Nazi regime were convicted, were seen as staged "proxy trials" in which a "collective guilt" of the Germans was to be proven. Against the background of a vague feeling of complicity, the exoneration of all Germans from a “collective guilt charge” was demanded. In an apologetic form, it was claimed that only Adolf Hitler , the Nazi leadership and the social elite were responsible for war and genocide, not the entire German people or the individual perpetrators. As Norbert Frei explains, the assumption that the Germans would be accused of collective guilt mainly served to always be able to reject this accusation in ritual indignation. This discourse was "an expression of the continuing national community need for solidarity" and was related to the widespread demands in the 1950s for an amnesty for convicted Nazi and war criminals and, in general, for a line under the Nazi past . The social scientist Samuel Salzborn argues in a similar way : By suppressing or hiding the "causal connections between German nationality and extermination policy on the one hand and the resettlement of Germans and bombing German cities as a consequence of this policy on the other," the "historical context" should be concealed . On the basis of an analysis of statements by AfD politicians Björn Höcke and Alexander Gauland , he writes : “The always hallucinatory accusation of German collective guilt, which the Allied and associated sides did not actually have as a political maxim for action [...], is countered with an interpretation of history , which is heading straight for the creation of a myth of German collective innocence . "

Even today, the claim that the Germans were or were exposed to collective guilt is part of right-wing rhetoric. In a speech on the Day of German Unity in 2003, for example, the conservative Martin Hohmann , then CDU (now AfD ), defended himself against alleged claims that the Germans were a " perpetrator people " by making the same claim against the Jews and quoting them underpinned from an anti-Semitic pamphlet . He was then expelled from the CDU.

In the rhetoric of German right-wing extremists , too , the statement that one is confronted with a collective guilt charge plays a major role. This delegitimized the re- education programs of the Allies after 1945, the demilitarization of Germany and the reparations for the war damage caused by Germany. In addition, it offers the opportunity to refer to Allied war crimes with exculpatory intent , to claim an alleged Jewish complicity in the Nazi regime or to relativize the Holocaust .

A German collective guilt was also rejected by the two national churches and by politicians. Federal President Theodor Heuss proposed the term “collective shame” instead; and Richard von Weizsäcker said in his important speech on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe and the Nazi tyranny , which he on May 8, 1985 before the German Bundestag held: "guilt or innocence of an entire people there is not" but at the same time called for people to accept collective responsibility for the National Socialist injustice. Weizsäcker describes this attitude as "collective liability".

Individual voices

“It is unthinkable that the majority of all Germans should be condemned on the grounds that they have committed crimes against peace. That would be tantamount to approving the concept of collective guilt, and this would logically result in mass punishment for which there is no precedent in international law and no justification in human relations. ”(From the judgment of the Allies in the Nuremberg war crimes trials against IG Farben , July 29, 1948. Note: The Germans meant all citizens of the Third Reich)

The psychologist Viktor Frankl argued against the construct of collective guilt: "There are only two races of people, the decent and the indecent."

The British-Jewish publisher Victor Gollancz turned against the concept of a German collective guilt in his 1945 article "What Buchenwald Really Means". He justified this with the fact that hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Germans were also victims of the National Socialist persecution and were even more silenced by the Nazi terror. British citizens who had done nothing to save the Jews, even though, unlike the Germans, lived in a democracy, would not be innocent either.

Benjamin Sagalowitz wrote in a travel report for the World Jewish Congress in 1950 :

The answer to the crucial question of whether there is any prospect of any real change in the behavior and position of the German people is closely linked to the problem of collective guilt; H. with Germany's attitude towards its Nazi past. A clear definition of the term “collective guilt” is essential if you want to assess the pros and cons of this question. When Jews talk about Germany's collective guilt, they mean the responsibility of the German nation as such for the crimes committed on their behalf by the Nazi regime. So it is about Germany's historical guilt as a collective political entity. [...] It is completely different to determine whether there is a “solidarity debt”, ie. That is, whether one should consider every single German guilty of the Nazi crimes - for the simple reason that they belong to the German nation. This is neither the view of the Jews nor that of the Allies. The different war crimes trials are sufficient evidence that only those convicted on the basis of personal guilt [...] are punished. Sagalowitz argued that the world was referring to the responsibility of the US, Great Britain, the Soviet Union or Israel when it came to e.g. B. about the fate of the Arab refugees from Palestine or about the division of Germany; in this way there is also a responsibility for Germany. Even Leo Baeck different political guilt of criminal guilt, he spoke of the overall responsibility of Germany.

In 1947 Ralph Giordano did not want to speak of “collective guilt”. There was a minority of Germans who followed their conscience and not the Führer. However, the majority have no right to feel relieved and benefit from their decency, especially because they still distance themselves from this minority today. Giordano saw the main guilt of the millions in their silence towards the injustice which they encountered everywhere every day, every hour . As early as 1945, the Frankfurt Rabbi Leopold Neuhaus wrote in the Frankfurter Rundschau on the anniversary of the so-called Reichskristallnacht that those who watched and allowed the destruction to happen were complicit. Beneficiaries, which were seen as complicit, also played a role in the discussion about collective guilt. Although there was often understanding and helpfulness for the Jews after the war, the will to make amends was initially lacking and in thousands of cases Germans tried to keep property that had been stolen from Jews.

Examples from religion

From the Old Testament the idea is known that a group is afflicted by misfortune because individuals have committed an offense or crime.
The accusation of the collective murder of God against the Jews had been a central component of Christian anti-Judaism since about 190 . Whether the New Testament ascribes collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus to the Jews is disputed in the debate about anti-Judaism in the New Testament .
The idea of a hereditary debt due to a so-called original sin of mankind is also widespread in Christian thought, which attaches to every person anew at birth and would be passed on through the act of procreation. This teaching was coined in the 4th century by Augustine of Hippo . In the New Testament , a collective guilt of man is justified in Paul's letter to the Romans with the text passage: “In Adam and Eve all sinned”. According to the Ten Commandments , a person's individual guilt will be pursued through the third and fourth generations of their descendants.

Example from sport

The principle of collective guilt is still practiced by the German Football Association today: "Supporters, fans and club represent a unit. The conviction ... is based on the established case law that the wrongdoing of its supporters is attributed to a club, even if it is not at fault meets…"

Take anti-Semitism as an example

The earlier, more religiously based, causes of anti-Semitism are fading into the background and are being replaced by Israel- related anti -Semitism . The Jews living in the diaspora are held to be collectively guilty of the policy of the Israeli government, especially towards the Palestinians. Israel's right to exist is also called into question.

Examples from history

Josef Stalin made citizens of German descent in the Soviet Union jointly responsible for the war with the Greater German Reich and had them deported to Siberia in a kind of clan liability; many lost their lives in the process.

The German ethnic group in Yugoslavia was declared enemies of Yugoslavia , disenfranchised and expropriated with the resolutions of the Antifascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) on November 21, 1943 and on the same date 1944 without trial and using the thesis of collective guilt .

The German ethnic group in Romania was assigned a collective guilt by the Romanian authorities appointed by the Soviet Union for “Romania's participation in the anti-Soviet war and the occupation of Romania by Nazi Germany”. Disenfranchisement, expropriation and discrimination followed; Examples are the expropriation in Romania in 1945 , the deportation of Romanian Germans to the Soviet Union and their deportation to the Bărăgan steppe .

literature

Karl Jaspers : The question of guilt. There is no statute of limitations for genocide. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1979, ISBN 3-492-00491-1 .
Norbert Frei : 1945 and we. The Third Reich in the mind of the Germans. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52954-2 .
Theodor W. Adorno : Guilt and Defense. In: Theodor W. Adorno: Sociological Writings II. GS (20 volumes), Volume 9.2, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-518-06511-4 .
Tobias Ebbrecht, Timo Reinfrank: German guilt and the troublemakers of memory. In: group open invoices (ed.): THE FINAL INSULT. The dictation against the survivors. German defense against memories and non-compensation for Nazi slave labor. Unrast, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-89771-417-5 .
Jan Friedmann, Jörg Später: British and German collective guilt debate. In: Ulrich Herbert (Ed.): Change processes in West Germany. Burden, integration, liberalization 1945–1980. Wallstein, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-89244-609-1 , pp. 53-90.

Web links

Wiktionary: collective guilt - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Collective Guilt and Collective Punishment in Jewish and Israeli Law

Individual evidence

↑ NR Branscombe, B. Doosje: Collective guilt: International perspectives. Cambridge University Press, New York 2004.
↑ Jeffrey K. Olick: In the house of the hangman: the agonies of German defeat, 1943-1949. P. 98 f. ( Footnote 12 ).
↑ Jeffrey K. Olick: In the house of the hangman: the agonies of German defeat, 1943-1949. P. 98 f. ( Footnote 12 ).
↑ A founding dilemma of the German culture of remembrance: The Gardelegen massacre on April 13, 1945 and its consequences [1] (PDF; 2.3 MB)
^ ^A ^b ^c Francis R. Nicosia , Jonathan Huener: Business and industry in Nazi Germany. P. 130 f.
^ Steven Casey: The Campaign to sell a harsh peace for Germany to the American public, 1944-1948. LSE Research Online, London 2005. (online) (Original In: History. 90 (297) 2005, pp. 62-92. Blackwell Publishing, “Indeed, in 1944 their main motive for launching a propaganda campaign was to try to put an end to the persistent American habit 'of setting the Nazis apart from the German people. " )
↑ Wolfgang Wippermann : Controversial past. Facts and controversies about National Socialism, Berlin 1998, pp. 14–15.
↑ Dieter Ehlers: Technology and morals of a conspiracy. July 20, 1944. Frankfurt am Main 1964, pp. 149-150.
^ Morris Janowitz: German reactions to nazi atrocities. In: American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 52, No. Sep. 2, 1946. (abstract at: jstor.org )
↑ Michael R. Decision: The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945. ISBN 0-7432-4454-0 , p. 258 ( “At a moment when they were trying to establish a sense of collective guilt for Hitler's horrors, they did not wish to confuse the issue by reminding the world that some Germans had risked their lives, however belatedly and for whatever reasons, to stop the Fuhrer. " )
^ Norbert Frei: German learning processes. Nazi past and succession of generations . In: Same: 1945 and us. The Third Reich in the consciousness of the Germans . dtv, Munich 2009, p. 47.
^ Norbert Frei: German learning processes. Nazi past and succession of generations . In: Same: 1945 and us. The Third Reich in the consciousness of the Germans . dtv, Munich 2009, p. 47.
^ Samuel Salzborn: Anti-Semitism in the "Alternative for Germany". In: ders. (Ed.): Anti-Semitism since 9/11. Events, debates, controversies. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2019, p. 206.
↑ Wolfgang Benz : collective guilt. In: Derselbe (Ed.): Legends, Lies, Prejudices. A dictionary on contemporary history . dtv, Munich 1992, p. 117.
↑ Frankl was a Jewish psychologist and, unlike his parents and his wife, survived Auschwitz. He was liberated from the Türkheim concentration camp in 1945 and also took 'his' former camp commandant Karl Hofmann into protection with the quoted sentence. His book … Say Yes to Life anyway (1st edition. 1946, 28th edition. 2007) became a bestseller and sold over 9 million times in America.
^ Ruth Dudley Edwards: Victor Gollancz: A Biography. Victor Gollancz, London 1987, ISBN 0-575-03175-1 , pp. 106, 108, 113.
↑ Jael Geis: To be left - "Life after" . Philo, Berlin, undated, ISBN 3-8257-0190-5 , p. 290.
↑ Jael Geis: To be left - "Life after" . P. 295.
^ Rabbi Neuhaus: In memoriam ... In: Frankfurter Rundschau. November 9, 1945.
↑ DFB sports jurisdiction Dynamo Dresden remains excluded from the DFB Cup. on: dfb.de , March 7, 2013.
↑ Anti-Semitism in Germany - current developments , Independent Expert Group on Anti-Semitism, Federal Ministry of the Interior. April 2017. Retrieved November 4, 2019.
↑ Rudolf van Hüllen : Is there such a thing as left-wing extremist anti-Semitism? In: Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Retrieved November 7, 2019 .
↑ Dieter Blumenwitz : Foreword to the legal opinion on the crimes against the Germans in Yugoslavia 1944-48. Quoted in: Oliver Bagaric: The German minority in Yugoslavia and the successor states from 1945-2005 , lecture on the occasion of the forum of the Association for German Cultural Relations Abroad : Focus Southeast Europe - German Minorities 1920-1945-2005. Dresden, October 15, 2005.
↑ Anneli Ute Gabanyi : The Beginning of the End: War, Flight, Persecution, Discrimination ( Memento from February 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Arte , July 29, 2004.

Remarks

↑ Of 40,320 people, 9,410 were of German ethnicity, the other ethnic groups concerned were predominantly Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians and Hungarians. (Source: kulturraum-banat.de , Wilhelm Weber : And above us the endless blue sky - The deportation of the Banat Swabians to the Baragan steppe. )

[1] NR Branscombe, B. Doosje: Collective guilt: International perspectives. Cambridge University Press, New York 2004.

[2] Jeffrey K. Olick: In the house of the hangman: the agonies of German defeat, 1943-1949. P. 98 f. ( Footnote 12 ).

[3] Jeffrey K. Olick: In the house of the hangman: the agonies of German defeat, 1943-1949. P. 98 f. ( Footnote 12 ).

[4] A founding dilemma of the German culture of remembrance: The Gardelegen massacre on April 13, 1945 and its consequences [1] (PDF; 2.3 MB)

[Francis_R._Nicosia_p.130,131-5] A ^b ^c Francis R. Nicosia , Jonathan Huener: Business and industry in Nazi Germany. P. 130 f.

[6] Steven Casey: The Campaign to sell a harsh peace for Germany to the American public, 1944-1948. LSE Research Online, London 2005. (online) (Original In: History. 90 (297) 2005, pp. 62-92. Blackwell Publishing, “Indeed, in 1944 their main motive for launching a propaganda campaign was to try to put an end to the persistent American habit 'of setting the Nazis apart from the German people. " )

[7] Wolfgang Wippermann : Controversial past. Facts and controversies about National Socialism, Berlin 1998, pp. 14–15.

[8] Dieter Ehlers: Technology and morals of a conspiracy. July 20, 1944. Frankfurt am Main 1964, pp. 149-150.

[janowitz1946-9] Morris Janowitz: German reactions to nazi atrocities. In: American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 52, No. Sep. 2, 1946. (abstract at: jstor.org )

[10] Michael R. Decision: The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945. ISBN 0-7432-4454-0 , p. 258 ( “At a moment when they were trying to establish a sense of collective guilt for Hitler's horrors, they did not wish to confuse the issue by reminding the world that some Germans had risked their lives, however belatedly and for whatever reasons, to stop the Fuhrer. " )

[11] Norbert Frei: German learning processes. Nazi past and succession of generations . In: Same: 1945 and us. The Third Reich in the consciousness of the Germans . dtv, Munich 2009, p. 47.

[12] Norbert Frei: German learning processes. Nazi past and succession of generations . In: Same: 1945 and us. The Third Reich in the consciousness of the Germans . dtv, Munich 2009, p. 47.

[13] Samuel Salzborn: Anti-Semitism in the "Alternative for Germany". In: ders. (Ed.): Anti-Semitism since 9/11. Events, debates, controversies. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2019, p. 206.

[14] Wolfgang Benz : collective guilt. In: Derselbe (Ed.): Legends, Lies, Prejudices. A dictionary on contemporary history . dtv, Munich 1992, p. 117.

[15] Frankl was a Jewish psychologist and, unlike his parents and his wife, survived Auschwitz. He was liberated from the Türkheim concentration camp in 1945 and also took 'his' former camp commandant Karl Hofmann into protection with the quoted sentence. His book … Say Yes to Life anyway (1st edition. 1946, 28th edition. 2007) became a bestseller and sold over 9 million times in America.

[16] Ruth Dudley Edwards: Victor Gollancz: A Biography. Victor Gollancz, London 1987, ISBN 0-575-03175-1 , pp. 106, 108, 113.

[17] Jael Geis: To be left - "Life after" . Philo, Berlin, undated, ISBN 3-8257-0190-5 , p. 290.

[18] Jael Geis: To be left - "Life after" . P. 295.

[19] Rabbi Neuhaus: In memoriam ... In: Frankfurter Rundschau. November 9, 1945.

[20] DFB sports jurisdiction Dynamo Dresden remains excluded from the DFB Cup. on: dfb.de , March 7, 2013.

[21] Anti-Semitism in Germany - current developments , Independent Expert Group on Anti-Semitism, Federal Ministry of the Interior. April 2017. Retrieved November 4, 2019.

[22] Rudolf van Hüllen : Is there such a thing as left-wing extremist anti-Semitism? In: Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Retrieved November 7, 2019 .

[23] Dieter Blumenwitz : Foreword to the legal opinion on the crimes against the Germans in Yugoslavia 1944-48. Quoted in: Oliver Bagaric: The German minority in Yugoslavia and the successor states from 1945-2005 , lecture on the occasion of the forum of the Association for German Cultural Relations Abroad : Focus Southeast Europe - German Minorities 1920-1945-2005. Dresden, October 15, 2005.

[24] Anneli Ute Gabanyi : The Beginning of the End: War, Flight, Persecution, Discrimination ( Memento from February 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Arte , July 29, 2004.

[25] Of 40,320 people, 9,410 were of German ethnicity, the other ethnic groups concerned were predominantly Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians and Hungarians. (Source: kulturraum-banat.de , Wilhelm Weber : And above us the endless blue sky - The deportation of the Banat Swabians to the Baragan steppe. )