Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt - Effects

Effects

Many Germans objected to the confession of guilt, on the ground that they had also suffered in the war, as a result of Allied wrongdoing (particularly Russian).

...the dreadful misery of 1945-1946 held the Germans back from all remorse. Because--most people believed this--the occupation troops were responsible for the misery. "They're just as inhuman as we were", was how it was put. And with that, everything was evened up.

Some Germans quickly drew comparisons to the "war guilt" clause of the Versailles Treaty, as the Declaration admitted that there was a "solidarity of guilt" among the German people for the endless suffering wrought by Germany. They feared that, once again, the victors would use such logic to impose punishment upon Germany, as Versailles had widely been viewed after the conclusion of World War I.

Furthermore, was "solidarity of guilt" a code word for "collective guilt"--the notion, advocated by some of the more hawkish Allied spokesmen, that all Germans (except the active resistance) bore all responsibility for the Nazi crimes, whether or not they had personally pulled triggers or ejected gas pellets on children? The Declaration did not expressly stipulate collective guilt, but neither did it expressly adopt the more moderate doctrine that guilt and responsibility, like all things human, were generally matters of degree.

Niesel, a former student of Karl Barth and one of the signatories of the Declaration, concluded that there was a general unwillingness by the German people to accept responsibility for the Nazi rule. As Hockenos puts it:

The righteous intermingling of self-justification and self-pity was as important a factor in creating a hostile environment for a public confession as were postwar fears of another Versailles or Allied charges of collective guilt.

One German churchman reflected on his contacts with his Swiss church comrades as those were renewed after the war; they had remained in contact even during the war, but there were boundaries still to overcome after the war's end. His reflections are revealing, both for the revelation and articulation of those boundaries and of his own post-war attitude of "helplessness" in the face of totalitarianism, his underlying premise that individual Germans could do nothing because the obstacles imposed by Nazi totalitarianism were simply too great, so the clergy had no choice but to collaborate:

Many Germans raised the practical objection that the Declaration would be interpreted by the Allies as an expression of collective guilt, which would in turn justify harsh treatment by the Allies in the postwar world. Most Protestants were willing to admit some degree of responsibility, provided that the Allies reciprocated and admitted their own wrongdoing.

Others, who saw the Declaration more in theological than in practical or political terms, recognized that confession is made before God and not before men, and that such "conditional confessions" were theologically wrong-headed and misunderstood the meaning of Christian confession. As one Protestant rather wryly noted, neither the Allies nor the World Council of Churches "are our father confessor."

Hockenos identifies three basic reasons that Germans were reluctant to confess wrongdoing:

• Many Germans had in fact supported the Nazis and were in fact unrepentant. Their racist and nationalist mentality was intact, perhaps even heightened by the defeat which triggered feelings of anger and resentment.
• The nature and extent of the Nazi barbarities was difficult to comprehend, even for some of those who participated in them. Bystanders were reluctant to take responsibility for a campaign that was, in both quantitative and moral terms, nearly incomprehensible.
• Germans were suffering also and they naturally gave priority to their own suffering.