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December 5, 1996
For Germans, Guilt Isn't Enough
By PETER SCHNEIDER
WASHINGTON -- Among the foreign countries that Americans know, I've noticed that my native Germany is named more often than many. When I moved to Washington this fall, I was struck by the omnipresence of things German on television.
But this distinction is no honor.
Almost all the images and stories on television draw on those 12 years when Germans perpetrated a crime the monstrous uniqueness of which only idiots question.
Most Germans I know in America have tried to act as un-German as possible. First, you avoid the vocabulary of the "Hollywood German" -- commands like "Komm her!" or "Halt!" or "Achtung!" even when your child is about to step into the street at a dangerous intersection. You avoid first names like Fritz or Hans, and if your last name is Reich, you pronounce it American-style: "Rike!" You try not to seem earnest or profound; you show some humor even if you've none to spare. You try not to be pedantic.
Above all, you attempt to become the exception to the rule -- the good German, the German struggling with his past, the German who feels guilt, the German who shuns patriotism and rejects a unified Germany. This holds true as well for many, if not the majority, of young Germans at home. Sometimes it seems that the German who tries to be the exception has become the rule.
Alas, all these heroic efforts have proved fruitless. Turn on your TV set on almost any evening in America, and on one of the many cable channels you will likely find a German. He is blond; sometimes, he is incredibly handsome. But he has these cold blue eyes, wears a brown or black uniform, clicks his heels and shouts: "Right away, Herr Kommandant!"
That's Hollywood. But this stereotype is more troublesome when the Nazi past becomes the only thing that defines today's Germany and holds its people captive.
In a recent column in The Washington Post, Richard Cohen touched on how some in the German Government apparently discriminate against Scientologists who seek civil service posts. I won't take issue with the undemocratic way in which certain German Government ministers dealt with the group: These officials were criticized in Germany, too.
But then Mr. Cohen goes further. Even as he says he does not believe that all Germans are innately evil, he brings up the idea by referring to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners."
"Goldhagen has revived the notion," Mr. Cohen writes, "that there is something indelibly spooky about Germans -- a gene in the culture that outsiders cannot detect and that gets passed from generation to generation."
Having read this, I confess I immediately wanted to have myself tested for this gene. Does every German have to fear that, no matter what we say or do, we are secretly disposed, deep down inside, to persecute minorities? And can we conclude that all non-Germans are by contrast comparatively immune to such impulses?
Mr. Goldhagen's book has unquestionable merits. Through his powerful descriptions, he made it known that hundreds of thousands of "ordinary" Germans willingly participated in the genocide. But in the process, he also reinforced a stereotype that we had almost shed: that German culture had over time thought of the Holocaust as a kind of "national project." Or to put it more directly: That long before they admitted it, most Germans were covert Nazis (and could become Nazis again).
This notion strikes me as "enlightened" prejudice, if such a thing were possible. In any case, it's completely unsubstantiated. Even if it could be substantiated, I would dispute it with all my might. If a whole civilization is responsible for genocide, it hardly makes sense to try individuals for the crimes they are personally responsible for -- the murderers and torturers are only doing what anyone would do. In contrast to his own stated intentions, Mr. Goldhagen relies on the thesis of collective guilt, which paints all cats gray and leaves little distinction between collaborators and decent people.
It may at first seem surprising that Mr. Goldhagen's book has had more success in Germany than any other country. Some may see in it a cause for hope, a sign of redemption. I find it disturbing. What does it mean that thousands of young Germans have embraced a man who says to them: Let's be blunt! When we talk about guilt, we're not talking about the SS and the Nazis, we're talking about Germans and German culture, from Luther to Thomas Mann. Are they trying to prove how un-German they are by applauding this sweeping charge?
Coming to terms with the past in this way further obscures the behavior of a group of Germans who showed during the Nazi years that they carried a very different (un-German?) gene: Let's call it the gene of humanism. In Berlin, for instance, some 10,000 families hid Jewish friends during the war. For the most part, these unsung heroes have been forgotten. Why is that?
Perhaps because these "good" Germans refute the claim, made by the Nazis and their supporters, that they couldn't resist what they called Hitler's "perfected terror apparatus." Perhaps these good Germans trouble the younger generation with the realization that, beyond any cultural genetics or "eliminationist mindset," as Mr. Goldhagen calls it, one had a choice and consequently could have behaved differently -- even under Hitler's dictatorship. It may be easier to claim that everyone was a potential killer than to honor those who were not.
For decades, many Germans played down the involvement of the "ordinary" Germans in the Holocaust. With some noble exceptions -- Willy Brandt and Richard von Weizs”cker among them -- politicians have admitted German guilt only under pressure. After Mr. Goldhagen's book, these facts can no longer be denied.
Germans will be measured by what we've learned from this history, especially in dealing with the murderous neo-Nazi assaults against minorities in Germany.
Some German intellectuals are calling and searching for a new national identity. But I'm afraid we cannot look for any lost or new identity.
We have one and Auschwitz is part of it.
But it is also true that the German identity cannot be founded on the history of the Holocaust alone and on the belief that one belongs to a people of murderers.
Germans must be permitted to believe and to state that our history is more than 12 years long and has produced more than "eliminationist anti-Semitism." There is even an urgent need to make known that in those 12 years thousands of Germans risked their lives to help Jews.
I would not expect anything good from the children of a country whose national archives offered only murderers and no heroes.
Peter Schneider is the author, most recently, of "Couplings," a novel. This article was translated from the German by Leigh Hafrey.
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company
Letters to the Editor, The New York Times
Peter Schneider puts a new spin on Daniel Goldhagen's racist
characterization of the German people as carrying a defective gene
(Op-Ed, Times, Dec. 5), but the spin does not invalidate Schneider's
acceptance of Goldhagen's disgusting underlying thesis that the German
people are a "race of murderers."
This fallacious notion is itself genocidal: German self-hate has
produced in Germany one of the highest abortion rates and the lowest
birth rates among any people on earth.
While Schneider is content to flagellate himself and his people, he
overlooks a corollary: in occupied Palestine a murderous cult of
Palestinian-haters (the Israeli settlers), practice and advocate
genocide. Baruch Goldstein's mass murder of Palestinians at prayer has
been repeatedly applauded by these settlers.
No, Mr. Schneider, it is not "idiotic" to contest the supposed
"uniqueness" of alleged German crimes. What is idiotic is for you to
overlook the crimes Jews have perpetrated against Palestinians and the
crimes the World War II Allies perpetrated against German civilians.
The resulting context makes clear that people like Goldhagen are simply
fixated--per usual--on the contretemps of the media's contemporary
"Master Race"--the "Chosen People."
The sufferings of all other peoples--including those who suffer at the
hands of the "Chosen"--don't count. This racism is more potent than
anything Hitler promoted. He didn't hide his ideology behind a human
rights front.
Michael A. Hoffman II
PO Box 849
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816
Tel.xxx-xxx-xxxx
Commentary from a Net discussion group regarding the NYT editorial:
During the week there have been several posts on the subject of Jews who
fought for Hitler, or at least, that is the way it is usually phrased.
I first became aware of this phenomenon about 20 years ago when I came across
Ernst von Salomon's memoirs, "Der Fragebogen." This past summer, I posted
some details recapitulating some things I had read over the years, including
some excerpts from "Voices of the Third Reich" which were I believe posted
here. Suffice to say that it is nothing new to me, nor should it be new to
those on this list. However, I am always interested in more details and I
compliment the young man for digging up these details.
A few comments. Some years ago, David Irving wrote a bio of Erhard Milch,
and it should be stressed that even by the time of his death (1973) Milch was
still claiming that he was in fact fathered by his uncle, and not by his
Jewish father, Milch. Whether that is true or not, that should be said.
Another point that is worth making is that Irving points out in Goebbels,
for example, that many of the judges in Berlin well into WW2 were half Jews,
because the other gaus kept sending them there.
My response here is made to the opinion piece attached in part below, which
comes out, incidentally, on the first day of Hannukah. Essentially the
opinion piece asks the same question over and over again, namely, why would a
Jew fight for Hitler?
Before answering this question, I would just say parenthetically that when I
claimed that many Jews or part Jews had fought in WW2, I was disbelieved by
some, and by others I was told that their survival was part treason and part
indication of the _corruption_ of the Third Reich. (!)
Why did they fight? Because they were Germans first, and Jews second. We
are constantly being told in fact exactly that, that Jews were loyal to their
home nations. So why should anyone be surprised, that, in a conjured war
between German and Jew, conjured, I say, because the reality was more complex
than that, a German of Jewish background would take up arms for his country
-- Germany -- rather than for "his people." This is even less of a surprise
than that Lee rode back across the Potomac to fight for Old Virginia.
The reason that people like Mr. Levin are appalled, and the reason why the
story has hitherto been ignored in the American media [probably], is because
it runs up against some sacred notions. Notions like: Nazi Germany was
committed to physically exterminating every Jew on the face of the Earth
without exception. Or the notion that the Holocaust in effect "proved" that
the Jews were "a people" who were Jews first and foremost, this last, a
particularly odd idea, insofar as it is exactly what Hitler said on the one
hand, but, on the other hand, it was the driving force to Zionism after WW2.
Final notion: that WW2 was between Hitler and everybody else. In reality,
it was a war -- rather much like other wars -- between Germany and everybody
else, but particularly against Russia and (as the Germans felt) against
Communism.
Of course, there is nothing in Mr. Rigg's revelations that "deny" the
Holocaust. But it does raise questions that will continue to be asked. For
example, if there were in fact loopholes whereby German Jews could survive,
then how committed was the Third Reich to total physical extermination?
Sufficiently so to exterminate three millions in jerry rigged gas chambers
in Poland? Sufficiently so to exterminate two millions more in gas vans and
mass shootings? In other words, the question is not whether many Jews
(preferable number, six million) died. Nor is it a question of the Third
Reich being a terrible dictatorship and ultimately responsible for this. It
is a question of why, how, context, and comparison. But we leave that for
other times.
The fact that German Jews fought, and fought well, for the Fatherland does
not surprise me at all. They did not fight for Hitler, they fought for their
country.
This is actually the kind of thing that could lead to a rapprochement. I
have known several Jews over the years who had very ambiguous feelings about
Germany. Great admiration for the culture, and a grudging, sometimes (as you
can imagine) rather covert admiration for the Wehrmacht. But now they can
know that Jews too were part of that legendary armed force.
There is a short story by Karel Capek in which a man is put on trial for his
life. He wants God to testify on his behalf. The judge refuses to hear
God's testimony. If he were to hear it, he would have to take into account
all of the factors of causation, all of the factors of necessity, all of the
mistakes that were made, but not always maliciously. In such a case, there
would be no verdict, no judgment, and no punishment. And after all, what is
the purpose of the Law anyway?
The proper function of history over time is to reconcile and bring together.
It is about accepting, but not condoning, understanding, but not excusing,
and acknowledging fundamental roots of connection and similarity. In other
words, the proper function of history is precisely the opposite of what
Goldhagen sought in his flawed but more important profoundly stupid book, and
it is precisely the opposite of the conventionalist agenda. This will be
clearer in time.
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