Guilt-Edged
By SARAH GAINHAM THE discovery by the international film in- dustry of the enemy side of the Second World War has had the effect of revivifying the Interminable discussion of that war in Germany itself. The films (which have had a very mixed reception by the German public—and no wonder, since they have no contact with the realities of that time, though they claim, bewilderingly, to be semi-factual) and, still more, the foreign re- actions to the Germany 'depicted' by them are much discussed. Contrary to a widespread notion in England the Germans have not forgotten the war; they are literally obsessed by it. It is im- Possible for a German-speaking foreigner to be Informally with Germans of the war generation without the conversation turning to the Nazis, the war and Germany's consequent relations with the rest of the world. Attitudes vary as widely as the people involved; the subject is universal.
Various complexes of feeling constantly repeat themselves in these conversations. One is be- wilderment at the virulence of British hatred of Germany; it is an objective fact that one hears more viciously anti-German remarks in London than in Warsaw or Belgrade, and there is some- thing about this which is deeply depressing. Then, the Germans wonder at the lack of knowledge in Britain of what was actually happening inside Germany during the war, in spite of the enormous documentation of the period. They see a block of terrible facts—nobody denies they are facts— 'Used pejoratively as a solid area of time-and- 'event without relation to any context; totally black, without light or shade. Thus: Genghis Khan was Bad; the Spanish Inquisition was Bad; the Germans (they know that Nazis and Ger- mans are lumped together in England) are Bad.
Germans do not understand why the events in their country, of which they see themselves as the victims as well as the outside world, should be detached from the rest of recent history. They 'know, and they feel we ought to know, that the massacre of the Jews, horrible as it was, was not an isolated event, even in its own time. Only a Year or so before it began, a few hundred miles away (but still in Europe) a much greater Massacre had taken place; and it was repeated after the war was over. The massacre of Russians and other nationalities under Russian domina- tion was larger than the Jewish massacres, and :lust as irrational—apart from the historical fact that pogroms as a political weapon were in- iv ented in Russia, and taken over as a political ,Weapon by the half-baked 'theorists' of the tsiSbAP.
, 811t---it is a big but—the vast killing in Russia ls capable of rationalisation. Although one may not like the idea of politicians killing off their opponents, it is an old idea; and it is a superfi- cially reasonable explanation for the purges *Inch the mind is able, if with disgust and dis- approval, to accept as sane—even though the great majority of the victims were a-political. Killing the Jews was so clearly and obviously insane that we feel horror when we think of it; and although the purges were just as mad, no- body in England considers the men who carried them out (with the curious exception of Serov) as unfit to be called human beings. Exactly the same excuse is accepted for them as the Germans make unsuccessfully for themselves—that Stalin had them so completely under his thumb ne could even make them dance for him in public. So nowadays they get invited to tea at Windsor.
As for what happened inside Germany, there is a great deal of muddled thought on this sub- ject in England. 'Divided loyalties' is an expres- sion in English normally used about personal relationships. England's happy history prevents her people knowing the terrible pressures of divided loyalties in public life; our aggressions, with, one exception, were long ago and far away, and we successfully ignore them. In England many people regard German soldiers and sailors not high enough in rank to have had a hand in making Hitler's war but highly successful at playing 'the greatest game on earth' as in the same category of guilt as Himmler, Heydrich and Eichmann. To Germans this .seems a deli- berate over-simplification—or British hypocrisy; for they do not believe that anyone would walk out of a London dinner-party on finding that, say, a commander of the bombers at Suez is a fellow-guest.
A different German admiral from the subject of one of these bad international films is a good example of the divided loyalties of that time; and the discussion of his moral position is still going on in his own country. Admiral Canaris was Chief of Military Intelligence. He was not by sympathy a Nazi but he did not give up his job, though he hated the war, and still more the de- grading horrors that accompanied it; and knew it must fail. It is clear from his writings that this was partly because he loved his fascinating work. But he was also clear in his mind that he would be a war criminal after Hitler had lost his war. He did not hold on to his job only out of ambi- tion; he knew that if the intrigues against him succeeded a real Nazi would get the job and would happily commit horrors which Canaris tried *.o prevent—at the cost of his life in the end. If he opted out, he abandoned his staff and the whole machine to SS thugs; because he stayed in, is he guilty of the gas chambers?
No, it is not as simple as that. When a man of that quality continues to serve the criminal government of his country he is torn by guilt and responsibility; and when the conspirators of July 20 finally tortured themselves into action they acted knowing they were helping their own people (not the government, but their wives, families and the men who served with them) to a defeat more terrible than anyone in Britain has any idea of.
There was a number, not great but consider- able, of men and women who brought them- selves to act against their (im people in Germany. Nearly all of them are dead. There were not enough of them to prevent Hitler corning to power or starting his war. But that was because in a sentence the authority of the law had failed and the fabric, of society was collapsing. In similar circumstances there would not be enough of such people to stop a tyrant in Britain or America. If this thought shocks, a perusal of Richard Revere's account of McCarthy will re- store .balance; eminent Americans behaved with craven cowardice over that street-corner rowdy when they had literally nothing to fear, when the prestige of the law was intact and in time of great prosperity. And if one still says, as one does, how could such a mob as the Nazis ever gain the confidence of their countrymen? then, how to account for the success of such a man as McCarthy?
No one who has not lived under tyranny has the right to condemn Canaris, say, or Harden- berg for failure to act, or for acting too late. To put the guilt for the gas chambers on all Ger- mans is to think like a Nazi; those who planned and carried out the crimes are guilty, and anyone else is guilty only in the sense that all English citizens are guilty of Suez. Such theoretical con- cepts of responsibility just do not work in real life. The men and women who volunteered, or who did not refuse, to commit these crimes were quite simply the sort of people who could do such things—they exist to any amount every- where but the law restrains them instead of giving them power.
And what of the officials of German-Jewish communities who almost without exception co- operated with the Gestapo and SS, docilely making lists for the destruction of their own people; were they victims, or torturers? Germans or Jews? They were all four. They were human beings. The whole point about these crimes is that they were not committed by inhuman devils, but by human beings who had gone mad and were in the grip of a mad machine of their own making; just as the NKVD was mad in Russia. The roots of their mass madness lie in human nature. They lie far deeper than the comforting surface 'of accepting their own rationalisations and saying, as they said of the Jews—they are different, they are the Other.
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