Talk of Guilt: German Perceptions of Collective Guilt and Responsibility Following WWII

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Abstract

This paper examines the contested notion of German collective guilt in the immediate aftermath of World War II through a rich, newly rediscovered dataset of personal essays. Commissioned by the American Office of Military Government (OMGUS), psychiatrist Dr. David Levy used interviews and psychological assessments to categorize Germans as either Nazi sympathizers or trustworthy collaborators in building a democratic postwar Germany. Yet amid these evaluations, Levy also gathered 230 essays on topics such as collective guilt, denazification, and Germany’s future, generating a highly personal record of how Germans themselves understood—and sometimes resisted—the idea of a shared national culpability.

Drawing on these essays, we identify five thematic framings of collective guilt: some writers focused on the unity of a Volk, seeing all Germans as inevitably implicated; others rejected sweeping attributions of blame, calling instead for individualized responsibility; a third group attributed Nazism to particular cultural traits such as arrogance or political immaturity; yet another emphasized the reputational harm brought about by Hitler’s propaganda; and, finally, some essays adopted a forward-looking stance that saw Germans’ duty as one of reparation and re-education. Generational differences also emerge, with older individuals more inclined toward views of collective identity shaped by wartime trauma, and younger respondents more oriented to rebuilding for the future.

By analyzing these firsthand narratives, this paper offers a critical, empirically grounded perspective on how notions of collective guilt were formulated, disputed, and intertwined with evolving political, cultural, and moral concerns in postwar Germany.

Authors

• Ori Gilboa, University of Toronto

• Ron Levi, University of Toronto