Sprache:
Englisch
Erscheinungsjahr:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
German History
Angaben zur Quelle:
25,2 (2007) 219-238
Schlagwort(e):
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
Kurzfassung:
Reflects on three ways in which Germans expressed feelings of moral guilt for Nazism and the Holocaust in the immediate postwar period. Examines three postwar discourses which ostensibly aimed at admission of guilt: the writings and interrogations of the Nazi war criminal Hans Frank, the memoirs of Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge (written in 1946-47, but first published in 2002), and Karl Jaspers' "Die Schuldfrage" (1945-46). Frank, with his contradictory statements, seems to be using guilt as a tool to represent himself as a Catholic martyr. What Junge calls feelings of guilt are in fact feelings of self-pity, centered around her fate as an assistant to a bad cause. Jaspers' position regarding German guilt is incoherent. Argues that all these discourses echo what might be called a form of "Nazi morality". Feelings of shame, rather than guilt, are revealed in Frank's and Junge's discourses. An excessively broad understanding of guilt in Jaspers' work promotes the replacement of moral analysis by Germans with self-justifying emotionality.
DOI:
10.1177/0266355406075715
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink