Shifting the Guilt

Germans call it die unbewaeltigte Vergangenheit -- the undigested past. By that, they mean the national burden of collective guilt from the Hitler years, which saw Germany start the largest war and commit the most heinous systematic crimes, including the annihilation of 6,000,000 Jews, that ever scarred the history of a civilized nation. Yet in recent years, many Germans, especially those who grew up since the war, have felt that the whole country was unjustly saddled with the burden of crimes committed by only a part of the population. As Foreign Minister Willy Brandt put it: "Twenty years is enough."

Last week the West German government refused to allow the yet unpunished Nazis to go scot free and thus continue to taint the entire German people by their presence. After a tense ten-hour debate, the Grand Coalition Cabinet of Christian Democrats and Socialists decided with only one dissenting vote, to abolish the statute of limitations on murder. Otherwise, the statute would have gone into effect on Dec. 31 and would have rendered war criminals immune to future prosecution.

Political Failure. By its action, the Cabinet hoped to transfer the guilt to the men and women who actually committed the crimes. "The main problem," explained Justice Minister Horst Ehmke, "is freeing our people from its spiritual complex." Though the Germans had failed politically in the 1930s and '40s by allowing a "crew of murderers" to gain rule of the country, Ehmke argued, political failure should not imply national complicity in the crimes of the Nazis. "But," he warned, "this process of acquitting our people can only be successful when the murderers within our people are brought to justice."

War crime trials have been going on in West Germany since 1945. In the immediate postwar period, Allied tribunals sentenced the surviving Nazi leaders to death or long prison terms. Then the responsibility for the trials passed to West German courts, which have sometimes handed down lenient jail sentences that have outraged foreign opinion. By 1968, 6,192 war criminals had been convicted in West Germany. Another 16,000 to 18,000 alleged war criminals either await trial or are under investigation. Many might have escaped prosecution altogether if the statute of limitations had been allowed to stand. In addition, there are an estimated 17,000 undetected war criminals still at large in West Germany.

No Distinction. The main debate in the Cabinet centered on the issue of who in the future should be regarded as a war criminal. Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger argued that "our job is to bring to justice the mass murderer, the beast in human form." Most of his Christian Democrat ministers favored excluding from the war crime category those Germans whose offenses were relatively small and who had only been following orders. But the Social Democrats held that it was impossible to make such a distinction and their view prevailed. In fact, the Cabinet agreed to remove the statute of limitations from all forms of violent murder, including killings committed by civilians in peacetime.

The bill will now go to the Bundesrat, the upper house, where it probably will have swift passage. In the Bundestag, there may be some opposition from the Bavarian affiliates of the Christian Democrats, one of whose ministers cast the sole nein vote in the Cabinet session. But the majority of the Bundestag seemed prepared to endorse the Grand Coalition's plan to shift the guilt in Germany more specifically upon the shoulders of those who actually committed the crimes.

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