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German collective guilt is the purported collective guilt of Germany and the German people for starting World War II and the Holocaust.

Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote an influential essay in 1945 about this concept as a psychological phenomenon, in which he asserted that the German people felt a collective guilt (Kollektivschuld) for the atrocities committed by their fellow countrymen, and so introduced the term into German intellectual discourse. Jung said collective guilt was "for psychologists a fact, and it will be one of the most important tasks of therapy to bring the Germans to recognize this guilt."

After the war, the British and US occupation forces promoted shame and guilt with a publicity campaign, which included posters depicting concentration camps with slogans such as "These Atrocities: Your Fault!" (Diese Schandtaten: Eure Schuld!).

The theologian Martin Niemöller and other churchmen accepted shared guilt in the Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis (Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt) of 1945. The philosopher and psychologist Karl Jaspers delivered lectures to students in 1946 which were published under the title The Question of German Guilt.

The question of collective guilt under dictatorial regimes is open to question, as there were no referendums or elections. However, the inability to protect the oppressed remains a matter of shame and guilt, under any dictatorial regime.

See also

• Collective responsibility, a different concept from collective guilt
• Denazification
• Hitler's Willing Executioners
• White guilt

References

1. Jeffrey K. Olick, Andrew J. Perrin (2010), Guilt and Defense, Harvard University Press, pp. 24–25, ISBN 978-0-674-03603-1
2. Jeffrey K. Olick (September 2003), "The Guilt of Nations?", Ethics & International Affairs, 17 (2): 109–117, doi:10.1111/j.1747-7093.2003.tb00443.x
3. Tracy Isaacs, Richard Vernon (2011), Accountability for Collective Wrongdoing, Cambridge University Press, pp. 196–199, ISBN 978-0-521-17611-8

• The Holocaust