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257:, Martin Niemöller... and Wilhelm Niesel ... needed no prodding to express lament over their own and the church's failure to speak out loudly and clearly against Nazism. Nevertheless, the Stuttgart Declaration was not simply an act of conscience. Persistent pressure by foreign church leaders for ... recognition of the ... inadequate response to Nazism played a significant role.
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Many
Germans raised the practical objection that the Declaration would be interpreted by the Allies as an expression of collective guilt, which would in turn justify harsh treatment by the Allies in the postwar world. Most Protestants were willing to admit some degree of responsibility, provided that
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One German churchman reflected on his contacts with his Swiss church comrades as those were renewed after the war; they had remained in contact even during the war, but there were boundaries still to overcome after the war's end. His reflections are revealing, both for the revelation and articulation
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Others, who saw the
Declaration more in theological than in practical or political terms, recognized that confession is made before God and not before men, and that such "conditional confessions" were theologically wrong-headed and misunderstood the meaning of Christian confession. As one Protestant
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Furthermore, was "solidarity of guilt" a code word for "collective guilt"—the notion, advocated by some of the more hawkish Allied spokesmen, that all
Germans (except the active resistance) bore all responsibility for the Nazi crimes, whether or not they had personally pulled triggers or ejected gas
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Some
Germans quickly drew comparisons to the "war guilt" clause of the Versailles Treaty, as the Declaration admitted that there was a "solidarity of guilt" among the German people for the endless suffering wrought by Germany. They feared that, once again, the victors would use such logic to impose
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of their churches for Nazi
Germany. One prepared a draft laying blame on "our fellow citizens" in Germany, thus implicitly denying or diffusing the responsibility of the church. This language was stricken from the draft, and Niemoller insisted on the language "Through us infinite wrong was brought
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of German interests; one signatory asked the foreign churchmen to refrain from publishing the
Declaration, entirely contrary to the purpose of obtaining it in the first place. Various interpretations and arguments were raised by some members the EKD Council to try to deflect the criticisms raised
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Through us infinite wrong was brought over many peoples and countries. That which we often testified to in our communities, we express now in the name of the whole church: We did fight for long years in the name of Jesus Christ against the mentality that found its awful expression in the
National
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The accusation was that we had survived.... for them that was treachery. They couldn't understand that, under a totalitarian system, one has to make compromises... one has to have a certain flexibility... they couldn't understand any of this. ... I was elected by the Swiss delegates to the
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to reestablish ties with the German
Protestant Church, based on a "relationship of trust." The representatives believed that any relationship would fall apart in the absence of a statement by the German churchmen, due to the hatred felt in their home countries toward Germany in 1945.
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In letter after letter the same cry of resentment is heard. To most
Germans the suffering itself was punishment enough for whatever share of guilt Germans bore....since the Allies also committed war crimes, this fact should somehow lessen the gravity of the crimes committed by
306:...the dreadful misery of 1945-1946 held the Germans back from all remorse. Because--most people believed this--the occupation troops were responsible for the misery. "They're just as inhuman as we were", was how it was put. And with that, everything was evened up.
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Of the eleven signatories, only Niemöller chose to publicize it: "For the next two years", he claimed, "I did nothing but preach the
Declaration to people." This bold approach, along with his internment at Dachau, helped create his controversial reputation.
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The nature and extent of the Nazi barbarities was difficult to comprehend, even for some of those who participated in them. Bystanders were reluctant to take responsibility for a campaign that was, in both quantitative and moral terms, nearly
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pellets on children? The Declaration did not expressly stipulate collective guilt, but neither did it expressly adopt the more moderate doctrine that guilt and responsibility, like all things human, were generally matters of degree.
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The righteous intermingling of self-justification and self-pity was as important a factor in creating a hostile environment for a public confession as were postwar fears of another Versailles or Allied charges of collective
65:, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Knowledge.
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of those boundaries and of his own post-war attitude of "helplessness" in the face of totalitarianism, his underlying premise that individual Germans could do nothing because the obstacles imposed by Nazi
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Socialist regime of violence; but we accuse ourselves for not standing to our beliefs more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyously, and for not loving more ardently.
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Many Germans had in fact supported the Nazis and were in fact unrepentant. Their racist and nationalist mentality was intact, perhaps even heightened by the defeat which triggered feelings of anger and
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achieved some administrative unity, critics still found a lack of contrition in the church. Niemoller stated, with some frustration, that "you should have seen this self-satisfied church at Treysa."
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and one of the signatories of the Declaration, concluded that there was a general unwillingness by the German people to accept responsibility for the Nazi rule. As Hockenos puts it:
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The Declaration makes no mention of any particular atrocities committed during the Third Reich or of the church's support for Hitler during the early years of the regime.
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Many Germans objected to the confession of guilt, on the ground that they had also suffered in the war, as a result of Allied wrongdoing (particularly Soviet).
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There is little evidence that the German Protestant church repented Germany's war of aggression or the cruelties visited upon other peoples and countries.
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Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
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The Declaration was prepared in response to church representatives from the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Britain and the US who came to
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It cannot be said that the attitude of the church toward its political responsibility is as yet satisfactory, let alone clear.—Stuart Herman
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that the Declaration was merely an internal church document that did not attempt to address political guilt for the war;
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Nazism, Liberalism, & Christianity: Protestant social thought in Germany & Great Britain, 1925-1937
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Other Americans were perhaps more diplomatic in their statements but the meaning was no doubt the same:
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governing council.... me, as a German!"... That moved me greatly... the bridge was truly there again.
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punishment upon Germany, as Versailles had widely been viewed after the conclusion of World War I.
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American representatives reporting from the Treysa conference voiced views similar to Niemoller.
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But the eleven members of the council had differing ideas on the
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For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler
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A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past
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the Allies reciprocated and admitted their own wrongdoing.
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The Declaration was viewed by many Germans as a further
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that only the German leadership had to be ashamed; or
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Denazification § Responsibility and collective guilt
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One of the initiators of the declaration was pastor
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459:. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp.
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493:. Oxford University Press US. pp. 208–220.
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