Word: fitzgibbon
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Count Me Out. In 1945 there was an Allied consensus-which no longer exists-on the doctrine of collective guilt, that all Germans shared the blame not only for the war but for Nazi atrocities as well. Like the denazification program itself, FitzGibbon starts from that consensus, and with the feeling that at the time "it would not have been possible, either psychologically or politically, simply to ignore the monstrous crimes committed in the name of the Third Reich." How just or justified the Allied judgment was seems to FitzGibbon far less clear. "Theologically," he observes, " 'collective guilt...
...FitzGibbon accepts as sound the plebiscites that gave Hitler up to 99% Ja. But if all Germans were guilty, he seems to wonder, why should countless individuals be singled out for punishment? If Eichmann, why not Everyman...
Such absolutist considerations had little to do with the actual proceedings against the Nazis, both for war crimes and denazification in general. These were, as FitzGibbon notes, much tainted by expediency and confusion. In practical terms, too, their results have been mixed. Ironically, some of the criminals of Auschwitz got off "extremely lightly" because the rules of evidence, which the Nazis had scrapped, had been reimposed in the name of justice by the Allies. Most Nazis were soon issued their Persilscheine ("whitewash slips," a name derived from a brand of soap powder). Modern Germany is run by the Persils...
Reprisals and Regicides. Has our age been harsher and more painstaking in its corrective reprisals than others that have seen fanatically fought wars and revolutions?' At the level of immediate outrage and intent, yes; in ultimate results, no. Taking a long view, FitzGibbon compares the performance of the Allied occupying powers with those of the English after the Stuart Restoration, Americans after Appomattox, and the European victors of Waterloo. In each case national character and historical tradition shaped policy. In 1660 the English Crown granted general amnesty, except for the clergymen, to all but a few of the Cromwellian...
...debacle of Hitler's Reich and the Allied mopping-up operation can make for depressing reading. Unhappily. FitzGibbon's book will probably find few readers from the one group in the U.S. that could profit most from its perspectives-the more violent and mostly youthful would-be revolutionaries who fail to see that indulging in millennial fantasies of total cauterizing power is likely to be followed by immediate realities of sheer hell...