German collective guilt

File:Diese Schandtaten Eure Schuldt.jpg

"These atrocities: Your fault!" — a poster showing the concentration camps to the German populace

German collective guilt is the purported collective guilt of Germany and the German people for allegedly starting World War II and the Holocaust. British white nationalist Mark Collett describes it as "one of the three main pillars of white guilt" along with the transatlantic slave trade and European colonialism.

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.

See also

• Collective responsibility, a different concept from collective guilt
• Denazification
• Great Awokening - often claimed to have been at least partially influenced by collective guilt related to the Holocaust.
• Hitler's Willing Executioners
• White guilt