German respondents denied knowledge of Nazi crimes to preserve collective identification

Evidence

The idea of repressed guilt should not be taken in too narrowly psychological a sense: defence mechanisms only operate to the extent that injustices one has committed are consciously seen as injustices. Hardly any of those who took part in the experiment and found themselves on the defensive were prepared to say, `It was right that they should be killed.’ Instead, it was usually a matter of making one’s own excessive identification with the collective to which one belongs consistent with knowledge of the crimes. One denies or minimizes such knowledge in order not to lose the possibility of identifying with the collective that psychologically enables countless people to overcome an unbearable sense of their own powerlessness. One can conclude from this that those who found themselves on the defensive, even where they only supported rudiments of the Nazi ideology, did not agree with any repetition of what had happened. Defensiveness itself is a sign of the shock they experienced, and therefore offers hopeful prospects. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2028

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion is striking: defensiveness — usually read as guilt or evasion — is here reconstructed as evidence of moral shock and therefore a hopeful sign. The claim that denial serves collective identification, not self-protection, resists one-line summary.
• XREF: Connects to Adorno’s later ‘collective narcissism’ in 2030 and to the broader Frankfurt School theory that psychological defence operates socially rather than individually. — connects to: Requiring members to prove non-Jewish descent manufactured felt inclusion in Nazi Germany — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 870; Nazi perpetrators escaped justice and later benefited from denial of their crimes — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3222; German Americans erased their identity to avoid persecution (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Most postwar Germans rejected shared guilt; academics and farmers were most anti-Semitic #complicates (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1887
• German Americans erased their identity to avoid persecution #exemplifies (0.75)
• Requiring members to prove non-Jewish descent manufactured felt inclusion in Nazi Germany #qualifies (0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 870
• Nazi perpetrators escaped justice and later benefited from denial of their crimes #exemplifies (0.72) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3222