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Only conscious or unconscious racists claim that Germans carry a hereditary taint. But all examinations and self-examinations of Germany must sooner or later lead to the legitimate questions: How did Hitler happen? How could Nazism seize a civilized country? Despite all the words expended on the subject, the phenomenon essentially remains a mystery. But part of the answer had to do with national identity. Though Hitler behaved like a nationalist possessed. Germany's sense of nationhood was always a fragile and insecure state of mind. In 1871, Bismarck belatedly forged German unity under Prussian hegemony from the anachronism of myriad principalities, but he sent Germany marching into the 20th century as little more than a feudal relic in modern dress. German society never experienced a nationalist, middleclass, democratic revolution or evolution comparable to those of France or Britain. The last and only real German revolution was Luther's Reformation.
After the World War I defeat and the Versailles Treaty, which sought to impose "war guilt" on the vanquished, Germany developed, in the words of one historian, "an overwhelming sense of communal shame"—not for causing the war, but for the old Spartan sin of losing it. Delayed nationhood, humiliation, plus economic chaos and the example of Communist methods from which the Nazis borrowed much—each is essential but none is sufficient to explain Nazism. It could not have happened but for two additional qualities that in the past at least have always seemed to be part of the German character. One is romanticism, the antirational worship of Wagnerian life and death of which Nazism represented a cancerous acceleration. The Hitler regime was romantic, even idealistic, in a perverted way; as Heinrich Heine said, "We Germans are idealists even when we hate." The other, and contradictory, quality is an alarming literal-mindedness, which made it possible even for many educated Germans to absorb and act on Nazism's pseudo science; other people have accepted crackpot theories about inferior races, but, unlike the Nazi leadership, they have not moved from the false premises to the insanely logical conclusion of systematic extermination.
Today's Germany seems more cautious than romantic, more skeptical than literal-minded. But its sense of national identity remains uncertain; in fact, there are new causes for the uncertainty.
The young of West Germany are pragmatic, slightly cynical, distrustful of slogans, emotions and religion; they believe in Gelassenheit (playing it cool). They never use the word Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle, except ironically. Compared with American youngsters, they are polite toward their elders, but they are learning to disobey and to question. German Historian Karl Kaiser, 31, a visiting lecturer at Harvard, points out that the present younger generation is the first to grow up in a genuine democracy. Toward the past, he says, they play "a strange double role": abroad, they argue that Germany must not forever be accused, but at home they do much of the accusing.