Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory 381homogeneous social units of between eight and sixteen participants (e.g.,
teachers, graduates, refugees, farmers, members of clubs) and their spon-
taneous statements were recorded onto tape and then transcribed – at
the time, a laborious and costly procedure. The qualitative evaluation
of the data took the form of a descriptive text analysis based on the
records of the 121 group discussions amounting to 6000 typewritten
pages. To motivate the various group discussions a ‘basic stimulus’ was
used, the so-called Colburn letter. This letter contained the fictitious
description of Germany in the postwar years by a sergeant in the oc-
cupation forces. It said, among other things, ‘Only very few people admit
openly that they were Nazis and the ones who admit it are often by no
means the worst. Only a small minority are said to be guilty. In a sense
that is true, but today there are only a few among the majority who
unequivocally distance themselves from the past.’^61
This novel method involving group discussion arose from suggestions
by Max Horkheimer, who wanted to convey the realistic and direct
expression of opinion as it emerges in such situations as in conversa-
tions between passengers in a train.^62 The train situation was to be
re-created artificially in an experimental framework. The idea was that,
thanks to the stimulus of the Colburn letter and the skilful guidance of
the group leader, the discussion would more or less spontaneously bring
to the surface the true underlying attitudes and thought patterns of the
participants.
Adorno was responsible for the most important part of the study, the
investigation of the complex of guilt and defensiveness. He could have
used a sentence from Minima Moralia as the motto for the entire study:
‘The obviousness of disaster becomes an asset to its apologists: what
everyone knows no one need say – and under cover of silence is allowed
to proceed unopposed.’^63 This thesis about the reasons for silence was
connected with the reflection entitled Pseudomenos (The Liar), which
alludes to a morbid defect of memory. Adorno surmised that the
National Socialists were protected from the exposure of their misdeeds
‘the more wildly the horror increased. The implausibility of their ac-
tions made it easy to disbelieve what nobody, for the sake of precious
peace, wanted to believe, while at the same time capitulating to it.’^64
Adorno wished to get to the bottom of this complex relationship be-
tween what the German population must have known about the daily
acts of discrimination against the Jews during the Nazi regime, the burn-
ing down of the synagogues, the acts of violence towards their property
and their ultimate deportation, and what they denied, presumably
because the horror was too great to acknowledge. As in the case of
The Authoritarian Personality, his study of the interaction of guilt and
defensiveness was based on psychoanalysis. In his introduction to the
interpretative section of the study, he wrote that the research group
‘constantly came up against subjective opinions and opinion formation
that, because they conflicted so sharply with objective reality’, were