382 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional
scarcely capable of explanation without recourse to psychoanalysis as
a theory of the origins of a collective psychopathology.^65 In the course
of analysing the data on the transcripts Adorno came across a specific
mechanism of repression. People developed defensive reactions in pro-
portion to the degree of their moral consciousness of the crimes that
had been committed. The internal function of these reactions was to
create an equilibrium between their bad conscience and their need to
identify with Germany as a collective entity despite the Nazi past. Those
Germans who reacted defensively in this way ‘would not sympathize
with the repetition of the past. Their defensiveness is itself a sign of the
shock they had experienced, and to that extent it offers some hope.’^66
As far as the first dimension of his analysis was concerned, it con-
firmed Adorno’s hypothesis in Minima Moralia that the enormity of the
crimes produced ‘its own veil’.^67 The second dimension focused on the
question of guilt. Here Adorno pursued the justifications put forward
by those who inclined towards National Socialist views and hence were
openly unapologetic about it. Although the total denial of guilt was
relatively rare, Adorno’s analysis came across attempts to convert the
guilt problem into a private, internal matter. Furthermore, the admis-
sion of guilt could be dismissed as a contemptible form of self-pity and
worldly innocence. There was a particular tactic that Adorno decoded
as the expression of an authoritarian disposition. This was the tendency
to claim that ‘the people at the top’, the ruling clique of Nazis, should
bear the entire guilt. Since people who made use of these justifications
did not reach the point of having a bad conscience, ‘it was all the easier
for them to remain loyal to the advantages that the regime had offered
them.’^68 This went together with the rationalization that, since the indi-
vidual was helpless and impotent, it would be wrong to impute guilt
to him.
A further dimension of the analysis concerned the self-image of
Germans in the years after the war. Adorno thought that this was
notable for a certain self-stylization. According to this interpretation it
was claimed that a sick nation could not help but incur guilt precisely
because it was sick. Adorno spoke here of the ‘magical transformation’
of guilt into a neurosis that then became the alibi for one’s own political
failure as well as for a certain need to be protected. This was contrasted
with an ‘ideology of minding your own business’ that asserted that
what had happened in Germany was an internal German matter. At
the verbal level, the repudiation of guilt made use of certain claims in
mitigation. For example, the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda and its
repressive measures was frequently cited. Rationalizations such as the
threat of Soviet communism and the maltreatment of German prisoners
of war were especially prominent in the attempt to deflect guilt.
What was particularly explosive was what emerged about the survival
of elements of National Socialist ideology. Not only did some parti-
cipants mention the allegedly good sides of Nazism, its idealism and