THE ISSUE OF COLLECTIVE POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR A MASS WAR CRIME OF GENOCIDE
THE ISSUE OF COLLECTIVE POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR A MASS WAR CRIME OF GENOCIDE
Author(s): Enver HalilovićSubject(s): Politics, Criminal Law, Military history, Political history, Politics and law, Studies in violence and power, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010)
Published by: JU Zavod za zaštitu i korištenje kulturno-historijskog i prirodnog naslijeđa
Keywords: individual guilt; collective responsibility; denazification; degenocidacija; political responsibility; rebellious statesmen;
Summary/Abstract: Karl Jaspers opened the question of individual guilt and collective responsibility for crimes against humanity immediately after the end of the World War II. He affirmed the idea of collective political responsibility and guilt of German nation for Nazi crimes committed in his name, and has greatly contributed to the intellectual and political denazification (German Entnazifizierung) of Germany after the Second World War. The collective political responsibility is inseparable from individual responsibility and guilt of masterminds and perpetrators of the crimes. Individually and collectively, they are not mutually inconsistent, assuming that the individual is aware of itself as individuality to the extent that the collective is aware of itself as collectivity, as an individual collectivity. “We are not aware of ourselves only as individuals but also as Germans. Everyone is, when one actually is, the German people. ... The German has no other form except these individuals. Therefore, the application for transformation, for rebirth, for rejecting the defective, is the task of the nation in a form of the duty of each individual”.
Journal: Monumenta Srebrenica
- Issue Year: 7/2018
- Issue No: 7
- Page Range: 17-26
- Page Count: 10
- Language: Bosnian, English