GERMANS AND NAZIS
By DR. REINHOLD NIEBUHR'
IT does credit to British moral imagination that the corre- spondence columns of the daily and weekly Press have been filled with appeals to the public to make careful dis- tinctions between the German people and their Nazi rulers and not to visit the just condemnation for the latter upon the former. The distinction is necessary and important ; yet it is inevitable that other correspondents should find it difficult to accept such a distinction and should argue that the German people must be held responsible for the type of tyranny which they have allowed to grow up among them. There is a measure of validity in each argument.
In a day in which the forces of civilisation confront what is probably the most corrupt and corrupting tyranny in history (a nice climax for the idea of progress, which was the essential religion of the modern man) it is important to gauge the nature and quality of historical evil correctly. To do so it is necessary not only to estimate the differences and similarities between the sins and weaknesses of a tyrannical Government and those of the community which has per- mitted that tyranny to establish dominion over it ; but also to estimate the differences and similarities between the sins of that national community and our own. If we do this, we shall discover that there are no simple black-and-white dis- tinctions in history. There are similarities as well as differences between pathological egocentricity and the selfish- ness of the ordinary man ; analogously there are also simi- larities and differences between the religious racialism and nationalism of the Nazis and the nationalism of any modern nation.
If the German nation had not been spiritually, economic- ally and politically sick it would not have contracted the disease of Nazism. Yet the virulence of the disease is such that we can hardly say that the German people deserved to be stricken with it, any more than we can regard pneumonia as a " just " punishment for treating a cold carelessly. Furthermore, the spiritual debility of the German nation is different in degree rather than in kind from that which reveals itself in the life of all modern nations.
Let us proceed from the general to the specific. The Nazi tyranny is more corrupt and corrupting than any pre- vious tyranny because the cruelty of its terror is applied with all the scientific perfection which a technical civilisation makes possible ; and the pretensions of its propaganda avail themselves of all the arts of modern means of communica- tion. No tyranny in history has ever bedeviled the spiritual life of the common man as the German radio does. Even now it is questionable whether the Nazi morale will break down as quickly as some of us hope it will. Years of lying have created a spiritual state which is worse than blindness *. Dr. Niebuhr, who has been Professor of Christian Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion at Union Theological Seminary, New Y9rk, since x928, is at present delivering the Gifford Lectures in this country. and deafness ; for the poor victims of this dishonesty live not in darkness but in a world of phantasms. Tyranny has availed itself of modern " progress " to rise to truly demonic heights.
Now, the German people are not as cruel as the concen- tration camps of the Nazis ; nor are they by nature dishonest.
Nevertheless, one of the reasons they have concentration camps is because the Germans, for all their great spiritual gifts, have always been politically the most inept of modern nations ; and one form which their ineptness has taken is that they have never been aware of the dangers of irrespon- sible power. The crux of Martin Luther's political ethic lay in his fear of anarchy and his consequent willingness to sanction State-power to the point of tyranny. Here Christian pessimism generated an ethic which can hardly be distin- guished from the fruits of Machiavellian cynicism. Luther was afraid of the anarchic consequences of human sin, but had little understanding of the problem of protecting common men from the sin of the powerful. Thus the power of the State was more sacrosanct in Germany than in our Anglo-Saxon culture, long before Hegel glorified it or Hitler reduced it to an absurdity.
People with a democratic culture may well be critical of this blindness to the perils of tyranny ; but it would be wise not to forget that Thomas Hobbes was not German but English, that our democratic world is full of tendencies toward the development of irresponsible power, particularly in the field of economics, and that we have " captains " and " lords " of industry who, without knowing anything about Thomas Hobbes, heartily subscribe to his political philo- sophy. The difference between us and the Germans, and between the Germans and the Nazis, is one of degree rather than kind.
In the same way the Germans did not invent lying. All men are, in fact, liars. Truth is always coloured by interest, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously. The Marxists imagined that their discovery of this taint of rationalisation was a proof of their freedom from it. But this claim will no longer be taken seriously after we have had a chance to digest the Communist rationalisations of the Stalin-Hitler pact, and its practical sequel. Just as all individual men are liars, so also every centre of political power makes moral pretensions which the facts do not justify. There is no vantage-point of pure honesty from which we can criticise either the Germans or the Nazis. Yet is it true that German life, even before Hitler, was infected with the Nietzschean creed, that it is better to tell a resolute and conscious lie than to lie unconsciously?
Nietzsche prepared the way for Hitler ; but it would be quite wrong to equate Nietzsche's rather noble honesty with the lying propaganda which began with the lie of the Reichstag fire and now makes Mr. Winston Churchill respon- sible for the sinking of the Athenia.' The Nazi racial bigotry is a type of primitivism, leading to the most terrible cruelties. This again is a form of decay, a violent disintegration of the universalistic elements of our civilisation. But it would not have been possible to foist it upon the German people if the "voelkische ldee" had not been germinated in the philosophy of German romanticism, in the thought of Herder, Novalis, Schleier- macher and Fichte. Furthermore, when Goering spoke of the Poles in his recent speech as " dieses gemeine Volk" he was speaking as a German as much as a Nazi. In fact, one reason why Hitler chose the Polish issue as the pretext for his great adventure was that he could count on a German arrogance towards the Poles, older and wider, particularly in Army circles, than the newer Nazi creed of Aryan superiority. Here Nazi bigotry is coincident wtih German arrogance ; but German arrogance embarrassingly similar to analogous manifestations in the life of Britain and America. Witness Irish politics here and in the attitude towards Mexicans, negroes and Japanese in America.
The fact that the differences are of degree rather than kind must prevent self-righteousness. The fact that the difference in degree can be very important justifies us in condemning the final bitter fruits of racial bigotry. A word might be added about the anti-semitic aspect of this bigotry. Dr. Goebbels' jibes, when he asked why if we loved the Jews so much, we did not offer them asylum more ger.Lr- ously, must have rightly embarrassed many decent folk in the democratic nations. We would be wrong not to be embarrassed ; but we would be equally wrong not to insist that, despite the universal character of racial bigotry, we must rid the world of a culture which identifies the prin- ciple of evil with a race and which reduces that race to the most cruel homelessness.
Simple moralists are always trying to persuade us, either that we have no right to contend against a virulent form of evil because the same evil is in us in some inchoate form, or that we must contend against it on the assumption that we have " truth " and " justice " completely on our side. The pacifists made a good deal of the first idea before the war ; and we shall be tempted toward the self-righteous alterna- tive during the war. Both propositions are wrong. Wise men will not require the illusion of guiltlessness to nerve them in a struggle against evil which has become truly demonic in its proportions.
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