BRITAIN AND BUCHENWALD

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Sia,—Mr. Victor Gollancz begins his recent pamphlet on What Buchen- wald Really Means with the words: " This pamphlet is not, in the main, about the Buchenwald horror, but about the reaction to it." The same remark is true of this article: it is especially about Mr. Gollancz's reaction to Buchenwald. Here, from the pen of the leading Left-wing publisher in this country, we have a thesis which, if widely adopted by Left-wing opinion in Britain, will do much to set us on the road back to that old, disastrous division of outlook between Left and Right over foreign-policy which in itself was the chief reason for our vacillations and weakness before 1939.

It is natural, and perhaps inevitable, that over-statements of many men of the Right about the " collective guilt " of the whole German people for the horrors of 'the concentration camps should produce a corresponding over-statement from the Left. Party politics usually operate on this basis of polarity. But the right remedy for over-statement is not over-statement of the contrary. Mr. Gollancz does well to remind us that German concentration camps have existed since 1933 ; that until the invasion of Austria they included only " Aryan" and " non-Aryan" Germans ; and that therefore it is ludicrous to regard the whole German people as responsible for the brutalities committed in these camps. He recalls, with justifiable satisfaction, that it was he who first published in 1933 The Brown Book of the Hider Terror, which called attention to them.

.But the mere recalling of these- facts is not, of course, the main pur- pose of his pamphlet. Having established these facts, he proceeds to build up the two main threads of, his thesis. One is that the " guilty men" of the Right who held power in Britain before the war have a peculiar share in the responsibility for Hitler's crimes: the other is that the citizens of Britain bear " a heavier burden of responsibility " than the citizens of Germany for these crimes. Here is tempting ammuni- tion, indeed, for the Left prior to a General Election. But what are its implications, and where does it lead our own party-politics after this election? It is best to let Mr. Gollancz speak for himself.

In the final analysis, no democratic Government dare fly in the face of public opinion, if it is sufficiently strong and sufficiently vocal. But you " preferred " to allow your Government, year after year, to pursue a policy which actively consolidated Hitler's power. I do not wish to introduce party polemics into this pamphlet. But if anyone doubts the truth of the -words italicised . . . I will give him the titles of books and pamphlets in which the charge is proved beyond any possAility of refutation.

That is all on the first point. On the second, he adds: Your case is morally worse than that of the "ordinary " Ger- mans. . . . For you knew exactly what was happening in the con- centration camps. . . . But the Germans knew only vaguely and by ttrrified hearsay. Moreover, there was no danger for you ; whereas the slightest action would mean, for a German, the probability of torture and death. Finally, you were a member of a democracy, with all the rights and duties of a citizen ; for the Germans civil

liberty had utterly vanished. . . By accusing the ordinary English- man I put in its most extreme form the doctrine of political responsibility—of the direct responsibility of every human being for what happens to other human beings throughout the world.

Here, then, is the sleight-of-hand by which the British citizen is induced to pay threepence to learn the surprising fact that he, who has just been risking his very life and existence to free himself from the danger of annihilation by some ten or twelve million German citizens trained and equipped to dominate the world, is after all more to blame for the incidents of this tyranny than the " ordinary " German. He is encour- aged to believe, by the way, that Englishmen of Mr. Gollancz's political complexion were alone right about Hitler, and that had they (split as they were between pacifists, advocates of disarmament and opponents of all war as the mere " consequence of Imperialism ") been in power, Nazis misdemeanours would have been prevented. And he is left, finally, to draw the logical implications that, since " we " are more guilty than " they," any attempt to control Germany by force for some years to • come will presumably be a further iniquity. The elector, in short, is invited to stand on his head at the next election: and the natural revulsion at German cruelties in Europe is diverted to serve party ends.

This pamphlet is worth examining in some detail, not so much because of its possible influence as because of the way in which it exemplifies false party-division on the all-important issues of international relations. The basis of the argument is refusal to recognise certain quite clear propensities in German national spirit. There is no need to accept Lord

Vansittart's theory of the German " butcher-bird" in order to perceive that Germany did behave differently from every other country in the face of economic and political problems during the inter-war years. The phenomena of economic distress and mass unemployment occurred in every European country: fascist or semi-fascist movements arose in nearly every country to exploit these phenomena and make their bid for power. But no nation—not even Italy—so readily, utterly and per- manently prostrated itself at the feet of dictatorship as did Germany. Again, anti-Semitism and race-prejudice of many kinds were international in incidence. But whereas Mosley lost support in this country as soon as he openly attacked Jews, and only two generations ago France crippled her whole social unity rather than tolerate personal injustice to the

Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus, Nazism in Germany fed and flourished on a widespread readiness to persecute the Jews. Why have German citizens never been ready to make any similar sacrifice—or even any similar effort—to assert the cause of personal justice and civil liberty against the cause of nationalism and authority?

More to the point than speculations as to what British Governments might have done differently during the inter-war years is the simple record of what British Governments—and " ordinary citizens "—have actually done during the war years. It is not our sons who murdered the victims of Buchenwald, but it was they who freed the surviving victims: and for Mr. Gollancz to pretend that they are in any sense " more guilty " than men of the Panzer divisions and the Luftwaffe is simply perverse nonsense. To ignore the realities of national differences, however inconvenient and impermanent they may prove, is to fly into the wildest utopianism: into that very utopianism which was the curse of Left-wing flu:eight before the war. To base party polemics on the principle that every citizen is " politically " responsible for what happens anywhere is to lift all party politics into cloud-cuckoo-land. Mr. Gollancz contends at one and the same time that all mankind is responsible for Nazi enormities, and that that particular section of mankind most imme- diately concerned was least responsible. He makes no distinction between sins of omission and of commission.

It may be that the Right pays too much homage to nationalism. But if the Left refuses to recognise its realities, the future of British foreign policy is in jeopardy indeed. Whether the British Government after the General Election be of the Right or the Left, or a coalition ofitoth, its foreign policy must be based on acceptance of a few basic principles. These include the principle that the ravages carried out in Europe—not

by the Gestapo alone but by the whole armed forces of Germany— demand that compensation and security be afforded to the victims ; that a nation which has proved itself more prone to mass-hysteria, racial animosity and calculated brutality on a massive and scientific scale than any other be for the future held firmly in check ; and that the spirit of service, sacrifice and resistance to tyranny which has been born in the world from revulsion against Nazism should find material expression :n workable international organisation. None of these principles is promoted by the thesis which has been examined above. Rather would it paralyse

British policy by confused thinking, sentimentalism, and echoes of recrimination (from both sides) for pre-war follies.—Your, etc.,.

DAVID THOMSON.