LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[In view of the paper shortage it is essential that letters on these pages should be brief. We are anxious not to reduce the number of letters, but unless they are shorter they must be fewer. Writers are urged to study the art of compression.—Ed., " The Spectator"'
" BLACK RECORD "
Sta,—It is only after long and careful consideration that I, as a German, a Prussian even, venture to take part in the discussion about Sir Robert Vansittart's Black Record. I am neither a politician, nor a historian or diplomat, but a simple and insignificant schoolmaster. It has been, and still is, my difficult and responsible job to teach German—language, literature, history and mentality—to the youth of this country. I have always attempted to present things as they are, irrespective of my personal feelings. The very day you published Miss E. Amy Buller's long letter, The Times reported Hitler's latest speech. " . . A British Lord has called upon Italians to cease from following the Duce and to follow his Lordship instead. Another had addressed a similar appeal to the German people. To this it should be • answered that the British should not have been sleeping so long. . . ." It is noteworthy that the Fillirer did not sneer at Sir Robert's broadcasts, that he did not think he would get propaganda-value out of them, as suggested by Miss Buller, but that on the contrary he poured ridicule on the people who have been trying to appeal to the " decent Germans."
The reason is simple. The Germans themselves have never denied their historical love for war and aggression. They have never taken offence at great foreign historians, such as Professors Bainville or Hearnshaw, who said as completely unbiased scholars exactly the same as Sir Robert did, only before him and in a less popular and more elaborated way. Their great national heroes before Hitler were people like Treitschke, Moltke, Wilke. " War is an integral part of God's universe, developing man's noblest attributes," wrote Moltke. " The condemnation of war is immoral," taught Treitschke. " War is a divine institution and a work of love " exclaimed Wilke. These theories had a great popular following long before Adolf Hitler was born.
" What about the great and decent Germans, such as Goethe, Schopenhauer, Holderlin, Heine, and so forth? " will ask those who refuse to indict a nation wholesale, and who usually base their refusal more on dangerous sentimental reasons than on established facts. Indeed, what about them? What did they think about their own country? They are certainly, it will be admitted, more qualified to judge Germany and the Germans than Miss Buller, Lady Astor, or even Sir Robert himself. Heine's opinion of the Germans is too well known to be mentioned. Goethe made few remarks about them, but these were plain and unambiguous. " It makes me most miserable to think of the German people," he says in 1813 to the historian Luden. " They are valuable as individuals, but hopeless as a whole! To compare the German people with other nations gives me most painful feelings which I try to overcome in any possible way." Schopenhauer summarised his feelings in Gedanken and Fragmente. " Foreseeing my death, I make this confession, that I despise the German nation because of its infinite stupidity, and that I blush to belong to it." Holderlin, the great poet, does not think much different. He says in Hyperion: It is a hard word, and yet I have to say it because it is the truth: I cannot imagine any more mutilated (zerrissen) nation than the German. One can see labourers, but no human beings ; one can see scholars, but no human beings ; priests, but no human beings ; masters, servants, young and mature people—but never any human beings! " (I translated " Mensch" by " human being.") Or take even the Nazis' great thinker and philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. I shall not attempt to investigate here whether his teaching or the perversion of his teaching is at the bottom of the Nazi mentality. What concerns us here is what the man whom the Nazis have chosen to make their leading intellect thought about the Germans and Germany. " It is even part of my ambition to be considered as essentially a despiser of Germans. I expressed my suspicions of the German character even at the age of six and twenty. To my mind the Germans are impossible. If I try to think of the kind of man who is opposed to me in all my instincts, my mental image takes the form of a German." (Ecce Homo, Vol. 17. page 128 of the English edition of Nietzsche's works.) Space does not allow me to be more elaborate. But I want to safe- guard myself against the reproach of having taken a few quotations at random out of the context. I hope to publish shortly a book on " Great Germans on Germany." But even before its publication I am prepared to demonstrate to anybody interested, by a collection of over 3,000 quotations, that these and other " great Germans " always thought the same, never varied their opinion about their country and their countrymen.
There are, of course, many " decent Germans " left inside and outside Germany. They are the people who continue to fight for Goethe and Schopenhauer's ideals, to whom the Bible was and is a mightier book than Mein Kampf, to whom religion and philosophy means more than nationalism and socialism. I count myself among this group. But we always realised, what people in England have not yet, that we are in a hopeless minority. We have looked for a long,
long time to the great democracies that they might help us to bring about the real German reformation, for the sake of peace and humanity. We were often bitterly disappointed in the past when these democracies did not see the evil forces inside Germany which we tried to overcome, as Goethe and others did over a century ago. Some of us left Germany in the hope to fight more successfully from outside. Others remained. These latter have been suffering per. secution and danger for the last eight years—but they never gave up hope. They continue to be our greatest and most potential allies within the territory of the enemy. It is to them that we should direct our propaganda first of all. We should encourage them to continue their lonely, gigantic and heroic struggle against an over- whelming majority. Nothing will encourage them more than the fact that the truth, bitter as it may be, is beginning to be understood abroad. It is for this reason that I, and many of my German friends here, consider Sir Robert Vansittart's broadcasts as the best propa- ganda yet delivered to Germany. It is for this reason that Hitler, who after all knows the German people at least as well as Miss Buller, did not mention Sir Robert's broadcasts, but ridiculed Miss Buller and many similar thinking people, who base their hope of a better future on a German nation of which the " decent Germans " (of which I only mentioned a very few—but I could continue the catalogue by many others) knew only too well that, so far, it has never existed.—
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