Minds of men in Concentration Camps

...tionslism can become is revealed to us by the daily explosions of the McColm ick«, the Pattersons, and the Hearsts...

...The West believes that it is dangerous to disregard these principles...

...The little men were only little wheels in a great machine...

...These are only a few of similar trends towards internationalist conceptions...

...We have agreed, for instance, that the final peace settlement with Germany, Austria, and Hsly, to say nothing of the Axis satellites, must be by general agreement among Ihc Allies...

...It was sup...

...British relations with the United States have not, after all, larked confidence...

...Citizens were picked up on the streets...

...If they had been nothing mere than that, they would not have had such a tremendous effect upon t he psychology of their victims...

...Those who did not know, hsd plenty of grounds for suspicion...

...looking bark I in inclined to think that blunt publir critirism from progressive element* might have provided * warning which w "i .nim...

...Itritain is the least self-sufficient country in the world...

...Their purpose waa amply to punish or reform political op-paent* of the Nan's and to serve as a parsing to the population...

...So at Buchenwald snd Dachau a double process wu going on...

...Later came other elements from the occupied countries...

...The Comintern altered that...

...ols are not alwsys able to give lo other governments...

...And that, indeed, » a*ldly new In British policy...

...In any rate the parallel between what began to hapfien in thie retpeet efter the laet war ie uncomfortably eloie to what teem* fo be happening now...

...And what about th* German population...

...In addition to punishing opponents, iktl «ne to »'i rr as training-tchoolt fur ltmt SS guard...

...ei« was before the atomic bomb had *»er *Vn used...

...But in Soviet Russia the nationalism common to all states Is fortified by the doctrines of Communism and the class war...

...the ('zaritt daya, these Russian conceptions did not concern the outside world very much because Csaritm did not attempt to export them, in no way intervened in the affairs of western states...

...What, it the right psychological approach to Russia in order to persuade her that her security and peaceful development will tie best achieved by making some considerable concessions to the western point of view, to western democrstic principles ? Our experience with the sggressor* of the 1930'· sorely should not be ignored in trying to find an answer to thst question...

...But unlets they soon conquered this reluctsnce they would find themselves in prisoners' clothes...

...But there is the rub...

...Often acts of violence were purposely committed in public with the definite purpote of terrorizing the people...

...Any plain -?·-»km a about the tendency of Ihe three dictatorships wu condemned a* "war mongrrlng...

...Any major change in the international scene must today be by general consultation and agreement for the simple reason that, being "one world," liny vital change by one nation affects aft the others...

...Just because she is for the »oment Weak and vulnerable, she-will Jean), at any chance of security other |**« her own power...

...Did they know about what wat going.on in the camps...

...Criminals from the jails were included...

...For a whole generation her people and the personnel of her government hsve been nurtured upon certain theories concerning the outside world, namely that it is a world that it, by its social and economic structure inherently hostile to Soviet Socialist Kustia...

...Yes, the majority knew...

...But the aspect of these camps which ' is leatt understood in foreign lands it the method of (heir administration...

...There is no country in the world that has not parties pledged to follow the directives of Moscow in political doctrine as Catholics are prepared to follow the -directives of the Vatican in religious doctrine...

...First there were the war prisoners, Russians, Poles, Belgisns, French...

...The United States insists that it hat a deep concern in (heir acceptance even by a remote state like that of Argentina...

...Britain is the only great power in the world thai has formally offered complete union with another, as Churchill offered France a Solemn Act of Lnion in 1940, so that the two countries might become one...

...The •¦motives, therefore, for avoiding *»r are certainly greater in the case of Britain than in the case of any other ">untry...

...Britain will suffer Th atore than others just because she h «o densely populated and the target, Inst»e4 of being scattered over vast •ftyis painfully compact...

...The mats arrest of Jews began...

...His job in the concentration camps was his career, his only means of getting on in life...

...His leaders trained him to brutality and by so doing produced a constantly growing circle of men who shared their criminality with them and were thus forced to defend the criminal state, become slaves of the state apparatus...

...The West has by long struggle evolved conceptions of law closely related to political democracy, that is to lay, resting upon public opinion developed by discussion, free access to Ihe facts, the right to criticize governments, to organize opposition to them...

...To most Americana, in fart, tat inter setup and operation of these ggttrloui institutions Is completely un-ksswi la the earlier days the rampa were ,,-l-—-i.««-lv email...

...The SS man was usually a low and stupid creature...

...I do not "K»rd Britoin's record in the support "f the International organization of se-car'ty as a spotless one...

...While the prisoners were «ring softened the jailers were being hi niesed...

...With a lis* to subduing and occupying foreign feast, it was necessary for them toughen uat brutalize thousands of them...

...The V-l and V-l ort« bomb* alone would have done IfAUer had had another sir months, MnUiijWould have been crippled utterly...

...The real criminals were the higher-ups...

...In civil life and by honest ways be could never have gone far...

...And Ibis alters Ihe situation enormously...

...and those doctrines by th* revived nationalism...

...For the csmp di iedurs took pains to spread the news that priaoners were not merely beaten but beaten to death...

...sas, in essentials at least, self-sufficing...

...In the early days of (heir training tnany of the SS men obviously found their job distasteful...

...The agreement to have no defenses on the Canadian frontier was made when Britain had just defeated Napoleon and was by that fact the strongest power in the world...

...a sAn'V international organization today —or any international direction of policy —demands the full cooperation of Russia...

...Bet they had a supplementary pur km...

...or which might have given greater force I· formal warning* If any were given...

...But the League *f Nations got far more support from 7* IXiblic as a whole in Britain than it *· from the public in any other country...

...She has to do tail at a time when at least a fourth' ef her houses, public offices, factories, railroad stations, hospitals and schools lavs .either been utterly destroyed or badly damaged- By the narrowest pos-«ible margin she escaped a far vaster "uti action, something which would have ""•aJbior her cities the fate which befell ''¦rosijiite and Nagasaki...

...The prisoner* themselves were to a Appeasement fall to' Germany unless promptly pie-fmpted by Russia...

...Hut League membership was by no means the only evidence of internationalist trends...

...Foreigners think of them aa mere prisons where SS jailers abused, starved and killed the prisoners...

...It waa a part of their general policy...

...But "cooperation," in international affairs, involves either complete noninterference with each other's internal concerns and acceptance of differing social anil political ideologies (as was the case when the United States and France maintained quite peaceful and courteous lelations with Czarist Russia) or the acceptance by each participant of certain principles...

...steed that after a few years they would w reduced in number and in site...

...They would hold bark, hesitate to beat and kick the prisoner...

...Seta t,he numbers incarcerated were doubled or tripled...

...How fierce snd reasonless simple na...

...If they had not turned with the whole mechanism, they would themselves have been shattered...

...The condition st which we have to aim it to avoid Ihe power of one nation or group coming into conflict with another by the creation of what Wilson called a Community of Power: pooled pnv^r behind an agreed law...

...y the time the period of 1937-39 was reached the SS men had so expanded their forces and so got control of affairs list instead of being reduced the concentration csmp system was enormously ex waded...

...I, for one, am convinced lhat the government of Russia wants no war, but lhat like Ihe government, of every other great state does want security from attack, any outside interference, and ample power within her own grasp wherewith to ensure that security...

...Britain is today, after the second fforld War, liar more vulnerable than France was after the first, and has in nany respects suffered more severely, ? 1919 France had at least some pros-lect of being able to feed her popula-ion from the products'of French soil...

...The war started...

...Every nation in the world is in leaser or greater degree auspicious of foreigners, an attitude rooted in nationalism...

...Tomorrow, when the "»bot bombs carry atomic explosive, the extraction of all the great cities and most ef the population will be certain if ever War comes...

...How are w* to meet this situation...

...But Russia, quite overtly, quite frankly, refuses to accept these Western principles of free access to the fscts, free discussion of them, political opposition, free elections, rule by a public opinion able to ge't at the facts and freely discuss them...

...Yet Argentina, however dictatorial its government, could hardly threaten the United States as an European continental power that stretched from the North Sea lo Ihe Pacific could threaten Britain...

...Then begsu the third period in concentration csmp history...

...It is all too probable thai the aggreealons alike of Japan, Italy and Germany were in very con sidcrable degree encouraged In the early «ta.es by (he attitude of the friend* of peace and by large sections of the left, by their belief that to Ignore the trend of things was the best way lo avert (hexe consequence...

...But little haa been aaid ^laat their purpose and how it waa Atkrita...

...League of Nations Union, with men ¦w- Hebert Cecil, Gilbert Murray, and •mtsinent members of all the parties « its executive, was by far the most powerful organization supporting the League anywhere...

...Dachau was built to bouse some 1,500 men...

...Buchenwald was designed for 2,0(10...

...The simplest realism and honesty compel us to admit that there is a fundamental difference between Ihe Russian snd Western conception of law and right...

...that it will be impelled to continue hostile by the very nature of Ihe forces which capitalism engenders, and can never be depended upon to abandon this attitude...

...A few years later it was Canning, a British Minister, who suggested what we hsve come to kaow as the Monroe Doctrine, and offered the support of Britain to it - offered indeed to make it formally an Anglo-American Doctrine...

...How all thia is being translated into Russian - foreign policy, what Russia regards as necessary to security, w* see in the policies applied to Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia...

...Adding them to the camps gave these institution a truly already varied German population of the varied and complicated character, + + * 1 ? very few cases would it be possible to prove in court that this or that individual SS guard was guilty of some particular cruelty...

...The views as to what constitutes security are necessarily conditioned by the atmosphere in which the Soviet state has been nurtured ever since it came into existence...

...The camps were intended to spread terror, to inspire in the general population a fear that would keep them quiet...

...To prevent actual famine, she must restore/ a world trade »sieh new lies in ruirls...

...At the beginning the Kasi* hsd st tbeir disposal only a few of tsese young-ruffians sufficiently hard-rats to serve their purposes...

...If the eastern food-producing areas of Germany become separated from Ihe rest of the country, those responsible for the feeding of Germans are presented with problems of immense difficulty...

...To serve their purpose the SS needed messes, end they got them...