THE HYPOCRISY OF EMIL LUDWIG

...in 1931 he raised hell in- German papers because the German Ambassador in Home did not wine and dine him in the grand manner as a great representative of German literature...

...With Ludwig one has always the feeling that he does not hate the Germans >o much for their atrocities as for their reviews of his books...

...The task was to sell the founder of Fascism to the German "Left," which favored revision of Versailles...

...In a book about the outbreak of World War I, entitled July '14 (1929), he wrote: "The sum of guilt was in the cabinets, the sum of innocence in the streets of Europe...

...In his patriotic indignation he saw the victorious Allies as "vengeful Judges with cold eyes smash a terrible verdict upon sixty million gniltless people, to make even their children and their children's children suffer in Old Gospel fashion, cruelly...

...Influence on tho pubtle mind...

...In m book about the Kaiser, published in 1920, he, the former monarchist, dls* cussing German politics, "tried to draw a line of separation between the old and the new regime, that is, to put the (Continued «n Page Thirteen) tome on the system" (ss different from $4 .people...

...With an indignation worthy of Hitler, he complained that there were not even 500 courageous officers "to slap the face of the rebellious common man, This failure of a caste which had enadherent of the republic out of me,'1 He bowed to, success...

...He states that be himself is free of such material interests which possibly might influence his rttitude...

...WRITERS and WRITING THE NEW LEADER LITERARY SECTION Portrait in Vitriol The Hypocrisy of EMIL LUDWIG By Konrad Heiden EMIL LUDWIG is notable among those who assert the collective guilt of the German people...

...some fled to neutral countries...

...For what gives Ludwig the rare courage to accuse those who did nothing but follow his "loud-mouthed advice...

...This was the exact opposite of the truth...

...He moved aerosa tha German war theatre with tha liberty that only a very trusted person enjoys...

...From the anti-militarist Ber...

...When they conquered half of Europe in 1940, Ludwig felt compelled to abandon for several years his new fatherland and to let the Swiss shift for themselves...

...After the capture of Rome, there was found in the library of Mussolini a book by Ludwig, dedicated by the author "to tho Dure, in admiration...

...Kilimandjaro...

...cried Ludwig...

...not ordering it early enough...

...So firmly did he believe—or at least professed so—in the Rousseauian goodness uf the people that even the Government of the Kaiser, because closer to the people than others, must be less guilty than they: "The less control a government had to fear, the heavier is its historical responsibility...

...He assures us: "Never in my life did I get more fun out of work...

...Meanwhile pacifism and anti-militarism were by no means dead in Germany, Ludwig's own paper, Berliner Tageblatt, managed to remain fairly decent, and once an editorial note corrected one of Ludwig's overzeaious Teutonic outbursts...

...Did England really intervene for poor little Belgium...

...he quotes such reviews ni proof ot German Hastiness...

...His latest book Der Fuehrer is generally accepted as the most authoritative volume yet written on the late Nasi dictator...

...But whatever he pretends tq think today about tha war guilt of/ the German people, he cannot have forgotten that in 1914 he thought this: "Simple, noble, bold,, ethical in the highest degree appears to me the motive'' that drove this steady people into such* incredible excitement" Whether he ever believed his own words, he cannot have believec them both In 1914 and in 1948...

...He would choke If he could not drop a hint (in the preface to The Moral Conquest) that the well-known authors who share his views store them from hlmj ( although it hardly could have been a bargain to snatch from his treaiuro A arguments gems like these: that German slave .mentality cornea out when they call each other "Herf," and that out of demonic state idolatry even their doormen wear uniforms...

...Is there any horror that can prevent us from hailing without reverent feelings the hour of our genuine test...

...1, Sept 6, Sept...

...But he wrote things in similar vein much later...

...2, Aug...

...And he told his readers that Germany had been attacked by "the black, debased Russian who had no right to wear the honorable name of European, the scheming, hesitating Briton and the Balkanese in the southeast who throws bombs, assassinates and betrays...

...Ludwig was a German chauvinist, a German war propagandist, an admirer of Bismarck, a literary defender of tha Kaiser, a voluntary drum-beater for Mussolini, a bitter critic of the Treaty of Versailles...

...No greater sacrifice was involved than giving up his jobs with German newspapers...

...Only the hope that this advice may have been forgotten...

...If he appears bitter and uncompromising in his judgments here on Emil Ludwig it is because he himself has been so loyal to the ideal of integrity...

...did his best to prevent the outcome...

...He praised the Government* of the Kaiser ("this prince whose love of peace is above any doubt") that it had thought of such a clever trick as this Russian treachery, to arouse the people to war frenzy...

...London came a long way after...

...A patronizing benevolence for the common man, whose face somebody had forgotten to slap in 1918, now made from time to time an erratic appearance in his- writings...

...Everywhere the lower classes feared war and fought against it until the eleventh hour...

...For this reason, while exact calculations ot relative responsibility are impossible, one can say that Vienna and Petersburg stand first, Berlin and Paris, their seconds, follow them, although at very different interval...

...And if, as history certainly will show, this hate errs ip the object, it does not err in the origin...

...Before the defeat of Germany, and as a Swiss citizen, he wrote, "the Nazis cannot rob me...

...The guiltlessness of the German people became one of his pet themes...

...He finds this guilt (a pre-Hitler Hitlerism) in the history of the Germans, their literature, their science, their way of life, public and private...

...One had been "intoxicated by internationalism,-* had been "in danger of losing those national instincts which fortunately separata what in vain one would try to unite...

...Here it is again: the complete innocence of the German people...

...One wonders what might have become of Loilwig if he had not been born with the name Cohn, or it Adolf Hitler ha^T not been ai.ti-Semitic...

...Some of the pacifists moved within the rather broad limits of 1...

...Roth books appeared approximately at the same time and, in certain ways, followed the same line of reasoning, it said, in the form given to it by Ludwig: If the Kaiser had only come to an understanding with England about a smaller German Navy, "the English in 1914 would not have decided against us, the war would have been avoided or—"audible sigh—"won...

...His were front-page stories...

...In his writings of this time, the peace of Versailles was of course a "brutal and stupid treaty," a "peace of power,' and the Paris Peace Conference "the last convention of World Imperialism...

...And it may be sold in his favor that ho has no talent for scheming and plotting...

...It is a lie that one single people "as such wanted war or wants it today...

...He confessed that in his eyes democracy was on its >ay out...

...For this is the story of a man who never gave up his comfort for the sake of his convictions, but who accuses others because they did not die for them...

...He described how only the news that Russia, while talking peace, was secretly preparing for attack, turned the people's temper—"thank God, this cue came...

...All this was done when there was no Gestapo to prevent hi in from warning the world...

...Why should we be afraid to state this...

...purely and completely patriotic" In the best tradition of Wagnerian todeeluel he hailed the coming bath of steel...

...That a man who played such an eminent part among his people really believes ) cjuld stand aloof from his deeds as if they were not his own is a phenomenon as puzzling in its way as the phenomenon of the German character...

...liner Tageblatt he switched in 1916 to the Vosa'isohe Zeitung, then a mouthpiece of the all-out war party...

...Ludwig Discovers The German People ToDAY he puts on a show by parroting in his toothless style the now fashionable radical sneers at the weakness of the German revolution and the Weimar Republic...

...Ludwig Hellud World Vlar I HE was then, at tho age of 84,' not Just one German in minions, but one of the thousand leading men In his nation, perhaps even among the upper hundred as measured by...

...No SS hangman but at the worst a city editor was there to frighten him into such martial outbursts...

...It was therefore rather with understanding and secret admiration that he revealed in an article the Machiavellian ways of the British ruling caste and told the story of how Winston Churchill kindled World War I to save his career...

...gality, others underground...

...Heldon's own record is distinguished by bis early, long, and unbroken struggle against totalitarianism and in behalf of democratic values...

...In the wake of the German armies and in the company of German officers he traveled through Europe and parts, of Asia, always briefed as a reporter for the Berliner Tageblatt, He praised the efficiency of German war propaganda in Holland and cursed the Dutch fatheads whoi wanted to live in peace instead .of admiring Germany in her martial greatness...

...His exact word's were that the trick "was not only politically wise but very wonderful in a human sense...

...Thic German colonial explorer had been swept out of his career by public indignation in Germany after his cruelties against African natives had been exposed...

...To change,'his altitudes, his opinions, if necessary his whole personality, is to him a spontaneous act of art...

...certainly shame about what has happened...

...This book about the Kaiser would have been the place to tell the German public a few truths about German atrocities in World War I which he denounced so vigorously later...

...Is it really so important, I asked myself, that a people has a little more or less liberty...

...The famous, Independent foreigner, who of his own free will offered his pen to the tyrant, certainly had nothing on the meek, cowed subject of Hitler who, tied by hands and feet, found if" wise to keep his mouth shut...

...Immensely proud of his vast knowledge, profound judgments and superior ethics, Ludwig gathered all the black "facts" he could think of in a booklet, The Moral Conquest of Germany, which, as he asserts, "offers a case for the guilt of the German nation...

...Yes, he brings up the German submarine warfare but only to blame the Kaiser fo...

...Ludwig interviewed the dictator and published MutsolinCt Talkt With Emit Ludwig...

...He was a foreign correspondent, a roving reporter and editorial writer for the Berliner Tageblatt, foremost German newspaper of that epoch...

...In the late 1920's he seems to have played with the idea of becoming a member of the German Reichstag...

...I hate it, that Slavic soul...

...To expose the mentality of the German masses, Ludwig cites a lot of "facts" which are distorted, falsified, or untrue, and reiterates the well-worn thesis that in three generations (1870 to 1039) Germany has waged three wars of aggression...

...In this book he praised the sawdust Caesar as a "great statesman," who, he said, sincerely „wanted peace...

...ho praised Fascism because of his "grandiose achievements" and because 'this movement has done great things f'pr Italy...

...BUT to be just: among his personal motives financial reasons arc probably not supreme...

...Ludwig once was one'of the most widely read German authors, bl* following immense...

...Ludwig could bars done the same more easily than others...

...It seems that the war of 1914 gave him the opportunity for a wonderful performance of Intellectual breast-beating In the grand style...

...This certainly must have been hard for him, and indeed he left his American exile the very minute ,the war was over...

...But Ludwig only made fun of the decent Germans, "the German missionaries^ and the papers who could not bear the idea that some thieving Negro had been hung in' the shadow of Mt...

...The subject is not mentioned once in the book, although it deals with the war at length...

...And one would simply like to ask: What did he, as a German, do against the German evil, during these thirty years while studying it...

...added was, in his handwriting, a line by Goethe: "I find pleasure in conversing with the powerful, with the tyrants...

...But in 1870 not Germany but France Was the aggressor, and in 1939 the whole German people was unmistakably against Hitler's war of aggression (see B*rKn Diary, by William L. Shirer: ". . . everybody against the war . . . population dead against JO...

...This outcome must give him feelings of various kinds: bitter grief about what is today, hope perhaps for the future, despite everything...

...Let this be a comfort to those honest souls Who don't fool themselves that as Germans under Gestapo rule, they necessarily would have been heroes...

...9, Sept...

...But Ludwig claims a special authority because ha "msde a study of the Germans for thirty years," which is only his way of admitting, with slightly reddened face, that he has been a German himself for the greater part of his life...

...Like others, he says that Hitler was nothing new in German history and that the Germans have always been barbarians...

...WHETHER Ludwig really wished to live dangerously or whether a valiant knight was only happily howling with the wolves—there was not much forca needed to make him do it...

...and "that this line of adoration has been obliterated in Versailles and after la in my eyes the de'tjlife' mistake of the laat decade," But hi nade also a point that he had cleared the Kaiser from the unjust charge of baring been*a second King Attila who wanted, to dominate the world...

...But Ludwig was not such a fool as to antagonize the German i public...

...Only this cue made the crowd wild and threw it into that exalted mood...

...land and could have become a Swiss citizen—he says so himself in his auto, biography...

...Now, thank God, there was a war to take care of all this: "In the sense of a historic development it was necessary that it came...

...That he Is Incensed at tho Germans for their reviews of his books Is not just a gag...

...He had flowery metaphors to denounce the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923: "In our city halls vengeful governors rule with threatening expressions on their faces, and the neck of the free-born nifner is bowed under a slave treaty which he signed so that at least he may live...

...it is in itself a genuine and therefore legitimate sentiment...

...From any approach, he just doesn't fit into the pose which he assumes: that of a moral accuser...

...Thirty years later he had the nerve to write: "The decent minority found itself overpowered by the loud-mouthed advice of the spiritual leaders.' All the phrases quoted here and in the following paragraphs are from Ludwig's articles in the Berliner Tageblatt from Aug...

...few writers had such a big audience...

...Only mean people would say that he did for the sake of his safety what he had not done for his cinvictions...

...In his bubble-bsth style: "The conceptions of democracy and parliamentarism began to become foggy, mixed forms came to the foreground, political life In the > traditional forms became empty, men of importance were lacking/ At the same time, I saw grandiose •chlevements of the material kind In Moscow and Rome, {,»., I recognized the constructive aide of these two dicta* torahlpe...

...The book about Wilbehn II had a bigger sale than Mein h'ampf until 1931...

...In no country had the man at the engine, in the workshop," or at the plow, any desire to break the pence or any interest in doing so...

...There is in Itself nothing new in this pulp magazine historiography...

...A pretext for teenagers...

...He interviewed kings and other leaders, sent reports to the...

...The author made fun of the "severe Socialists" and "psrty-line men" Who called him a.traitor...

...I acted my parts so seriously," he tells us in his autobiography, "that as correspondent from Paris I slightly attacked the man in London, then as man in London struck back and became particularly bitter when a real London paper contradicted me...

...In 1918 the success of the German revolution came as an unpleasant surprise to him: "Instead of being happy, I was terrified," says he in his autobiography, regretting the lack of resistance to the revolt...

...He deserted the ruling caste only after it had surrendered: "Only this turned my mind completely...

...wrote, book after book to glorify the heroes of the German Navy...

...or could it have been a draft board that expected the exempted young hero to do something in his line for the German war effort...

...no, Churchill and his colleagues Asquith and Grey were threatened by a cabinet crisis by which they would have been thrown out of power, and so "they found that great old outlet and started a war to escape chaos...

...Praise for Mussolini and Stalin THEREFORE, when Benito Mussolini in the early 19.10's started his diplomatic campaign to destroy this treaty, Ludwig was at hand again...

...When the Nazis cams to power in 1033, they robbed Ludwig of the German book market, i.e., approximately of half of his income...

...He denounced Nazi imperialism as he denounced all varieties of German Imperialism before It...

...But rhortly before Hitler came to power be saw the light, dropped «pll this German stuff and became a Swiss citizen...

...But it would be too much to expect this from Emil Ludwig...

...While Ludwig was publishing his books in honor of the Kaiser's admirals and wrote news stories to the effect that America's entry into the war was nothing to be afraid of, unknown German sailors started their first abortive mutiny and were beheaded...

...29, Sept...

...Let's be frarjk^ One could forgive Ludwig a lot /Of errjrs and changes of mind if^thoy came out of an outraged Jewish'soul, bunuig with grief and hatred/for German atrocities against Jews...

...For years he had had a house in Switzer...

...As a newspaperman in the early 1920's, Ludwig used to invent "authentic" news stories, written in Berlin but dated under several assumed names, from London and Paris...

...Socialist and pacifist leaders—Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Froeiicb, Wilhelm Dittmann, Kurt Eisner, and many others—went to jail...

...23, 1914...

...Race hatred was indeed all that yet had been missing in this picture of servile emotion, and in this special case there was some real feeling behind it...

...Nobly he declared that he would never desert the poor wretches...

...As a rule, any person who ever bad a part, large or small, in the public life of Germany—and this means you if you had lived there, and me since 1 did— will not dodge his share of responsibility, though he may think hi...

...But'when he was on the spot and things happened around him, Ludwig "secretly praised the Prussian moderation" of the revolution in Berlin, and wrote a protest against the demand that the Kalaer should be given up as a war criminal to the Allies...

...He insisted, again and again, that "Germany never wanted nor, from a political standpoint, started this war...

...Ludwig had joined the Protestant Church some years before and now probably considered himself a member of a Nietzschean master race of old European stock...

...It was just the time.when this paper came out for unlimited submarine warfare, scornfully rejected President Wilson's suggestions for a peace of reconciliation, and insisted on a prolonged war until decisive German victory...

...Germany had grown too soft, people "had begun to indulge in a refinement that threatened to become weakness, in a dissipation threatening to become degeneration...

...tha hour permits nobody to be anything hut...

...The good old device to confound an author by his earlier writings is certainly justified here...

...It is the pitiful conceit of the man that explains so many of his antics...

...Whatever he says sounds false because he does not l.elong> at all to the cause for which he pretends to stand...

...He adds that in each case the German people supported these wars "with enthusiasm...

...And as for the undeniable German war frensy of 1914 (mora or less shared by other belligerents), Ludwig should blush in silence...

...He has fought for political rights and civil liberties regardless of national contexts and cheap personal considerations...

...Anyway, Ludwig bravely delivered a spiteful tirade about the Russians, against whom "this war must be fought with the full hatred v. • The Slavs or we...

...cried Ludwig with audible relief...

...Valiant Knight or Howling Wolf...

...the national indignation without which war could not bo waged...

...In the 1920's he published a biographical sketch of Carl Peters...

...And to make this point quite clear, let's sea in detail how a noble character behaves in a sitution in which he demands heroism from othere...

...Take Berlin, for instance: "The fast-growing city threatened to develop in Amercian fashion—voluptuousness without culture, speed without beauty...

...Millions ot p.iipn\ Gentiles as welpas Jews, hale the whole German p^bple indiscriminately foi 'he most authentic motive: for unspeakaole horror^ they committed...

...he witnessed tha "marvelous spectacle" of four Allied ships sinking at the Dardanelles...

...He gives vent to his spite because now it is safe for him to do so...

...The avowed purpose of the book was to "replace" the "false picture" that the world bad of Mussolini, to "change opinions and fears of the world by a different pictare...

...he wrote, and years later the Russians still were to him "the most immature people of the white race" and "Orientals...

...One can believe that...

...He absolved imperial Germany from the chief responsibility for World War 1 which had been the basfc thesis of the Treaty of Versailles...

...5, Aug...

...Ludwig accused tierman refugees who do not share his views that they want to go back and to grab nice, soft job') in liberated Germany...

...HEIDEN ON LUDWIG: KoNRAD HEIDEN is the internationally-known biographer of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism...

...He testified that the masses in the streets were reluctant to fight ("for days depression, coolness, doubts were weighing the thousands down...

...He did exactly the opposite...

...German Foreign Office, was a guest of German generala and the confidante of German diplomats...

...He pleaded for the innocence of the German people after World War I and demonstrated that the German government of that period was less guilty thsn others...