THERE'S HOPE FOR GERMANY

...Suppose we analyze how we did approach this whole difficult and diabolic situation...

...Roentgen and Einstein and the countless other bright luminaries in Germany's vast firmament of great figures of culture, art, science, and all the other learned professions...

...Schopenhauer and Kant...

...Fortunately, I repeat, there are Germans of real stature and ability and courage who are not alone sympathetic but dedicated both in thought and in act to these principles...

...A country, like a person, without pride in self is one forlorn of hope...

...Buttenwieser, formerly a partner of Kuhn...

...They demonstrate this, as indeed they have in the past demonstrated it, by adopting and championing the proper view even though such espousal is not always popular...

...The only difference that I can see between this type of mob rule and what transpired under the Nazis is that the injustice would have been under Occupation rather than Nazi aegis...

...Often I have wondered whether the interpretation that might not well be attached to this Biblical story is that in addition to sparing Sodom for the sake of the righteous 10, the Lord in His infinite wisdom also had in mind that these 10, by way of demonstrating their appreciation of His forbearance, would act as ambassadors for and champions of righteousness...

...If there were no rebirth of pride in Germany, it would indeed mark a spirit of hopeless futility hardly suitable to the development of any democratic ideas or ideals...

...Actually, there are even some Germans who share this view, ill-founded and untenable though I believe it to be...

...There was another agony some 19 centuries ago...

...and the fear of one neighbor is a fear that is not theirs alone...

...It is neither possible nor desirable to try to keep 7,000,000 former party members—and with their dependents probably 25,000,000 people— outside the community or outcasts from it...

...953,292 trials were completed, leaving only 3,681 cases to be resolved...

...9,833,864 were found to be non-chargeable...

...Unfortunately, this rebirth has been accompanied by the re-emergence of some dangerous elements...

...My plea to them is that they should properly evaluate the vast amount that has been accomplished and not exaggerate the relatively isolated instances of Nazi violators of varying degree who have gone unpunished or punished with far less severity than their misdeeds warranted...

...A people can reconstitute themselves only from within...

...All that we can do is to help the German people in the huge task that lies before them in recasting their attitudes and thinking...

...They come from all walks of life and from varying faiths...

...30,622 to special labor but not imprisoned...

...but in them and in them alone, I profoundly believe, can we place our hope and our faith...

...Before that, let me assure you that those of us entrusted with carrying out U. S. policy went to Germany with no predilection for Germans but equally with no inner hatred toward them...

...27,268 to property confiscation...

...We deem this to be basic to everything else we seek to accomplish in Germany...

...There were uttered then among the noblest words ever heard by man: "Father, forgive them...

...It may well be said that there are but too few...

...of this latter category 2,502,163 of obviously slighter offenders were amnestied without trial...

...Lest there be any misconception, let me review the record...

...Loeb 6 Co., is a past president of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in New York and a trustee of the National Council of the Jewish Welfare Board...

...The Progressive, although disagreeing with some of Mr...

...the balance of 3,459,136 were found to be chargeable...

...In that development we of the Occupation Forces, as I see it, can play our most vital role by helping Germans of liberal mind, progressive energies, and public spirit in infusing these attributes of mind and spirit into the thoughts and actions of their countrymen...

...There's Hope for Germany The Speech the Anti-Defamation League Refused to Hear By BENJAMIN J. BUTTENWIESER IT IS safe to say that, save for some fragments, Nazism in Germany has been destroyed never to rise again...

...Buttenwieser's judgments, is happy to be able to publish this slightly condensed version with his cooperation...

...We can help them but we cannot, contrary to what some may ill advisedly think, achieve by fiat our goals for Germany...

...Fortunately, however, the bulk of the German people and their leaders are alert and opposed to aggressive nationalism...

...We feel, as did such diverse dailies as the New York Times and the New York Post, that the Anti-Defamation League erred in refusing to give a hearing to the speaker they had invited...

...It is encouraging that Germans are beginning to try to forget the nightmare of the Hitler regime and supplant it with memories and the revival of the better Germany which produced Goethe and Schiller...

...Guided and inspired by our help and our hope, I truly think they will achieve the goal which they and we share in common...

...The time has come to permit them to show that they have learned a lesson, that they will be loyal members of the developing German democratic state...

...Officials of the League refused to permit him to talk because their reading of an advanced copy led them to believe that Buttenwieser's talk was an "apologia for the limited job that has been done to denazify Germany...

...and progress is what we must lend every effort toward developing in Germany...

...Those found guilty were either executed or condemned to long prison sentences...

...There are, as I said, Americans and Germans who feel that, in the face of the fiendish crimes committed under the Hitler regime, our measures were all too weak and compromising in ferreting out and punishing those who had any part in these barbaric ravages...

...Even if democracy is not yet deep rooted in the German scheme of things today, the tendrils at least are beginning to take hold...

...By any reasonable tests they produced, in the overall, effective, proper results in the light of the enormity of the problem and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of coping with every Nazi offender...

...In probably the greatest legal procedure that the world has ever witnessed, in the American Zone alone as of Nov...

...for they know not what they do...

...This extremist view would merely have been allowing the predatory law of the jungle to prevail...

...There are many who will suggest that the U. S. policy toward the eradication of Nazism and measures to prevent its reappearance have been woefully weak...

...The major war criminals were tried at Nuremberg by an International Court...

...It is a fundamental concept that once the guilty have served whatever sentence has been meted out to them by duly constituted authority, justice and ethics require that the penitent be received back into the fold of society and permitted to function as an accepted member of the community...

...As I conceive it, we Americans cannot reorient the mental processes of the German people...

...II It is a Herculean assignment to rehabilitate the German mind and to reorient the German people so that their public and private activities may be along democratic lines...

...and 125,036 were restricted in employment...

...He served with a bomber squad in the Pacific during the war, and later was executive officer on the carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt...

...program suggested by such extremists carries with it its very rejection by any reasonable or reasoning people...

...We can furnish the German people with the figurative tools of the mind and spirit...

...The extreme view of such people is that the most effective means of eradicating Nazism once and for all, and ensuring the permanent destruction of any possibility of its rebirth, would have been for the Occupation Forces, immediately upon their arrival in Germany, to have declared an "open season...

...I think the mere statement of the Benjamin J. Buttenwieser, assistant U.S...

...In appraising the end results, may I lend a word of advice to our critics—critics whose sincerity I do not doubt, but the accuracy or objectivity of whose judgment I somewhat question...

...Only through the achievement of that goal of a Germany reoriented and reunited along democratic lines do I foresee Germany's reacceptance into the family of nations and thus a further safeguard toward world peace...

...30, 1949, 13,293,000 Germans had been screened by registration and questionnaire...

...Effectively, therefore, we have had only the past two years during which our program has been functioning...

...Our Government did take comprehensive steps to demonstrate to the Germany of today and to the world that Nazi criminality, under whatever guise it was carried on, was not to go unpunished...

...but in the ultimate analysis it is they who must do the reconstructing...

...During this period, victims of Nazi persecution could have rendered rough justice by having those guilty of criminal excesses hanged by a sort of mob rule...

...Subsequently, Abraham prevailed upon the Lord to reduce the number to 10 and elicited His promise that Sodom would be spared for the sake of 10 righteous, if such could be found...

...Some occupy higher positions...

...Predicated on this concept, I submit that it is proper to have former Nazis who have been tried and either acquitted or found guilty and served their sentences function wherever their skills and ability permit...

...1 do not believe any nation is capable of recasting the thinking of another nation...

...It is difficult to learn any ideology, except possibly one of subversive-ncss, on an empty stomach...

...Moreover, for the German Government to grow in stature in the eyes of its own people and the world, it must, insofar as practicable and subject only to the requirements of security and to the devolpment of democratic processes, gradually be given full sovereignty...

...Of the 426 condemned, 299 were executed and 127 had their penalty commuted to life imprisonment...

...Of course, there are former Nazis in many public positions in Germany...

...We must protect them from it and make our ideology seem more valid and therefore more attractive to them and inspire in them a love for our type of living...

...Our Occupation is of only five years duration...

...And the wicked inspired by this example of forgiveness, would be reformed by the righteous...

...571,746 were fined...

...This does not connotate, however, that severe and effective measures should not have been and were not taken toward dealing with those guilty of Nazi crimes and excesses in all the varying degrees of their seriousness...

...However, though these people were certainly not heroes, not all of them were devils...

...The methods adopted for accomplishing this huge task appeal to me as having been fair and conscientiously administered...

...We would indeed leave arid the fields in which the Germans must plant these seeds of right thinking if those fields were parched by the withering materialism of revenge...

...23,386 were declared ineligble to hold public office...

...Fairly, it must be admitted that their number in comparison with the entire German population is not as large as we would like to see it...

...That immortal supplication ranks in the very forefront of sublime and uplifting thoughts to which man, regardless of his religion, fell heir...

...Many are school teachers, mail carriers, policemen...

...The Lord was willing to spare Sodom if 50 righteous could be found within the city...

...That, I emphasize, is our major objective in Germany...

...Thus can Germany be guided along the road of democracy which will gain for her acceptance back into the family of nations of the West and thus play a significant part in ensuring peace for the world...

...At Dachau, special U.S...

...These figures hardly indicate softness in dealing with those guilty of Nazi misconduct...

...9,770 were sentenced to labor camps...

...However, it is in those, few though they may be, that we must rest our hope and on them must we focus our efforts...

...Only the Germans can reorient themselves...

...Now that I have discussed the efforts to eradicate Nazism, we logically come to the next question which is of a very different nature...

...No people would re-establish a losing system...

...Many businessmen holding important posts were former members of the Nazi Party...

...Equally, however, no reasonable person can deny, nor would anyone otherwise expect, that some guilty have escaped detection or punishment...

...In that manner alone can Germany ultimately prove that she is worthy of trust by the Occupation Powers and the rest of the nations dedicated to democracy and peace...

...There are many who will challenge this view...

...It can but retrogress...

...Along with that help must go patience and understanding...

...Despite this end, unfortunately, too many similar examples, if we did err—and it is inherent that there would be some mistakes made in such a vast process —I think, in the spirit of forgiveness, as well as with a constructive view to the future, it was far better to err on the side of fairness and leniency rather than arbitrariness and ruthlessness...

...While we do not have the divine right to destroy or spare a people, we do have the finite and human 'power and ability to help a people in the God-given task of recreating themselves in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world...

...All that we could have hoped to achieve and all that I think we have accomplished, is that a sincere, honest and, so far as feasible, effective job was done in punishing the guilty in a manner and to the degree for which punishment is designed...

...There is a vast difference between nationalism, which, in its proper sense, represents pride in one's country and National Socialism with all its lethal doctrines...

...For example, I, too, am appalled at the attempt which is now being made to whitewash Nazi malefactors in Stuttgart...

...Is there a rebirth in Germany of nationalism...

...There are men and women of that caliber in the Government and outside the Government in the Germany of today...

...I wonder whether victors in an occupation might not well meet the vanquished in some degree of that spirit and lead them hand in hand along the pathways of the better life of which democracy is such a significant part...

...I say this with deep conviction predicated upon careful observation during the time I have been in Germany...

...least of all pragma-tists like the Germans...

...I base this view, too, on the firm and reasoned belief that the German people who are admittedly intelligent, if not always sympathetic, will not again adopt an ideology or political pattern which caused them such costly defeat, privation, and long-range deprivation...

...Not all their neighbors are their friends...

...Either of these attributes in the minds or hearts of those affiliated with Military Government or the High Commission would obviously render such people incapable and ineffective in carrying out our objectives...

...The stakes are high but we must be prepared to meet them...

...I think it must be conceded that during the first two or three years, while (Germany was digging herself out of rubble, it was hardly possible to teach democracy with any hope of a very attentive audience...

...The German people have hope but equally and with reason they have fear...

...Military Courts tried 1,672 individuals, of whom 426 were sentenced to death and 646 received prison terms...

...Beethoven and Wagner...

...They are scattered throughout the land...

...There are today Germans of that caliber...

...From the signs thus far discernible in Germany, I think we are warranted in the hope that under democratic leadership, induced from without and within, the German people may find surcease from the fear under which they have lived, so that they may dedicate themselves to true democracy and thus, with well-founded hope, strive to earn for themselves a safe haven in the welcoming circle of peace-loving nations...

...It is practically impossible in a movement which was so long existent and widespread as was the entire Nazi scourge to bring to the bar of justice all who were guilty of participation or collaboration in its inhuman conduct...

...To this my answer is in the affirmative...

...That other ideology which is not democratic threatens them from the East...

...High Commissioner [or Germany, flew from Frankfort, Germany, to Chicago last month to address the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, but found his speech cancelled out when he arrived at the convention...