IS THERE A 'CORRUPT' RACE?
Meyer, Ernest L.
Is There A 'Corrupt' Race? By ERNEST L. MEYER WITH Allied victory at arms imminent, a vast amount of current debate centers about the problem of what to do about a defeated Germany. A score of...
...20, 1944, has contributed an article entitled "Can the Germans Cure Themselves 1" Because he says much that needs saying in these distrait days, I am taking the liberty of quoting at length from his essay...
...And unless we have learned from the lessons of World War I, unless sane and reasonable voices like that of Mr...
...This does not mean that disorder is desirable...
...It is pleasant to report that a new and sane voice has been added to the councils...
...A score of schemes have been advanced...
...On the extreme other end are the "soft peace" advocates who believe naively that the mere fact of the collapse of Hitler will almost overnight change a nation conditioned by more than a decade of fascist hood-lumism into a country of gentle burghers dedicating their lives to beer and Bach...
...Bad Behavior, Not Race "It must be recognized that this is sheer nonsense...
...But this is a matter of behavior and not of inherent racial or national characteristics, and other nations, too, have gone through decades of 'bad' behavior...
...A long occupation, he believes, would mean that the occupying forces would be blamed by the German people for all the inevitable evil consequences of the war, instead of the blame falling where it belongs, upon the Nazis and German militarists...
...Warburg writes, "there has been a spate of books and articles written to prove that the Germans are paranoid, or bloodthirsty, or militaristic, or aggressive, and that they must, therefore1, be rendered forever harmless by drastic means...
...In achieving this goal, Mr...
...The danger is that, by preventing disorder, we may also prevent the birth of democracy...
...The evil which has made Germany what it is today is inherent in all human beings of every race and every nation...
...in Germany it has become dominant, partly owing to the vicious circle created by the German people themselves and partly owing to the behavior of all Western society after World War I." Expanding on this thesis, Mr...
...And it was to put down the rebellion of the Socialists that the Allies allowed the German bourgeoisie to rearm...
...They maintain that all, or nearly all, Germans have certain precise racial or national characteristics...
...It is undeniably true that since Bismarck's first war of aggression Germany as a nation has behaved with increasing lawlessness and brutality, and that under National Socialism she has sunk to a point of bestiality and criminal brutishness unique in modern history...
...Warburg prevail at the coming peace councils, we shall have new Hitlers and new horrors until the end of time, amen...
...These books have been written about 'the Germans' in exactly the same way as Hitler and his followers have written about 'the Jews.' They have been written as if all Germans were alike—or even the majority of Germans...
...Mr...
...But whereas in Italy there is the justification that we are still fighting a war and must prevent disorder behind our fighting lines, there will be no such justification in Germany...
...He favors a relatively short occupation of Germany of three to six months, or only long enough for the emergence of a stable government which would respect the rights of individuals...
...Warburg does not expand upon this statement, which, it seems to me, is the most important in his essay...
...What is to be desired is the birth of democracy, even if it has to be attended by a certain amount of disorder...
...He warns that the German problem is not the problem of the United Nations, but primarily a problem of the German people to fit themselves into a peaceful Europe...
...It was Hitler that created the present carnival of slaughter...
...Birth Of Democracy At this point the proposals of Mr...
...Recently," Mr...
...Warburg differ sharply from the vengeful annihilation schemes of the extremists...
...It was fear of the "red menace" that eventually created Hitler...
...Shrillest among the disputants is the school led by Rex Stout, whose program of woe to the vanquished is vengeful and damned by a vitriol that has never in history been part of the chemistry of enduring peace...
...Warburg, in common with most other commentators, sees it necessary to disband the German armed forces, including the whole machinery of the General Staff, to carry out the Moscow declaration with regard to war criminals, to set up machinery for the restoration of looted property and payment of reparations, and to impress upon the German people the reality of their defeat...
...For it will be recalled that after the defeat and flight of the Kaiser in 1917 the Spartacists rose in Germany...
...During this period the 'bad' in German society has dominated the 'good'—increasingly so in recent years...
...It would mean," he writes, "a strong likelihood of our repeating precisely the mistakes we made in Germany in 1918, and which we have already partly repeated in Italy...
...Warburg reports that the most important mistakes made by the Allies after the last World War were made long before the much-blamed Treaty of Versailles was written...
...The Germans are a people composed of both 'good' and 'bad' individuals, just like any other people...
...At this point, and not before, he urges, a peace treaty should be signed and Germany should enter into the family of nations with full and equal rights and full and equal obligations to share in the responsibilities of preserving peace...
...The principle underlying his outline, he says, is that Germany must be cured by the German people themselves and that until she is so cured her sovereignty will not be recognized...
...I refer to James P. Warburg, who in the issue of the New York Times Magazine of Aug...
Vol. 8 • September 1944 • No. 36
