HILTER'S CONQUEST OF AMERICA
Hutchins, Robert M.
Hitler's Conquest Of America By ROBERT M. HUTCHINS THE most distressing aspect of the world in which we live is its indifference to the basic issues, which saw, as always, are moral issues. The...
...We are told that the development of transportation has brought us as close to Berlin as Richmond was to Washington...
...They are, in fact, regarded as signs of weakness and as showing that the one who uses them is guilty of the capital crime of modern times— lack of realism...
...13,000 died...
...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations...
...We are against dictatorship, but the dicta-orship of the proletariat is an exception...
...The German people, all but a few million of them, were indifferent to the rights of man and indifferent to the violation of these rights by those in power...
...The rise of the new realism was bound to produce confusion in Amer...
...What they did, to deserve punishment at the hands of human judges, must have been illegal at the time it was done...
...I should feel better about having Americans judge the anti-Semitism and the concentration camps of Germany if I could forget the anti-Semitism and the lynchings in the United States...
...We are now talking about guilty races...
...for the worst men can, and usually do, want it...
...To state the thing in its lowest terms, in terms of money and power, which the new realists claim are the only terms there are, our political and economic in-erests require a prosperous Germany and Japan...
...Our interests may, in the light of current readjustments of power in Europe and Asia, require a strong Germany and Japan...
...THE new realism is so unrealistic that it blinds us to our own interests...
...It represents the conquest of the United States Hitler...
...If any nation can be found which is not guilty of this crime, then it is qualified to judge the German people for their indifference to the crimes committed by Germans against Germans...
...We believe that if that policy had been followed the national community would have soon been restored, and years of suffering, which still leave their mark upon the nation, would have been avoided...
...And we are saying about aurselves—or at least we are strongly hinting it—what Hitler said about the blond teutonic "Aryans...
...Our religious and racial intolerance is unorganized, and violence is sporadic and illegal...
...They should be punished for what they individually did...
...And we cannot be sure that our resent Allies will always be our friends and that we hall not sometime need the help of our present enemies...
...The word security, which is the great word today, has no moral significance...
...nation which has pretended to the name of Christian must now abandon the attempt to deserve it...
...for the new realism is nothing but the old Real-tik...
...We could wish that all men were prepared to die for their principles in peace and in war...
...If the judgment is to command the respect of Americans, it must be shown that the act was, one which a patriotic American would not have committed if he had been a patriotic German...
...We must remember the ancient doctrine that no man is a good judge in his own cause...
...We want Europe rebuilt, but will have no heavy industry in Germany...
...HITLER'S conquest of America proceeds apace as we succumb to the idea that social and political problems can be most effectively solved with the aid of a firing squad...
...Churchill must have regretted in a very short time the unwise words he uttered about Kussia 5 years ago...
...Punishment for illegal acts must be meted o'ut legally, with a fair trial and" adherence to the Anglo-Saxon principle that every man is presumed innocent until he is proved guilty...
...As for ourselves, it is not unfair to say that the American people, except for a few million of them, are guilty of the crime of indifference in the face of race prejudice, economic exploitation, political corruption, and the degradation of oppressed minorities...
...So we call Japanese soldiers fanatics when they die other than surrender, whereas American soldiers who the same thing are heroes...
...A graduate of the University of Chicago told me that he wished a dense cloud of poison gas would settle over the Japanese islands and destroy every man, woman, and child in them...
...We prove that all Germans are murderers and all Japanese apes, and at the me time insist that we are going to have one world in which all men are brothers...
...the words of the Second Inaugural should be our guide: "With malice toward none...
...Is the standard we intend to impose on the Germans the standard of heroes and saints, or that of the ordinary man, who throughout the world thinks first of the lives of his family and second about his principle...
...We do not expect Americans to do it except in war...
...We are like those rugged ;alistic advocates of the high protective tariff who ropose to export vast quantities of goods without ad-itting any imports to pay for them...
...We hate slavery and propose forced labor...
...had reluctantly taken up arms only because they thought it was their duty to their States...
...They could not be permitted to rejoin the society of respectable citizens...
...They must be kept down by military force until the end of time...
...Talk of non-fraternization, of reducing the South to a subsistence level, and the punishment of war criminals filled the air...
...For instance, are we prepared to stand trial ourselves for the violation of treaties and attacks on undefended places...
...We know now that Anderson-villa did not prove the depravity of the South...
...At the same time it must be clear that the characteristic of criminals is that they are individuals, not nations or races...
...We now believe that his policy was the right, the listic...
...This guilt does not assist our claim to judge and punish the German people for theirs...
...Without debating the Christianity of declaring war on women and children, I merely point out the arrogance of the assumption that any American is fit to judge all Japanese...
...Are we ready to say that in the face of the tommy guns of the SS we would have remained true to our ideals of democracy...
...Those responsible for it deserved punishment...
...it must have perpetual conscription...
...It suggests that the one powerful nation in he world which claimed to hate machiavellianism, and epadiated the doctrine that military superiority im-suplies moral superiority must now embrace these theories or be accused of being "soft...
...We have not yet gone in for these things on the grand Nazi scale...
...And it would do us no harm to apply the maximum of equity that one must come into court with clean hands...
...But we are sufficiently vulnerable to lay ourselves open to some embarrassment if we set ourselves to pass judgment on the domestic conduct of other nations...
...Andersonville was an atrocity...
...This moral confusion is matched by intellectual disintegration...
...We seem not to see or not to care about the tupidity of following contradictory policies and tak-g contradictory attitudes...
...Justice demands that none of the guilty escape...
...with charity for all...
...I insist that criminals must be punished...
...We say we are going to re-educate the Germans, and dopt a policy of non-fraternization...
...The new realism is unrealistic, for in addition to thwarting our own interests, which it falsely pretends to serve, it ignores all the facts—the facts of history and the facts of human nature...
...with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, —let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind tip the nation's wounds...
...If the policy of Lincoln is the right, the realistic, one, and if our task is the same as his...
...The Southerners were then the guilty race...
...We should hesitate to punish Germans for acts which we have committed or may commit...
...TODAY we are struggling to build a world community...
...We all believe today that what was miscalled "Reconstruction" in the South after the Civil War was a blunder, if not a crime...
...He said: "Everyone can see how Communism rots the soul of a nation, how it makes it abject and hungry in peace, and proves it base, abominable in war...
...The words peace, justice, co-operation, community, and charity have fallen out of our vocabulary...
...Every Southerner was guilty of favoring slavery and rebellion, though it was known that thousands, like Robert E. Lee...
...We know ihn^ bv actin" as though it did the North hurt itself and delayed the recovery of the entire country...
...and must get all the island bases it can lay its hands on...
...One of the factors that shaped public opinion in the North was the revelation of the treatment of prisoners at Andersonville in Georgia, where, out of 50.000 men...
...Intellectual integrity is coming to be regarded as a sign of softness, too...
...If this is so then we have on an international scale the same task today that Lincoln had in 1865...
...He had the grace to add, "Maybe I'm not a Christian...
...A nation which fought 2 wars to end war must now, in the hour of victory, plan to have the greatest navy in the world...
...The discussion of the estions on which our fate turns is not even conducted in moral language...
...It: is impossible that 125,000,000 Germans and Japanese can be excluded from it...
...We are saying about the Germans and the Japanese what Hitler said about the Jews...
...WE may hesitate a little to punish Germans for crimes against Germans unless we are ready for a foreign investigation of American crimes against Americans...
...And the new lay dawns by the light of the burning homes of Tokyo and Yokohama...
...Of one crime the German people were certainly guilty, and that is the crime which the new realism sanctifies—the crime of indifference...
...We want or-er in Europe, but not if we have to sacrifice to prevent tarvation...
...to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan...
...But we cannot trade with those who have nothing to exchange...
...The conquest of the United States by Hitler is re-realed by our adoption of the Nazi doctrine that certain races or nations are superior and fit to rule, where-is others are vicious and fit only to be exterminated or nslaved...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 27
