ARE WE FIGHTING HITLER'S WAR IN GERMANY?
Brandt, Karl
Are We Fighting Hitler's War In Germany? By KARL BRANDT EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of two articles by Dr. Brandt. The second will appear next week. THE tyranny which under the bloody...
...I saw the rise of the gangster regime...
...The same punitive argument is used to justify a plan envisaging the transfer of many millions of Germans into some countries which have suffered because of German military campaigns, to serve as slave laborers...
...We must cooperate as closely as we can with the good Germans who have stood against the Nazis and believe in moral principles and law...
...She could organize this on a large scale by hiring voluntary workers under specific labor union contracts and accomplish the job...
...Let me mention briefly about the military aspects of the peace for Germany...
...After the war-criminal trials and the first very brief phase of occupation, peace must be declared...
...MERELY teaching the German people how wicked the Nazis were is only a step toward rehabilitation...
...I know only too well, though, that these emotions, natural as they are, will certainly blur our vision and our reason...
...The idea of not declaring peace, and of making the German people a collective criminal awaiting trial for many years is destructive and will sabotage any effort to bring the German people back to peaceful cooperation...
...ALL that I have said in this first article rests upon the foundation of my judgment that the German people consist of individuals who, as other people, are potentially capable of being good citizens of the world, and therefore are not collectively guilty and collectively punishable for the atrocious crimes committed by the Nazi government and many individual Germans...
...The once mighty German Army, fleet, and Luftwaffe are a heap of scrap—gone the shining armor, the glory, and the aggressive challenge, after almost six years ¦of war...
...Only if our decisions are Hbrne of "intelligence, sound judgment, and true statesmanship will the sacrifices we have made not be in vain...
...Freedom of expression means something only so long as we have the intellectual integrity and the civil courage to speak when the time calls for it...
...A Prussia broken up into several self-governing regional units would be the best guarantee against any repetition of that section's aggressive ventures, and would make over-centralization impossible...
...Offers every citizen an opportunity to join in a petition that is going to be presented to Congress, signed l>y people from all over the country, formally bringing this discovery to the attention of Congress, and indicating the incalculable human benefits of starting to use this new knowledge without delay...
...It may be convenient to claim that we tried that after World War I and it did not work, but that is not true...
...A Sound National Economic Policy by M. H. REYMOND Reveals one of the greatest discoveries of all time from the standpoint of the common man: the right answer to the problem of inflations (which cheat people out of savings) and depressions (which deprive people of the right to work for a living...
...While it is not true, as Marxian doctrine claims, that war springs exclusively from economic causes, it is still the case that persistent national economic distress promotes extreme nationalism, and therefore foments war...
...On top of that, the Western powers added Czechoslovakia's 80 modern divisions to Hitler's Army, partly by omission, partly by commission...
...Perhaps they can educate us in that regard...
...Yet I want to put most solemn emphasis on my conviction that we lose the peace to Hitler unless we succeed with the moral reconstruction of the relations between nations, including Germany...
...We encounter difficulties, however, when we approach the political element of the peace formula, because here we have to tackle the intricate job of rehabilitation and moral reconstruction, and we have to denazify Germany...
...I fully share the horror, disgust, and anger of the American public about these crimes...
...Germany should retain her 1936 territory, particularly if neighboring countries should insist upon deporting all German minorities, and she should not be broken up as a unit...
...That was more troops than Great Britain and the United States combined hadv at the time...
...There should soon be a new German government and a German administration...
...And the folly of continuing spending-for-prosperity, paid for dishonestly by "inflationary financing...
...Neither Great Britain, France, nor the United States were interested in real demilitarization for Germany...
...Indeed, not only do I believe that all Germans are not vicious and guilty, but I knoiv that a large number of the German people are just as much the victims of the Hitler gang as were all the others whom he conquered...
...TE enforcement of this peace clause is simple and ool-proof as long as the people of the United States stand behind that policy...
...One claims that it is necessary to military security...
...But the time will soon come when the inescapable necessity of such a course will be generally recognized, no matter what, in confused anger and bitterness, we still feel now...
...But still they are there, with their abilities and their gifts, and their claim as human beings to some sort of existence...
...But we must not be so arrogant and stupid as to impose foreign teachers and foreign propaganda upon German schools, colleges, and universities, because that is the surest way of rehabilitating the defeated Nazis...
...National Press Syndicate, 129 State St., Bingham ton, N. Y. Note to newspapers and magazines: Contents of this pamphlet, divided into 12 articles appropriate for serial publication, may be freely reprinted with copyright notice, in whole or in part, by...
...Moreover, we cannot punish soldiers or officers merely for acts of warfare without eliminating the legal ground upon which we stand for our acts and those of our Allies...
...Of course, this method of eliminating competition is in stark violation of Principle Four of the Atlantic Charter...
...This would mean that Prussia would be broken up into several such cantons...
...However, to take many millions of men, perhaps soldiers who have already served four or five years in the army, by force into slave camps abroad is something for which there has been no parallel in history since the Babylonian exile of the Jews 570 years before Christ...
...It changed the balance of military power by 160 divisions...
...Wisdom of statesmen, however, should prevent the exactment of immediate reparations in kind that destroy the source from which production flows...
...It is relatively easy to' prevent rearmament, but it is tremendously much more difficult to create a new moral and psychological atmosphere in a nation which has been so thoroughly scourged by 12 years of gangsterism and total military defeat...
...We would indeed have attained very .little if the Allied victory had accomplished nothing except the defeat of force and violence by stronger force and more effective violence...
...They were merely reduced, and no effort was made to prevent full re-militarization...
...Baruch's argument is being used vociferously by various industrial groups in Allied countries...
...It claims that the destwuction of German industries is necessary as a means of punishing the German nation, and an atonement for the crimes committed by the German people...
...This very popular and forceful argument is borne of the desire for revenge...
...There are three arguments for stripping Germany of her key industries...
...This we owe to our boys who will never return, to our own future, and to our Allies...
...The German constitution should be based on the Swiss system of a confederacy of relatively equal cantons or states...
...Bernard Baruch a new advocate...
...We broke the grip of the Nazi gang on the civilized world by using their own weapons with greater physical power...
...Bookstands or postpaid, 25c...
...The goal toward which the Allies must work is to make it possible for Germany one day to become a member in good standing of the United Nations, and to rekindle Germany's interest in being such a member...
...After the war criminals are brought to justice, the German people themselves must accomplish- their denazification...
...Two wrongs can never make a right...
...The greatest heroes who have kept the torch of moral prin-i ciples burning in Germany can be found among the clergy, particularly the Roman Catholics...
...We had no other choice...
...The British did not even protest when Helgoland was fortified again...
...Howard S. Ellis very ably replied, in the New York Times, that if this were sound reasoning, America must try to stop exports from Great Britain and all the other United Nations as well...
...Chief among these principles are genuine tolerance, respect for the inalienable rights of the individual and the family, respect for due process of law, and honesty...
...New York University SchooHtf Commerce and Finance...
...We should cooperate with the churches and give them the freedom to restore respect for the teachings of the religion on which our Western civilization is built...
...It proposes to forbid Germany, and Japan, too, from ever exporting industrial goods, in order to prevent damage to the welfare of the American people by the product of "sweated labor...
...I am not primarily concerned with political effects in Germany, but rather with the immeasurable harm it will do to the restoration of moral principles with which the reconstruction of a world of law and order must stand or fall...
...We forfeit the opportunity to restore these principles if we do not refrain from retribution against the vanquished, and from employing the methods used by the defeated gangster regimes...
...ANOTHER argument has found in Mr...
...Together with our Allies, we have defeated the Nazis, but now, more than four months after V-E Day, We have yet to make up our minds what we shall do with 70 million prostrate Germans...
...There is not a single modern industry used for war that is not needed for a civilian peacetime economy...
...We hold individuals, not classes, responsible for their acts...
...THE tyranny which under the bloody swastika banner overwhelmed most of Europe and threatened the rest of the world, finally was broken last May...
...Germany should be forced to do certain specific amounts of reconstruction work in foreign countries...
...Typical comment by one of the country's foremost economists: "Indeed a pleasure to sign petition to Congress...
...Seven years of appeasement gave Hitler the time, the raw materials, and in part even the credit to arm to the teeth...
...WHETHER Europe will have peace depends largely on how good a moral basis for that peace we build...
...The cruel tragi-comedy is that these people believe this is the way to secure the peace...
...What I am about to write is purely my personal opinion as a private citizen who is keenly interested in the security of our country in the years to come, and in the peace of tomorrow...
...Demonstrates the futility of trying to cure unemployment by such things as: unemployment insurance, compulsory old age and health insurance, made-work schemes, government dictated wage rates, encouragement of business cartels, encouragement of labor cartels, operating on unbalanced budgets, building dams and power plants, government planning of production, government price fixing, government subsidies to special interest groups, setting up government lending agencies, setting up government employment bureaus, raising or lowering tariffs, making gifts or loans abroad, etc...
...Genuine rehabilitation will be under way when the young people are inspired with the positive ideals of a civilized democratic society and realize the extent to which they can contribute to it...
...The German armed forces, including the general staff, must be abolished...
...In the economic realm lies the chief opportunity for establishing a society in Germany that will devote all its energies and ingenuity to the peaceful pursuit of happiness...
...Other people speak of dynamiting the remnants of the German chemical industry...
...Willford I. King, Professor of Economics...
...If we permit these emotions to control our faculty of critical and cool reasoning and mature judgment, we are well on our way to-being conquered by the evil spirit of the defeated men of ill will...
...Born and educated in Germany, I lived and worked under the Weimar Republic, and for it...
...Our American industries form the best example, la 1939 we had scarcely any war industry...
...The German people should, and must, contribute within reasonable limits theirshare to the reconstruction ofareas devastated by warfare, and should restore all stolen property...
...A few military intelligence officers living in Germany can watch violations of the peace, and a single international bombing squadron can enforce the law...
...Taking from 70 ruined cities the machines that survived strategic bombing is a means of destroying future production...
...We should refrain from foisting foreign educational systems on the Germans, but assist their anti-Nazi educators to rebuild the school system...
...TO condemn whole groups or classes of people is a violation of the basic principles of justice...
...equipment and military installations must be destroyed, and the revival of military activities in any form be prohibited...
...Pamphlet 22 pages...
...This is the sort of logic that suggests that factories which make spades can make knives, and whereas knives are used by some people on other people's throats, all factories capable of making spades must be forever destroyed...
...On this point, all of us agree...
...Before I offer some reasons and evidence for this solid conviction of mine, I want to elaborate further what I think we should do with Germany—for our own sake, not primarily for hers...
...The third argument is of a different nature...
...All recommendations meet my approval...
...The German people are still there, beaten, impoverished, threatened by famine—most of their cities in shambles...
...Demonstrates the folly of compromising American ideals of liberty with the slavery of state socialism...
...Unfortunately, the brutality of a cruel enemy has temporarily brutalized our own thinking, as all of you realize from the sort of language that has crept into our newspapers and magazines, and from the tone of letters to the editors...
...Hundreds of specialists are busy devising elaborate plans for forcing the German people down to a diet and a standard of living lower than that of the poorest victimized nation, and keeping them in that sort of perpetual concentration camp...
...Germany's industries must be reconverted to peace and prohibited from reconverting for war, which is a very conspicuous process taking years, not months, to accomplish...
...whatever the merits or demerits of such things for other reasons than to cure unemployment...
...If certain people anaesthesize their consciences by saying that the Nazis, too, used slave labor, they admit that they are willing to drag the peace down to the level of Nazi depravity...
...France granted Hitler all the soldiers he wanted a few days after he grabbed power...
...even in the Old Testament the Lord says that revenge is His, not man's...
...The new German government should be composed of representatives of all political groups—left-wing, center, and right, in so far as these groups believe in constitutional government by law...
...Inevitably the challenge, the privilege, and the responsibility to decide about the future of Germany rest primarily upon the American people...
...The German land is there, in the very heart of Western Europe,vwith its resources and its strategic importance in the political and economic fabric of Europe, irrespective of the German people...
...Destroying Germany as a unit would misdirect all the energies needed for a peaceful reconstruction toward the nationalistic effort of reunion...
...On this matter of demilitarization, we can agree so easily because it requires little else but determination and vigilance...
...The earth was freed from the monsters Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, and from the gangster regime they built...
...The British Optical Manufacturers' Association urges the Allies to prohibit for a generation the production of optical glass or optical products in Germany...
...The essence of what I have to suggest can be condensed into this formula: Hard military and political peace terms must be combined with a policy which offers the German people the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves, and to find their way back into the family of nations as respected members, and to work themselves out of their poverty and misery and to carve for their children a lot better than their own...
...Shows how unemployment and consequent demoralization can be forever banished by our nation and by every other nation, thereby cutting the ground out from under future Hitlers and other salesmen of quack prosperity schemes...
...Prof...
...After years of adversity and deadly peril, the Allied powers prevailed chiefly because of the power and the sacrifice in lives and wealth of the United States...
...Public much indebted for good work you afe doing...
...This sort of philosophy insinuates in clear enough language that one of the purposes of our fighting World War II, and of making the sacrifices we did, was to make certain industries here more profitable, and suggests the utility of war as a means of assuring those industries of no outside competition...
...But what we really tried to restore was a moral system of international law and respect for the basic tenets of a constitutional government...
...If we do not stem this process, we will be unable to establish a sane and decent peace...
...In fact, Mr...
...I know that today I have very little company in proposing such a policy...
...Having never compromised with the gangsters who have drenched Europe in blood and reduced to shame and shambles my former country, I take the liberty of writing frankly, and straight from the shoulder, on this delicate subject...
...After tasting for six months the daily medicine of Nazi tyranny and terror, I left Germany for good, by my own initiative, came to this land of the free, and for 12 years have given my undivided loyalty to the cause of freedom...
...anyone...
...America must decide now...
...The German Army and Navy were not dissolved...
...From all these suggestions, you can see that I find myself in determined disagreement with a very articulate part of our public that calls for wholesale punishment, if not worse, for all Germans...
...Sueh a police force should act automatically under standing regulations whenever certain facts of violation are established...
...Remarkable feat...
...The moral principles of the Western World, with its Judaeo-Christian foundation and its political tradition, were trampled upon and flouted in Germany, and in Germany we must reinstate them and fortify them...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 41
