Germans Must Pay For 'The Tremendous Spree'

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 99, 28 April 1945, Page 8

Germans Must Pay For 'The Tremendous Spree'

"If there is such a thing as Germany—then there is also a thing as responsibility," says Thomas Mann, in his article, reprinted from the Free World magazine. Thomas Mann, himself a refugee from the Nazis, is widely regarded as one of the greatest men of letters of this age.

THE destiny of the most repulsive monster of our era, National Socialism, is on the point of fulfilment—a destiny appropriate to its character, a destiny that from the start was visible to every seeing eye, a destiny whose fulfilment was always only a question of time. If its agony were only its own and not at tne same time that of a great and unfortunate nation that is now suffering for its credulity, its seductibility and besottedness, its lack of political judgment, we could view the catastrophe with greater equanimity.

If we were vindictive, we exiles who were abused as enemies of our people or, at least, as obsolete thinkers, we who were despised as representatives of "retarded humanity"—good lord!—we would be less moved than we are by the agony, the torment, the misery of the community that ejected us. But this agony far exceeds any suffering that we could ever have wished upon it. When I think back, before the beginnings of our exile, to that time of uprootment, of agitation, of anguish, of homelessness—what was our predominant emotion, our ever-recurring thought in all our personal anxiety? I turn the pages of my diary of 12 years ago, to the years 1933 and 1934, that time when the din of narcotising festivities, of unwarranted jubilation over victories and liberty echoed from Germany to the adjacent countries, with its accompaniment of church bells and paeons, flags and endless Roman holidays by decree of the people, the Government, the party.

Lacking in "Sense for the Evil"

Here are the words of my diary: "Pity for the people that saw the shipwreck of all its great hopes and that is now to experience the frustration of the ultimate pledge of its faith. What is shortly to become of the people who have staked such a measure of faith in falsehood? But I doubt whether pity is appropriate in view of the degree of delusion, the lack of sense for the evil, that this people demonstrates in its faith."

After all that has happened, this doubt of the propriety of pity is more vivid to-day than ever. The "lack of sense for the evil" that large masses of the German people have shown, was and always will be criminal. The tremendous spree that this ever thrill-greedy nation imbibed from the poisoned gin of nationalism, ladled out by fools and liars, must be paid for.

It is impossible to demand of the abused nations of Europe, of the world, that they shall draw a neat dividing line between "Nazi-ism" and the German people. If there is such a thing as a people, if there is such a thing as a Germany as an historical entity, then there is also such a thing as responsibility—quite independent of the precarious concept of guilt. The world has gone through five years of a w r ar full of suffering and sacrifice, a war unleashed by Germany; and from the very first day of this war Germany's opponents were faced by the whole power of the German nation, which stood as such behind the regime and fought its battles.

No one can deny that the "national awakening" of 1933, this delirium that carried the seeds of war in it, possessed the uncanny power of a genuine revolution. But hopelessness and damnation were written on its features. "Great revolutions," I wrote in my diary at that time, "usually attract the sympathy and admiration of the world by their bloody and passionate generosity." ... It was left for the Germans to bring about a revolution of a character never seen before: a revolution without ideas, opposed to ideas, to everything higher, better, decent, opposed to liberty, truth, and justice. . . . And liberty, truth, and justice. . . . And all this is accompanied by tremendous rejoicing of the masses who believe they have accomplished thenintent. And behind it all lies the absolute certainty on the part of the better people that everything is headed for a horrible catastrophe.

At the risk of appearing to deny German responsibility and to advocate a soft peace, I shall not conceal what I knew at that time, namely, the rapidity with which disillusionment, uneasiness, anxious doubts spread through the land. The people foresaw every conceivable misfortune, war, economic catastrophe, dissolution of the nation, disquieted, as they were, by their ignorance, by their impotence in the face of propaganda, by a thousand horrors that took place in their midst, and by their moral isolation. Moreover, the condition which I called "an internal war of revenge" had soon developed into a state of war with the outside world, an ersatz war of hopeless isolation, war autarchy, and of the carefully nurtured popular delusion that the German people were the champions of truth against untruth and that all

evil and wickedness in ths world had maliciously united against the country that could bring salvation. , But every state of war, genuine or pretended, brings the people and its Government closer together. Atiocitics Beyond Atonement Then the war cam 6, the real war, which to an uncritical people like the Germans is simply a challenge to its manhood, its biological soundness, its willingness to sacrifice. The Germans did their best—and their worst. In their name, through their hands bestial rulers committed atrocities at which the heart of humanity trembles—unatonable, unforgettable. At the same time the war was lost ! as soon as the blitz had—once more —failed. ■i The national catastrophe which the regime carried in its bosom is at hand. For 12 years we had to wait for it with a mingling of horror and hope. And now that the debacle -is here, ruin of unprecedented extent, an all-embracing, moral, spiritual, military, economic bankruptcy without parallel—now our pity for so much misguided history, for so much imprudence, for so much loyalty to dead ideals, for so much defiance of the real demands of the present world—now our pity nevertheless equals our satisfaction: it is a pity that is- by no means purely altruistic, for everything German is concerned and is placed in jeopardy, including the German spirit, German thought, the German word; and we are forced to face the question whether in future "Germany" in any of its manifestations can dare to open its lips in human affairs.

Satisfaction? Certainly, we experience it. The disgrace of a disgraceful philosophy that tortured and exiled us; the exposture of the lamebrained, sycophant intellectuals who

mistook the vilest travesty of Germanism for the real thing and who saw in a disgusting ciownj a hysterical swindler, the "saviour," the "charismatic leader"; who spinelessly took part in every abjectness. The downfall of National Socialism into limbo, into the underworld to which it always belonged—for it was such of the underworld, the lowest, that had risen with it to the surface—why should it not fill us with satisfaction! And more than satisfaction—it is comfort and bliss to experience the restitution of the honour and liberty of the European peoples. Militarism Must Be Destroyed How will it be to belong to a nation, to work in the spiritual tradition of a nation that never knew how to become , a nation, and-under whose desperate, • megalo-maniac efforts to become a nation the world has had to suffer so much! To be a German author—what will that be? Back of every sentence that we construct in our language stand a broken, a spiritually burnt-out people, bewildered about itself and its history. One thing is certain; there must be an end of the martial Reich that never understood the meaning of the -Avord liberty; that regarded as "liberty" only its own right to enslave others. The mechanised romanticism called Germany was such a curse for the world that no measure whatever that tends to destroy it as a state of mind can be disapproved. The hope remains that, with the co-operation of the German will itself, purified by cruel suffering, a form of government and of life for the German people may be found that will encourage the development of its best powers and educate it to become a sincere . co-worker for a brighter future of mankind.