TWO GERMANYS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4523, 14 January 1942, Page 3

TWO GERMANYS

“ When I am asked by foreigners whether any real distinction can be made between the German nation and the forces which dominate it, I reply: I have faith and patriotism enough to believe that the Germany they love —the country of Durer, Bach, Beethoven, and Goethe—-has the deeper historical roots. The other Germany will be short-lived. We must not mistake its present stertorous panting for deep, regular, and healthy breathing. This Germany is spent, or nearly so; It is truly on the point of death. It is the Third Reich, which as the incarnation of an idea is something unique and altogether deadly.

‘.All our hopes are based on this very fact, namely, that National Socialism, as the political fulfilment of ideas which for the last century and a half have fermented in the minds of Germans, literate and illiterate, is a distortion, an extreme, an experiment in brutal immorality, which cannot be exceeded and can never be repeated. “It represents the jettisoning of all human law and morality, a desperado’s violation of those spiritual values which were and still are so dear to Germans. It represents the re-creation of a State devoted to total war; it implies racial intolerance and world servitude. It is the absolute low-limit of infamy.”—Thomas Mann, famous German writer.