“LOW LIMIT OF INFAMY”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 November 1941, Page 6

“LOW LIMIT OF INFAMY”

>. DR. THOMAS MANN ON NAZIS. " EXPERIMENT IN BRUTAL IMMORALITY. Broadcasting to Germany, Dr. Thomas Mann, the famous German writer, said: “In the outside world men are discussing whether any real distinction can be made between the German nation and the forces which dominate it today; whether Germany is capable of entering honestly into the new international and social order, based on the princip--1 les of peace and justice, which will • arise from this war. When I am asked to define my attitude to this question, my answer is something like this: It must be admitted that this so-called National Socialism is deeply rooted in German life; it is a poisonous distortion of certain ideas wheih always bore within them the germs of fatal corruption, but which were none the less current even in the old, civilised and cultured Germany. They were held in ! high repute there. They were classed i as romantic, and exercised a considerable fascination on the outside world. But I have faith and patriotism enough to believe that the Germany of Durer, Bach, Beethoven and Goethe has the , deeper historical roots. The other Ger- i many will be short-lived. We must not ; mistake its present stertorous panting i for deep, regular and healthy breath- ( ing. This Germany is spent, or nearly ( so. It is truly on the point of death, i It is the Third Reich, which, as the J s incantation of an idea is something c

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 humanity, a berserk onslaught on human law and morality, a desperado’s violation of those spiritual values which were and still are so dear to Germans. It represents the recreation of a state devoted to total war; it implies racial intolerance and world servitude. It is the absolute low-limit of infamy,”