GERMANS AND CRUELTY
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Snt,—The "great debate" on the horrors of the German concentration camps is likely to continue for some time ; may I be permitted to add a few words to that discussion as a Pole and as a foreign journalist who during his stay in Germany in the period 1934-37 had the opportunity to study at close quarters the education of the German nation to barbarism and cruelty?
By 5935 the existence of concentration camps was no longer a secret in Germany. Many people knew about them, but they preferred not to speak about them. The inmates of these Scamps were Germans ; the Third Reich wanted to crush ruthlessly any vestige of political opposition. They succeeded in obliterating any opposition worth mentioning and in keeping down by terror those sections of the German nation which were showing any sign of independent thinking. I knew many Germans bitterly opposed to the Nazi regime ; and the noble figure. of the Nobel prize- winner Karl von Ossietzky who—a broken and dying man—was brought to a hospital in Berlin from a concentration camp after being rewarded by the Swedish Academy, will always remain in my memory. But I do .know, too, that these Germans opposed to the Hitler regime spoke very bitterly about their own countrymen, about their moral cowardice, about their submissiveness to the rule of a " strong hand," about their readiness to accept the most absurd. and brutal political creed. I contend that many Germans did not warft to know anything about these camps from sheer moral cowardice ; that many accepted the system as a malum necessarium accompanying the many " blessings " which Hitler's rule brought, in their-opinion, to their country. I am ready to make a very large allowance .for the bulk of the German nation, which was terrorised, duped and put under the terrific pressure of a totalitarian rule. Nobody who did not experience the nightmare which is the totali- tarian State can grasp what a terrific pressure is being exerted by the State; how easily the courage of people is being broken, how quickly the people are reduced to a mental and spiritual slavery. To resist the pressure exerted by a totalitarian State one needs almost superhuman courage ; and the German nation, while extremely courageous on the battlefield, are unfortunately lacking that quality in the moral domain. But while 'making the greatest possible allowifice for that pressure exerted by the totalitarian Hitler regime I cannot help thinking that this cannot explain the amazing phenomenon of a great nation sinking into an appalling moral state and into depths of cruelty and sadism. I agree that all these " Party cloisters " or Ordensburgen Acre the new genera- tion of the future Fuehrers of the Reich have beerr educated, contributed enormously to the rebarbarisation of the German nation. But what amazes me is the number of Germans—educated and cultured Germans-- who succumbed to that brutal creed: those legions of German doctors and lawyers and people of various liberal professions who helped in practising these cruelties in the horror camps of Dachau and Belsen, first on their. own countrymen and then on members of all the, races of Europe.. The Nazi creed was a-brutal and primitive one, but the trouble is that it found a fertile soil in Germany. And- this the most disturbing fact which leads me, after studying.. The German problem for several years, to the conclusion that there is in the German soul some curious inclination towards sadism, and that the tragedy of the German soul is that it completely lacks a balance between a highly developed and able intellect and an uneducated and neglected sphere of instincts and emotions. In the ghastly " library of German atrocities " committed in France prepared now by the French Government (it comprises thirteen volumes) one of the victims of the German cruelties affirms that " the German has two definite selves, the polite, cultured self, aid the animal which is roused in him like tears in a disappointed child whenever things do not go the way he would like." I find this description very apt, and everybody who came in contact with various shades and hues of the German Wut (rage) would subscribe to that judgement.
In spite of the fact that my nation has suffered frightful things both from Nazis and Germans—the camps of Maidanek, Oswiecim, Dachau and others bear witness to that—I try to be as impartial as is humanly possible. I maintain on the strength of my observations during a pro- longed stay in Nazi Germany that many people in 'Germany knew about the camps, but they preferred to keep silent. I state, too„ that thousands d courageous Germans have been slaughtered in these camps ; but I cannot help thinking that this was a minority -and that the majority remained either passive or that they only too readily submitted to the re-education in cruelty. This readiness, and the fact, that, the number of Germans who helped in that sadistic process-is astonishingly large, forces me to the conclusion that there are in the German nature some
lugubrious and dark forces which find expression in a scientific cruehy and which takes pleasure in the use of some most ingenious devices for torturing people. This " scientific " angle is the most repelling item in all German camps, -and a most disturbing feature, which raises the problem of a sadistic and cruel streak in the very nature of an average
Previous page
