A German Attacks Bismarck
Know Your Germans. By Count Kurt Blucher. Translated by Lord Sudley. (Chapman lt Hall. 125. 6d.)
Counrr BLUCHER is a man of astonishing courage and 'common sense with a Shavian neatness in pointing out that the Emperor is wearing no clothes. He has the further quality of4ollowing the Marc Bloch- Lefebvre historical school in attacking the habits of those historians Who explain effects by such causes as, they themselves choose with- °lit reference to the evidence. He directs his. main attack against Bismarck, against Bismarck's achievement and above all against Bismarck's genius. To readers in this country who complain that this indictment is familiar it is only fair to reply that this book is tPecifically intended for Count Blilcher's countrymen. The vast (majority of them have never ceased to be intoxicated by the tremen- dous legend of the Iron Chancellor. This was and is particularly true not only of the immature and half-educated, but also of the 'former personnel of the German Foreign Office. Even a relatively young official like Dr. Erich Kordt appears to have regarded the Bismarckian tradition as the ultimate standard of good. Baron von •Weizsacker believes that "to preserve the neritage of Bismarck undiminished " was the acme of moderation. ,"„_No one," he writes with complete lack of vision, " can acquit 'the so-called Wilhelminian era of having squandered the heritage of Bismarck." Count Blucher most exactly points out that, on the Contrary, the genius of Bismarck made the Wilhelminian—and the subsequent--era what it was. " No opponent," he says, " was ever considered worthy of respect (by Bismarck) ; the fact was never grasped that hardly a problem exists which one man alone can tackle." " The flight into secrecy," he adds, " the salving of con- sciences in private homes, accompanied by an indifferent, blind obedience to a policy regarded as questionable, began to be more Widely practised even under Wilhelm II, as soon as a generation
rought up in the Bismarckian spirit had reached maturity and started to occupy important official posts." Nietzsche if Count Blticher is right to blame Bismarck together with ivetzsche (who, as he suggests, degraded the intelligentsia , as them, demoralised the' politicians) for the age that succeeded he surely attaches too little significance to Hitler. It is too VinPle to claim that Hitler had no idea in his head but his mad
Zsucceeded hatred of the Jews. It is too simple to claim that he never ceeded except by coincidence. Those who long to hail him as "if the Great will not be deterred by an under-rating of the unexpected logicality which was linked with his frenzy. There is n fact no security yet that he will not be restored to more than his Ig‘i°,.r.)! of the days of the Third Reich, although he survived the ,s_.unich Agreement, in Count Bliicher's view the peak moment of his Ponularity, by six and a half years. At the end of his book Count BRIcher stresses a fact which both Germans and non-Germans seem impatient to forget, and he adds a warning. " . . It was he (Hitler), and he alone, who led the Russian armies in an almost non-stop victorious progress through Russia to the German frontier. Russia was covered in glory, and won the sympathy of all the nations which had still remained hostile to her." Not only this,, but the Bismarckian tradition would seem likely to leave the Germans more susceptible to the Communist Weltanschauung than to Western individualism.
ELIZABETH WISICEMANN.
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