AFTER HITLERISM
By CANON ROGER LLOYD
SINCE we are all agreed that we will not hate the Germans, and that one of our purposes in fighting this war is to set them free from the Nazi tyranny, it is urgent that we should be thinking now what is to be done about them when the war is over. It is obviously not enough to put Hitler and his myrmidons in gaol, for that simply leaves the fundamental problem untouched. This problem is contained in the chronic political immaturity of Germany. This political ineptitude has now become a public nuisance. It has caused Germany to fight four wars in less than a hundred years, and unless something is done about it there is every reason to suppose that a fifth will follow in another twenty years. That they should now be defeated in war is no doubt necessary for us and for the world, but defeat does not of itself constitute a political education for them. Hence it seems to be true, however little we like it, that the Peace Treaty will have to prescribe the kind of govern- ment the Germans may have, and then the victorious allies will have to try to help them really to make it work, and to set them free in their own household. This, of course, is hardly " Self-Determination," but it is intolerable that we should have to fight a major war in every generation, and until the Germans are capa'31e of producing a freedom- loving government and of making it work there will never be peace in Europe. But what kind of government? Nothing is gained in the long run if for one dictatorship another is substituted. It might be a milder dictatorship, but there is no reason to suppose it would remain mild for long. For Hitler to be followed by a Kaiser or a Major-General would simply be to guarantee the continuance of European instability. A democracy, as Britain and France understand the term, does not seem to be practical politics in Germany unless, in- credibly, someone of the calibre of Masaryk could be found to be the Prime Minister. A working democracy which really sets the people free is the fruit of a long political education, and Britain and France had to pass through a revolution, and America through a Civil War, before any one of them could evolve a political ci.zrnocracy of this kind.
There remain two possibilities. Each of them is con- tained in Germany's own history. One is that Germany may return to the political arrangement of the eighteenth century, and become again a series of petty principalities. This is not so impossible as it sounds, though it is plainly not a solution which could be imposed upon her from without. But history has a way of asserting itself, and the historic tendency of Germany has always been to fissi- parousness : The Bismarck tradition and the dominance of Prussia is really alien to the historic necessities of the Ger- man character. The provinces in Germany are more pro- vincial than the provinces in France and England. They have, each of them, their own life and ways of thought, and at heart they are separatist. This solution is the likely and not the impossible direction and result of a German revo- lution ; and it was under this form of government that the majority of Germany's superb contributions to European thought and art were made. Perhaps there will never be another Bach until his Saxony is wholly free of Prussia, nor another Beethoven until Austria achieves a settled but a German independence. There are difficulties in abundance about any such solution, but they are not insuperable pro- vided that this is what Germany herself desires. If she were to return to it, and to find generous assistance from the other European nations in the early stages, not only would Europe at last feel free, but all that is best in Ger- many would be freed, too.
The other possible solution is one much canvassed today —the setting up of a Federal Union of nations which agree to limit their sovereignty and surrender its instruments into the hands of a Federal Government which unites and con- trols them. Thus, that Parochial Sovereignty, as Professor Arnold Toynbee calls it, which has been the curse of Europe for five hundred years, would be ended. It is not surpris- ing that this solution is canvassed by many of the ablest men in all countries—men far too experienced to minimise the difficulties in setting up and working such a Federal Union. If a Germany freed from Hitler's tyranny were to join that, and thus become not Germany but the German province of the Union, just as we should be the British province, then Aristide Briand's dream of a United States of Europe would be within sight ; and, which is more important, all the ordinary people would at long last be able to live their lives in settled security and peace.
But this can never be more than a dream if Germany remains outside it, and it is practical politics immediately she decides to join it. It does not of itself solve the chronic problem of Germany's political immaturity, but it does set it in a matrix where it is potentially soluble. What chances are there that the ordinary German would accept any such idea? No one can say at present, but there are two forces in Germany which might very well make towards a popular acceptance of her inclusion in a Federal Union of Europe. One of them is again history. For eight hundred years Europe was roughly so organised, under the title of the Holy Roman Empire, and in that confederacy Germany played always a leading part. The idea is, so to speak, in the historic blood of the race. In the Middle Ages the basis of it was ecclesiastical ; today it would not be that. But the idea in itself is not strange and new to the European or the German consciousness. What is really new and revolutionary is the domination of Prussia.
The other German force which, once set free, might very well lead her people that way is the force of the German Christians, both Catholic and Protestant. There are some acute observers who bid us put our trust in the German Christians and not in the Liberals, the Social Democrats or the Communists if we hope for a German revolution. Whether they are right or not only time can show, but the history of the German resistance to Hitler suggests that this possibility is not fantastic. If Christianity will Germany becomes the spearpoint of the overthrow Nazism, then the force which will emerge is one which has catholicism and not nationalism deep-rooted in its heart. It would be strange if a new, non-ecclesiastical, United States of Europe were made possible by the toughness of the ecclesiastical mind in Germany, but it is not wholly unlikely.
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