TERROR IN GERMANY
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Sta,—You were good enough a few years ago to publish a letter from me under the heading, "The British Forces on the Rhine," in which I pleaded for their early withdrawal and stressed the undeserved humiliation which their con- tinued presence on German soil inflicted on a beaten nation, which was striving to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of Europe.
I cannot, therefore, be accused of being hostile to Germany if I venture to say how entirely unconvincing, as an apologia for the recent terrible excesses of the Hitlerites, the letter from Herr Deissmann appears to me. There is, in particular, one very significant and, I am tempted to think, deliberate omission in his very laboured defence of the new regime. He is entirely silent about the furious " Judenhetze " which has all along characterized the Hitler programme and by its unreasoning savagery raised a doubt as to Germany's right to be still reckoned among the truly Christian and -civilized nations of the world.
One would have thought that the memory of the thousands of Jews—not all conscripts—who in the late War laid down their lives for Germany might have shamed the most fanatical anti-Semites into treating the Jews who survived with some semblance of decency, quite apart from considerations of the great indebtedness of Germany to her Jewish subjects for the part they have played in making her great in all 'walks of life.
But no, none of these considerations count for anything at the present juncture. Germany is suffering badly from an inferiority complex, and therefore needs a scapegoat— the Jews' immemorial role throughout history Indeed, I often think that, if the Jews did not exist, they would have had to be invented, merely because of this recurring need among nations for a scapegoat. What, I ask, has Herr Deissmann to say on this most sinister aspect of Hitlerism ?
With the letter, however, from your correspondent Miss Brooks, may I be permitted to express my entire concurrence ? The Allies, by their blind subservience to France since the War, have largely helped to sow the dragon's teeth, and must now be prepared to reap the harvest.—! am, Sir, &e., 13 Rolland Villas Road, W. 14. ERNEST LESSER.
Previous page
