RE-HUMANISING THE NAZI
Sm,—As one who in recent years has had many contacts with Germans in many walks of life, may I support most strongly the views put forward by Mr. Herbert Robinson?
In the early days of 1937 I happened to find myself seated at dinner next to Baldur von Shirach, the chief of the Hitler Jugend. In the course of conversation von Shirach stated that, contrary to what was believed in England, he did not seek to inculcate militarism into the seven million members of the Hitler Youth Movement, whom he controlled. He admitted that naturally the discipline of the training was helpful to the boys when they came to do their military service. I asked him if he would come to London and tell the British public what he had just told me. He replied that nothing would induce him to do so. To be quite fair to him, I think he was feeling annoyed about an invitation which he had received to the Boy Scout jamboree at Budapest, which con- tained a proviso that the Hitler Jugend would have to camp apart.
But the point I wish to make is that his refusal to come to England was given with all the arrogance typical of the youthful Nazi, an arrogance born of a patriotism run mad and one which has replaced religion and humanity by Hitlerism. This is the teaching to which the unfortunate German youth has been subjected, and it is this teaching which has produced the malign mentality that for the time being has pushed into the background the many fine qualities which one used to associate with the German people— certainly with the South Germans.
When we have won the war it will indeed be a formidable task to exorcise from the minds of the rising German generation the worst effects of the baneful teaching of the last few years, but until this is achieved it would be madness to give Germany a free hand to develop as she thought fit.
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