Hitler and the German People
In his St. George's Day speech Mr. Duff Cooper went further than is altogether wise in declaring that "this series of crimes which had made a horror of Europe were not the crimes of one man, nor were they the crimes of a small band of criminals. They were the crimes of a whole people." If that is true the prospect of any accommodation with Germany after the war is desperate. But in fact it is not true. It is an intelligible reaction against the sentimentalism which suggests that the German people are the innocent tools of a handful of gangsters at the top. The history of Germany in the last three-quarters of a century shows un- fortunately that there are evil traits in the German nature to which a criminal like Hitler can make appeal, as there are not in the British or the French. But Mr. Duff Cooper goes too far. He makes no allowance for the silent, helpless hostility to Nazism which undoubtedly exists in Germany, or to the extent to which the average German has been robbed of all power of rational volition by the terrorism of the Gestapo and the organised mendacity of the radio and the Press. That may have produced a people temporarily dragooned into support of Hitler, but not a people per- manently Hitlerised. It is by no means true that the average German is secretly opposed to Hitler. But neither is it true that every German has swallowed the Hitler doctrines whole. The truth lies somewhere in between. That alone can justify the belief that after the war there may still be some foundation on which a new Germany can be built.
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