THE PRESS
time we treated the Nazi epoch as history
BEING BEASTLY TO THE GERMANS
THE BEHAVIOUR of the press and the Daily Mirror in particular towards Princess Michael of Kent raises a number of issues. For once I am inclined to agree with the Revd Kenneth Slack when he wrote to the Times: 'Christian conscience must surely be shocked by the exploitation of the revulsion that all must feel against Nazism and its incredible barbarities to try to tarnish someone not born until the war was moving to its close.' He called it 'a form of Journalism which tarnishes our society', and he is right. But the first point to notice is that the Mirror campaign did not suc- ceed, because the Princess was able to appear on TV-am later in the week and give her reactions. It was a fascinating and convincing interview, and I doubt if any- one who saw it will think any worse of the Princess for finding herself in this predica- ment. Here is one of the most important functions of broadcasting: to provide a quick remedy for someone who has been victimised by the newspapers. It is a function which is under-used, in my opin- ion: the people who run television news and current affairs programmes are more inclined simply to follow tamely in the footsteps of the Fleet Street heavy mob.
The second point is more fundamental. Isn't it about time we began to treat the second world war and the Nazi epoch as history, instead of as part of current affairs? By this I mean we should begin to Judge what happened 40 and 50 years ago objectively, dispassionately and without allowing our emotions to cloud our analysis of the facts. These perpetual anniversary celebrations and memorial services I sus- pect do more harm than good. They keep, open the old sores and hatreds, rather than Promote reconciliation. I thought the Guardian had a good point in its leader on Monday when it argued that, in Ireland for
instance, memorial gatherings to mark the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday and God knows how many other episodes in Ireland's long history of killing almost invariably risk provoking fresh vio- lence and so intensifying the clash between the communities. In South Africa the same principle seems to operate when blacks gather to mark the anniversary of Sharpe- ville. The cycle of violence thus becomes perpetual and the extremists on both sides are the only beneficiaries.
Fleet Street is particularly fond of arti- cles on the second world war, nearly all of which have an explicit or implicit anti- German flavour. Curiously enough, these papers rarely make any reference to the holocaust of the Jews, the one gigantic episode in Hitler's wicked career which ought to be kept fresh in our minds because of its unique barbarity and be- cause of the lesson it teaches about the irrationality of human beings. But there is no newspaper glamour in that grim record of murder factories.
Instead we get endless memoirs and battles. But in all these narratives, the point is missed that Germany's launching of two world wars, a tragedy for our civilisation — it was the suicide of Europe — was an even greater tragedy for the Germans themselves. They had been cor- rupted by Bismarck, who had prussianised the most gifted and best educated people in Europe, and transformed the new Empire from a civil into a military one, so that ministers addressed the Reichstag in the uniform of colonels and majors. The Eng- lish had always liked the Germans and got on well with them, until the transformation took place; and they began to fear them in the 1890s when the German state in addi- tion to the best army in the world began to build a vast ocean-going navy.
Germany emerged from the first world war, which she had won in the East but lost in the West, a stricken and demoralised country, swarming with penniless and often violent ex-servicemen. The number of political murders, many of them wholly unpunished, was terrifying. A violent spasm of inflation wiped out the savings of the middle class but left the rich industrial- ists and landowners richer because they were able to pay off all their debts in worthless paper. Germany enjoyed a few years of modern prosperity in the second half of the Twenties, but it soon flickered out and thereafter prosperity and what was left of national morale were drowned in an ocean of unemployment. At the same time, the Weimar system of government, which had never been accepted by many Germans, broke down. These desperate circumstances just enabled Hitler, the gut- tersnipe version of Bismarck, to slip into 'power, and once he had his hands on the levers he never relaxed his grip until his suicide 12 years later.
What has to be appreciated, however, is that, from 1933 until the beginning of 1939, Hitler was one of the most popular leaders in German history. Most Germans accepted his totalitarian cruelty because of the benefits he brought them. He was the only leader of a major country to bring back full employment in the 1930s, and he did it with astonishing speed. Strikes ended. There was job security and political stability. Just as important, Hitler restored 'national morale. All Germans, and indeed many British people (not least those who served in the trenches), regarded the Ver- sailles Treaty as unjust. That was why Appeasement was such a popular policy until the end of 1938. Most Germans applauded Hitler when, at no cost in human life, he got back the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and 'liberated' the Sudeten Germans. But they parted com- pany from him when, in March 1939, he invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. Then they knew he was bent on conquest and would undoubtedly get them into another war. The actual onset of war was received by most Germans in grim silence, and thereafter Hitler rarely addressed big pub-
lic gatherings or appeared in the streets. His popularity was, gone and only his
apparatus of terror remained. Moreover, in the secrecy and darkness imposed by war he could stealthily begin his evil schemes of extermination.
I can understand why many Germans were deceived by Hitler in the 1930s. But I don't think they had the will to war, as they certainly had in 1914. They were the big losers in the conflict: their country parti- tioned, perhaps for a century or more, a long occupation, a humiliating struggle to be again recognised as a civilised people.
On the whole, during the last 40 years, they have made reasonable efforts to pay their debt to international society and to perform a constructive role in Europe.
Perhaps it is time for us to recognise the fact.
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