The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1945-05-04
An Editorial

selfpreservation; vengeance and Justice. Vengeance is purely
and abstractly destructive. Justice is corrective. And cor
receive punishment is what we must visit upon the German
nation. For the German nation is guilty--not only a handful
of IT'S leaders. The German people and their culture, their
systematic arrogance, their moral responsibility made these
leaders possible, and not only possible, but inevitable.
Why is it we or the British or the Russians produced no
spurred and booted Kaiser, no Hitler, no storm troopers and
no national official policy of thievery, lying and murder?
How long would we in America follow a clique of heiling and
goose-steppn2 murderers who staged a putsch and achieved
control of the government? Could such a group of leaders
make us slaughter minorities and ravage our neighboring
countries? But if indeed we did follow them in their course
Of organized evil and t~reachery, shooting hostages, gassing and
burning conquered populations by the millions-would we not
then be guilty as hell? OF course we would.
The Germans have broken the peace of Europe four times
in the life span of old men now living. German military AFRO
gance is an acknowledged fact through a thousand years of
history. 1t is written into the sagas, the literature, the music
of the western world. History teaches the incontrovertible
fact that German "kutur' is based on the evil and dangerous
impulse of the aggressor. It's ideals are power, ruthlessness,
and German mastery. And this is really also its fatal weak
ness, for it is a culture that can only awe and overwhelm.
Ultimately it harvestS the hatred. not the admiration. of the
other peoples of the world. And in the end-through bloody
wars, suffering, sacrifice, they prevail against it. This is the
culture that we must to tear out root and branch in Germany
To do so is self representation, not vengeance.
Let us be clear about one thing. We do not adhere to
the Nazis corrupt doctrine of racism, even against the Ger
a history of arrogance and evil for a thousand years in Eu-
rope, but we do not fall for the Nazi mysticism, and assert
this evil grows from a weaknss of character carried in the
German blood and protoplasm. Cultural inheritance is not
biological inheritance. 1t is unfortunately too easy to con-
fuse them. The corrupted ideals of power, arrogance, ag-
erosion that a man inherits from his family group, his Prus-
slan1zed schools, his Wagnerian music and his shackled press
Is Hot something ne lnnefltS In his blood stream. The Germans
who have come to Amrica and who have shaken off the Ger
man culture-though often it has taken more than a genera
tlon-are as good a people as we have had in America. Wen
dell Willkie was of recent German extraction, to cite only
one example. There are countless others. Many an American
soldier carries a German name, including the commanding
General, Eisenhower.
But though we do not believe the spirit of German AFRO
gance a matter of race, it is nevertheless an entity too SUI
premely dangerous to be left as a survivor of this war in
Europe. Because it is a culture of infallibiity, victory, in
vlnclb1llty, its great weakness is that it leaves the German
people without preparation, without moral stamina in de-
feat. This is the weakness, and only in this respect may it
finally be destroyed.
the German nation-the first they will have known in many
centuries. In the last war they escaped without this ultimate
lesson. We cannot afford to make this mistake again. We
must show the German people, from the traditional beer
drinking burgher of the beer halls to the sneering storm
trooper, what a real defeat is; what it looks like, feels like.
tastes like. The German people alone cannot be made to
rebuild Europe. The ultimate destruction achieved by the
feuhrer and his war, has been too great. But thew must be
made to work, to rebuild cities in France. Czechoslovakia,
Poland, Russia; to work upon the roads, the rails, the
wrecked factories. Our psychological experts have made
almost no Roadway with trying to neutralize the arrogant
Nazlsm of the younger prisoners. The Hitler youth has
been poisoned forever against the peaceability, the reason
ableness of the democratic argument; the Goebbels propaean-
da has achieved at least this victory.
This youth is a youth no longer except in wears. It has
grown old, brittle, cynical in the nightmarish universe that
the Nazis achieved. Its language is force, realism" And
only IN these terms can they ever be brought to understand
the enormlty OF the German crime, in which they participated
almost to a man; and more important, made to understand
that history and civilization has a deep power of retribution
that eventually destroys tyranny and arrogance, and leaders
like Hitler. Let this generation of German Wreckers spend
as many years at the labor of rebuilding Europe as thew have
spent In tearing 1t apart; words may not teach them anv-
thing, but the experience of paying in toll may teach them