The globe-independent. (Hagerstown, Md.) 1943-19??, 1946-02-07
'The German Talks Back"
By Heinrich Hauser
Reviewed By MyIdred SchOen

are Hauser's attempt to explain why
we are not the most popular people
in the world, not only to Germans
but to Europeans generally.
The chapter in the book which de-
serves a review in itself is the one
devoted to German war guilt and
war criminals and aptly entitled
Crime and Punishment" For it is
here that Hauser, who is civilized
man and a thinker, reveals so clear
ly the impossibility of our under
standing the German or the German
either understanding or approaching
US Briefly, Herr Hauser feels that
he, and all those like him, should
be on trial as war criminals in
! Nuremberg this minute-not because
they were guilty of the atrocities
| perpetrated in the prison and con-
Icentration camps, but because they
stand indicted of that even greater
sin, civic coWardic They could have
| stopped the Nazis-but they didn't.
j The author feels, and frankly says,
that a nation capable of breeding
such monsters is entitled to no con-
slderation from the rest of the world
and that our habit of referring to
the Germans as barbarians is a gem
of understatement-people can be
raised from a state of barbarism to
civilized level, he contends. What
you can do with a civilized nation
that deliberately returns to the Dark
Ages, Hauser doesn't pretend to
know. He only knows that Ger
many's shame before the world is
burden of guilt on the soul of every |
living German.
In the same breath-and herein
lies the unbridgeable gap-Herr |
Hauser makes clear his major pre-
mise that we are incapable of pun
ishing the German war criminals
First, because they cannot and will |
not consider death punishment for
having acted on their convictions,
and second, and by far most start |
ling, trial and sentence before and |
by jury of ones peers presuppoSes
that the judges are on an entirely
different plane from the men they
are trying-the integrity of the
judge and jury must be unimpeach-
able. This, in the case of the United |
States of America VS. Germany is inn
possible, because in Houser's careful
ly considered opinion, we are as gull
ty as they. Our bombings of German
cities and dams were quite as Grim
inal, he thinks, as any destruction
perpetrated by the Germans-our
precision bombing, to his mind,
ridiculous. There is, he feels, no
difference between accuser and ac-
cused.
What Hauser fails to take into
consideration-to the point that he
never mentions it's the fact that
we did not start this war, that with
out retaliating with saturation
bombing we would still be fighting,
and that at no time have we-or
any of our allies, with the possible
exception of RuSsia-Seen fit to hold
a dress rehearsal of horrors to come
over helpless, PROSTATE and bleed
ing nation as the Germans made it
their business to do over Spain.
This chapter and the one follow
ing, which deals with the Europeans
reasons for feeling that our indus
trialization has been a betrayal of
the ideals of our founding fathers,
are going to be the hardest for the
American mind to comprehend or to
view effectively. But it is in these
sections that Hauser demonstrates
that relations between America and |
Germany have reached an unbreak-
able deadlock-if indeed they have
ever been on any other footing.
The thoughtful American, deluded
through the years by German prop
aganda, the American soldier in the
Army of Occupation, the minister,
the teacher, the newspaper man, the
commentator, the parent-every one
of us owes it to himself and to the
future of his children and our nation
to read 'The German Talks Back"
not with rancor, or prejudice, but
nth a searching mind.