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Henry Morgenthau, The German Character
Five chapters from Morgenthau’s book, Germany is our Problem, here published with an introductory note by Ellopos. Emphasis, in bold or italic letters, by Ellopos. Complete book in print.
52 Pages
Page 34
GERMANY HAS THE WILL TO TRY IT AGAIN
SOMETHING OVER ONE HUNDRED YEARS ago, the world outside of Germany regarded that geographical expression of dozens of states and principalities with a sentimentality, rooted in ignorance, which persists, despite all the hard lessons of history, to this day. Germany in the 1830^ was a land of fairy tales where Prince Albert and Prince Ernest collected botanical specimens in the woods or played their little pianoforte duets in shabby castles, where the peasant fattened his Christmas goose in neatly tended farmyards, where most of the Icings and princes of Europe found their remarkably plain wives. Of course, for centuries Europe also recruited its mercenaries from these picturesque villages. And of course the Fichtes and Hegels and Kants had been expressing the highest philosophy of these seemingly simple, peaceable, musical folk in extremely belligerent language. Only the language was so horribly dull and difficult to follow that very few outside Germany regarded it as anything more than an unpleasant academic chore.
It remained for a German to sound the warning which Europe and the world did not heed. Heinrich Heine is remembered chiefly for his love poems (and the Nazi banning of his works because of his Jewish blood) but he was also a keen observer of the contemporary scene. In 1834—it was the year a German customs union under Prussian leadership gave the first impetus to formation of the modern Germany—Heine warned France: "You have more to fear from Germany set free than from all the Holy Alliance with its Croats and Cossacks." Heine knew what the leaders of his people were thinking about. He knew what the teachers and philosophers were saying and writing. It would lead to "a drama compared to which the French Revolution will be only an innocent child," he thought, and although it was not beyond the realm of ideas as yet, he foresaw the reality.
Cf. H. Arendt: totalitarianism reduces men to impersonal natural forces * German philosophers in support of Nazism * Beethoven and Mauthausen * The Superior Race of Germans * Kalergi, European Spirit must Precede Europe's Political Unification * La Construction de l'Europe selon Jean Monnet * Plan Fouchet * Mitterrand and Kohl urge European Political Union * Il Manifesto di Ventotene
