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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 4
Before the Versailles Treaty was ratified in 1920, the German generals had thought of and put into execution a device for evading the hundred thousand men limitation placed on their army. They recruited "police" who lived in barracks, drilled like soldiers and wore military uniforms. The Allies protested, so the Germans, still cautious, changed the name of this special force. They did not change its character. Nor did they do anything to discourage wholly illegal military organizations which kept alive the warlike spirit of youth.
Within another year, Germany was finding means to avoid two other consequences of her defeat. By May 10, 1921, she had succeeded in getting her reparations bill cut from $56.5 billion to $33 billion. Thirteen days later, the German Supreme Court at Leipzig began a farce— solemnly dubbed a trial. It was the German idea of a substitute for the court martial of men against whom an Allied commission had compiled "the most striking list of crimes that has ever been drawn up to the shame of those who committed them"—the description is that of the commission. The German government professed to be helpless. It said it could not arrest these individuals for delivery to Allied justice but it could try them 'at home. The Allies agreed to a test case of twelve obscure men who were raised to the status of popular heroes in Germany because they were permitted to be portrayed as martyrs rather than criminals. They were not put to the inconvenience of martyrdom, however, for six were acquitted altogether. The others received trifling sentences worthy of a rather serious traffic violation, and two of them were permitted to escape before their terms were up. That ended the "punishment" of war criminals. No more were brought to trial by Germany; the Allies did not press their authority under the treaty to do the job themselves.
Meanwhile, the conversion of German industry to peace (and to a more modern war technique) was proceeding rapidly. The latest types of furnaces replaced some rather old-fashioned steel mills that had been good enough for World War I but would not do in World War II.
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
