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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 41
The most notable figure in German official life who was believed to have been converted to democracy and peace between the two wars was Gustav Stresemann. His most sympathetic biographer says of him: "His first creed ... was force ... With his belief in power went a belief in authority ... Combined with Stresemann's belief in power and authority was a belief in discipline." So Stresemann supported the war of 1914 with enthusiasm, urged unlimited U-boat warfare with all his might and saw the overthrow of the empire with indignation. Yet he was no Junker militarist. He was the son of a restaurant keeper, the product of German universities, and he looked like an unfriendly caricature of the German middle class. After the war, he led the political party which was financed by Hugo Stinnes, the Ruhr industrialist. His only differences with the financier arose over Stresemann's insistence that the state was bigger than business. "German industry should not be regarded as an end in itself, but as a means to an end," he wrote.
Stresemann, who was Chancellor when Hitler staged his beer hall putsch on November 8, 1923, saw that Germany needed to be reconciled to the European family of nations to speed her recovery. As Foreign Minister, he developed a real belief in peace, and it was he who signed Locarno. The treaty was hailed with rapture in all the signatory countries but one. Germany was so indignant with the acceptance of Alsace-Lorraine's permanent loss that Stresemann had to be smuggled back into Berlin obscurely under police guard to save his life. Even when he negotiated the evacuation of the Rhineland five years ahead of time, there was more outcry in Germany against his failure to abolish reparations than praise for his success. His biographer reports that as he read the newspaper attacks just before his death, he cried: "It is madness." And added after a moment: "Then I have lived in vain." Of all his generation, Stresemann made the biggest effort to weaken his country's will to war. He won more prestige abroad than any other German public man between the two wars; he had and used unrivaled eloquence; he was one of the shrewdest and ablest of politicians; he had the advantages of his early powerful backing by Stinnes, his own belligerent war record and his diplomatic triumphs. But not even his biographer thinks he made any impression on German thought or long-range German policy. He was used as a tool to win concessions Germany was still too weak to force. But he won no German converts to conciliation.
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
