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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 48
The hallmark of democracy in this sense is that even when it is not altogether observed, the people who violate its tenets feel called upon to justify themselves. They do not deny the validity of the ideal; they say that the circumstances under which they are living at the moment do not permit them to achieve it. They are always wrong, of course, but even the worst of them are so convinced of democratic truths that they prefer to excuse their conduct on democratic grounds rather than assert that there is a higher ideal to which they owe allegiance.
Now all that is quite inconceivable to the great majority of Germans today. They just don't believe it. They have been reared on the directly opposing theories of racial superiority, supremacy of the state over the individual, glory of war, the natural duty of some to rule and many to obey, the absolute rightness of might. Of course this is not because they are of German blood. As a matter of fact, Germans have made great contributions to democracy—but not in Germany. For many generations, Germany has been the world's greatest exporter of brains and character. That is why men like Carl Schurz and Wendell Willkie and Robert Wagner were making great additions to democratic processes in the United States instead of in the country of their ancestors.
There are German believers in democracy who probably would be willing to return to that country and attempt to bring the whole nation over to their way of thinking. There were even Germans inside Germany once who could have helped. They fought for human freedom, dignity and equality, and they died for their ideals with a courage which compelled the admiration of the world. But there never was a time in recent history when these democrats could sway the mass of the German people.
So far as Germany herself is concerned, they have accomplished virtually nothing in the last seventy-five years. At every decisive moment, the "good" Germans have been neutralized or eliminated. In 1914, they joined the rest of their people in a war which nearly all of them approved. In 1919 they became a screen behind which the real Germany could lick its wounds and prepare for another war. In 1933, they were condemned to exile, the concentration camp or the headsman's block.
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
