The High Cost of Vengeance Other Books by the Same Author
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The High Cost of Vengeance Other Books By the Same Author LANCASHIRE AND THE FAR EAST JAPAN’S FEET OF CLAY JAPAN’S GAMBLE IS CHINA CHINA AT WAR THE DREAM WE LOST LAST CHANCE IN CHINA LOsT ILLUSION THE HIGH COST of VENGEANCE bY Freda U tie) HENRY REGNERY COMPANY CHICAGO 1949 This book was made possible by a research grant from the FOUNDATION FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, ~‘ASHINGTON, D.C. Copyright 1949 HENRY REGNERY COMPANY Chicago, Illinois Manufactured in the United Statesof America To My Dear Friends John and Joan Crane Whose Help and Encouragement Have Been Invaluable In the Writing of This Book Table of Contents CHAPTER PAGE 1. Road to War 1 2. The Spirit of Berlin 20 3. The Material Cost of Vengeance 54 4. Tragedy in Siegerland 104 5. German Democracy between Scylla and Charybdis 129 6. Nuremberg Judgments 162 7. Our Crimes against Humanity 182 8. Our Un-American Activities in Germany 211 9. How Not to Teach Democracy 232 lo. The French Ride High 271 31. Conclusion 302 Do not be seduced by the prospect of a greut alliance. Abstinence from all injus- tice to other powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquil- ity for an apparent temporary advantage. -THUCYDIDES, The Peloponnesian War I Road to War FOLLOWING WORLD WAR I FRANCE AND BRITAIN REFUSED TO LISTEN to the statesmen who said that you can have peace or vengeance, not both. They broke their armistice pledge to Germany that peace would be made on the basis of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points and “the principles of settlement enunciated” by the American President.* They continued the starvation blockade of Germany for six months after the Armistice, in order to force the German democrats who had taken over the government to sign a dictated peace. Having promised a peace without annexations or indemni- ties, they deprived Germany of territory and imposed a crushing reparations burden on the newly established Weimar Republic. Having promised general disarmament they disarmed Germanv without disarming themselves. The victors refused even to discuss the terms of peace with the vanquished who had surrendered on stated conditions which were not fulfilled, and in general dis- credited democracy in German eyes by associating it with broken pledges, national humiliation, and economic distress. The Nazi movement, born from the dragon seeds planted at l’ersailles, and brought to monstrous growth by the world depres- * Referring to the Armistice, Maynard Keynes in 1919 wrote in his prophetic book The Economic Consequences of the Peace: “The nature of the contract between Germany and the allies . is plain and unequivocal. The terms of the peace are to be in accordance with the addresses of the President, and the purpose of the peace conference is ‘to discuss the details of their applications.’ The circumstances of the contract were of an unusually solemn and binding character; for one of the conditions of it was that Germany should agree to Armistice Terms which were to be such as would leave her helpless. The honor of the allies was (thus) peculiarly involved in fulfilling their part, and if there were ambiguities, in not using their position to take advantage of them.” 1 2 THE HIGH COST OF VENGEANCE sion which raised the total number of unemployed in Germany to six million, took power at the moment of Europe’s and America’s greatest economic crisis. Inevitably, the second World War fol- lowed the first after an interval of only twenty years. Instead of learning that you cannot build confidence and se- curity, democracy and prosperity, on a foundation of hatred and vengeance, the victorious allies this time have torn Germany apart, deprived her of all possibility of existence without exterior aid, and while unable to agree among themselves on a peace treaty, have jointly reduced the defeated enemy country to the status of an African colony. History is repeating itself with results likely to be even more tragic for Europe than the events which led up to World War II. Once again the victorious allies are making it impossible for the Germans to place their faith in democracy and justice, since they find justice denied and democracy mocked by the occupying powers. Once again the German democrats are in danger of yield- ing right of way to the totalitarians because legal methods and ap peals to justice are again failing to obtain a fair deal for the German people. Last time we produced Hitler; this time we may succeed in giving Stalin hegemony over all Europe. If France, following World War I, had been prepared to treat Germany as generously and intelligently as England had treated France after Napoleon’s defeat, Europe might have known another century of peace. The long conflict between Germany and France could have ended on terms as advantageous to both, and as con- ducive to European peace, as the Anglo-French collaboration which succeededcenturies of rivalry and war between England and France. Instead, France sought a fictitious security by disarming the Teutonic giant while giving him every reason to plot for revenge. The crushing burden of reparations the Germans were required to pay, and the denial to Germany of a secure and honorable status among the nations of Europe, so enfeebled German democracy that the Nazis won power and France was overwhelmed by the forces she herself had created. It may be true that the lesson to be learned from history is that mankind learns nothing from it. But the explanation for the failure of the Western democracies to read the lesson of the immediate past seems mainly due to the effect of war propaganda and the ignorance or lack of integrity of the molders of public opinion. The pen is still mightier than the sword and responsible for ROAD TO WAR 3 more human misery when unscrupulously employed in “psycho- logical warfare.” As Samuel Johnson wrote in the eighteenth cen- tury: “I know not whether more is to be feared from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie.” War propaganda, and the falsification of history indulged in by a multitude of journalists, authors, professors, and politicians has convinced the American public that the Germans have a peculiar aversion to democracy and are an innately aggressivepeople who will always attempt to rule the world unless kept down and taught to love democracy by a long period of instruction in a reformatory. Only those who have studied the history of Europe know that Germany did not become a militarist nation until centuries of French aggression, from the days of Richelieu to Napoleon’s con- quests. had caused a reaction which enabled Prussia to forge the modern German state out of the disunited and powerless congeries of kingdoms, principalities, and free cities, which constituted “the Germanies” before the French Revolution. Americans who have had it dinned into their ears for years that Germany has attacked France three times within living memory will be astonished at reading what was said at the time in Britain and the United States about the France-Prussian War. The London Times on July 16, l+o, wrote as follows: The greatestnational crime that we have had the pain of recording in these columns since the days of the First French Empire has been con- summated. War is declared-an unjust. but premeditated war. The dire calamity, which overwhelms Europe with dismay, is, it is now too clear, the act of France, of one man in France. It is the ultimate result of personal rule. There can be no doubt as to the side on which the world’s sympa- thies will be enlisted, and, whatever may on former occasions have been the offenses of Prussia, she will in this instance have on her side all that moral support which is seldom denied to those who take up arms in self-defense.* George Bancroft, the U. S. Minister in Berlin, reported as fol- lows : The leading statesmen as well as public opinion in America regard * Cited in Gustav Stolper. German Realities (New York. Reynal & Hitch- cock,1948), p. 218. 4 THE HIGH COST OF VENGEANCE the present war essentially as an act of self-defense on Germany’s part, and the outstanding task is to insure Germany permanently, by a better system of frontiers, against new wars of aggression on the part of her western neighbors, of which the past three centuries have brought so large a number. The tragedy of modem history is that the Germans have always been kicked around when they were pacifically minded, with the natural result that the apostles of violence have again and again won the leadership of the nation, following the failure of the dem- ocrats and antimilitarists to win a fair deal for the German people, or protect them from attack. Having finally girded their loins to resist French aggression and forced France to abandon her centuries-old ambition to establish her hegemony over the Continent, the Germans proceeded, once Bismarck’s influence was withdrawn, to follow in France’s foot- steps. Nevertheless the popular conception of the Germans as the cause of all recent wars is erroneous. In the half century which elapsed between the France-Prussian War and World War I, Ger- many was at peace, whereas Britain and France conquered most of Africa and extended their Asiatic colonial empires; Russia fought Turkey and Japan; and the United States acquired new territory by wars with Spain and Mexico. Having both studied and taught history at London university in the twenties, when war passions had cooled.