For despotically ruled States there is no salvation except in downfall.

FRIEDRICH SCHILLER, “Ueber Völkerwanderung, Kreuzzüge und Mittelalter”

GENERAL AND GROUP RESPONSIBILITY

SO far we have been at pains to practise the difficult virtue of justice, and to prove the untenability of the theory that at bottom Nazism is nothing else than the hated Germany, of which it is impossible to be too suspicious. We have shown that Nazism was essentially of the general type of totalitarianism, though in one of its worst forms; but it was not Teutonism.

If no soul perishes, how could those great souls the nations, with their bright genius and their history rich in martyrs, full of heroic sacrifices, overflowing with immortality—how could these be extinguished? When one of them is in eclipse for one moment, the whole world suffers in every nation.

MICHELET, Le Peuple, PART 3, CH. 4

FALLACIES AND HALF-TRUTHS

THIS chemical combination, with which we compared the German national character in the last chapter, may, broadly, be regarded as the ultimate product of a thousand years of German history, a history that differs in important respects from that of the other great European nations. But what is the peculiarity of German history that has led to what we must once again call the German problem?

THE MEETING OF THE CURRENTS OF GERMAN AND PRUSSIAN HISTORY

IN the course of the nineteenth century the two historic currents we have been observing, the general German one and the specifically Prussian one, steadily approached each other, until in the critical years from 1864 to 1871 they united, with the Prussian predominating. In 1866 Germany ceased to exist, after a life of nearly a thousand years, and her place was taken by what can only be called a greater Prussia.

The enemy who has merely been overthrown can rise again, but the enemy reconciled is truly overcome.

SCHILLER, Ueber Anmut und Würde

When civilized men fight cannibals they do not eat them.

G. K. CHESTERTON

December, 1945